"he is no more" .... "is it?"

" He is no more..." said the voice on the other end of the phone, I went numb for a while... didn't know how to respond and how to break the news to others. It took a while for the fact to sink in, they were talking about my grandfather 'nanaji' I used to address him that way. As any lucky kid who gets to spend the childhood with grandparents I too have been very close to mine. Looking at their lives I've always realized that they were different breed of human being, our generation is very different from what theirs used to be and I'm glad I happened to inculcate some value of theirs, I wouldn't say that made me a saint but definitely a better human being.
So, after a while when I finally grasped the reality and accepted it, I thought God wouldn't feel happy about it if I mourn too much for a full happy life that served the purpose it was meant to and knowing that the body was so much in pain and finally when the sufferings came to an end ain't I being selfish in wishing that it wouldn't have happened. Agreed that it's a loss for everyone in the family, agreed that he used to give us sense of security, but what about his pain, what about his sufferings, and all the efforts we made to drag it a little longer and little longer. Of course it's a human nature we give our best to things we want and we need, his body too might have fought, but lately I always used to have this feeling that his soul wanted to be freed. So, now I see him as a free soul happily going for a heavenly adobe and smiling at me, at all of us and blessing us abundantly.
I start recollecting things about him, and in retrospection I see him as an honest man who had only one religion and that was his duty. All he had done through out his life was work and fulfill responsibilities towards his family. There are random thoughts that come to my mind ...

•  he graduated from presidency college in erstwhile Calcutta during pre-independence era, when he was offered job at a government office his family ridiculed saying are we sort of money that we would slave ourselves for angrez so, he got into family business
• in my entire life I have never seen him making small talks with anyone
• never saw him going to temples, unless it was very necessary, he wasn't an atheist, first thing after waking up was chanting God's name, and looking at both his hands, that was it. I remember him telling me that he doesn't believe in going to temples he has got his God in his heart... 
• he was the one who used to give me my first English lessons " what are you going to have for your supper? " he would say and I would say 'dinner' :)
• he was a simple man but would prefer a crisp ironed coat but wear it with his dhoti
• the only indulgence he had was that he used to collect lottery tickets which we always found funny that he never won any 

there is no man without a fault, he too must have had some but none that i know of, and neither do I want to because it's always good to have an ideal example....so, there are hundreds of memories that I have of him , and since yesterday every moment a new memory comes up which I never even knew existed, and then I smile at the irony of words that they say "he is no more... " well, I find him in thousands of my memories and he will always be there for me forever...

dear diary.....

"Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary."

Geoff Dyer

Recently i came across this quote and I so agree to it ! I remember there was a time when my diary was my best friend, it was at age of 13 that I started maintaining a diary and was pretty loyal to it, but with passing of time I guess 'world' happened to me... I was growing up, had a rat race to run and win, and all that took away those lofty dreams, those larger than life ideas, those fairy tale fantasies, slowly getting immersed into too much of practicality and worldly affairs I started feeling that life hardly had anything worth writing about it was more about coping up with day to day hustle-bustle and hence after 10 years with a slow fading character the habit came to an end. I was so very busy that I did not even have time to mourn over it.

 Now after few odd years of giving up writing a diary, when the major part of the rat race is over, life is a bit more settled as we might call it, I realize how much of a dull life it is.... I miss my diaries, I miss that enthusiasm I had about every little things of life that I used to write about, I miss those out of the world ideas which might have been stupid, but am sure if I would have pursued them with all the passion life would be a different story, I miss those fairy tale fantasies, somewhere deep inside I miss believing in fairy tales, it would be a little risky but if my belief was strong enough you never know life could have had a hint of fairy tale in it.

But then it's never too late is it? Fine I had given it up once but I've still got days ahead, life ahead, no matter how old I'm, no matter how much of time I've lost but I can always start, and I can always believe that there are always things in life worth writing about ! 

So, it goes to me as well as to you "keep a diary"  and record some moments of your life and your experience because your life, how so ever ordinary you may feel, always has something worth writing and rejoicing about :)

 picture courtesy: Google

An Equal Music- A review

It's been my the most favorite book, ever since I've read it which is 12 years back and I'm still in love with it, and here is review which was written 10 years back

“AN EQUAL MUSIC”

                                                                                         By - Vikram Seth

 A world of melodies beautifully woven around a melancholic love story.  An Equal Music is a heartrending saga of a lost love which however never looses its existence in the life of the lovers and rekindles itself to be extinguished once again.

The plot of the book is based on love and music, or to put in another words it’s ‘love for the music’.  The story revolves around Michael, a violinist who plays in a quartet and who is still haunted by the ghost of a foregone relationship, a relationship with Julia, the pianist with whom he had fallen in love 10 years back while in Vienna, and with whom he actually has never fallen out of love, a loss which he has never been able to retrieve. After 10 years of their falling apart and losing each other one day Michael happens to spot Julia on a bus on a street in London and he can’t help himself from pursuing her again. Julia is now married to a banker and has a son, and apart from these new developments in her life there is one more secret…. she is going deaf, but none of these stop her from getting involved with Michael once more. So the broken strings of love are reunited by both of them but to lose it all once again.

The background of the book is based in places like London, Vienna, Venice and Rochdale and of course the writer’s skill as a travel writer is well evident by the vivid portrayal of these places. The music, the emotions and the places go together hand in hand in this book, each of them lead to another one and all are beautifully interwoven.  With just a handful of characters the book never leads to any confusion for the readers. The central characters being Michael Holmes (who narrates the book) and Julia McNicholl, other than them is Virginie, the young French girlfriend of Michael who also happens to be one of his students, then two other characters are Julia’s husband and her son, and few others like the rest of the members of Maggiore quartet where Michael belongs, Michael’s father in Rochdale and Mrs. Formby whose fiddle is what Michael plays. Each character has his/her own charms and oddities. Both the central characters seem to be at a war with their own inner selves, they are torn between love and duty, faith and fidelity, silence and music. In spite of having quite melodramatic situations and circumstances like, the agony and pain of a musician going deaf ,or the constant insecurity of Michael about losing the only two objects of love in his life, Julia and his violin, the story is not overtly dramatized . At the end of the story music wins and music survives and that gives the answer to all their questions, and gives the hope to all their despairs, and as Michael says at the end: “Such music is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music--not too much or the soul could not sustain it--from time to time” this sentence explains it all, though the characters loose their love but the real love of their life is music, which shall always remain with them.

With this book Vikram Seth once again proves himself to be one the finest writers of his generation. His range needs no further explanation, as the book itself shows how its characters n music belongs to an entirely different world when compared to a historical world of post-independence India that was depicted in Seth’s A Suitable Boy”. An equal music blends two different forms of art (music and literature) so very well that the emerging equation is simply a delight to go through. The symphonies and the sonatas are described with such fine details that the reader can actually hear the music being played. The language is poetic and needless to say beautiful…. “Who must follow these prerogatives, these hidden histories of the chameleon word ‘love’?” sentences like these which enrich this book are a delight for both mind and heart. And in this pragmatic world if at all Love with all its beauty, complexities and divinity is considered to be a form of art then for sure the writer excels in that aspect too by wonderfully merging these beautiful forms of art and these substantial expressions of human emotions into a very pleasantly painful musical experience called An Equal Music – an equal music that will keep echoing in the ears of readers long after it has been read.

appreciating life

" the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. it is a little star-dust caught, a segment of rainbow which I've clutched"
Henry David Thoreau

everyday passes by and living becomes a norm, only thing we don't realize is that inside the norm too are miracles hidden which make up for this exceptional phenomenon called life..... so realize all the little and huge potentials it has and live it full !

simple reasons to smile ....

Sometimes all you need is something as insignificant as a pretty shade of nailcolor to make you feel happy...  so look around and find those small nothings which can make you smile !