On meeting someone unique:

Almost Three years in Bangalore. Time flew by indeed and I have finally begun to feel I am established here; only thing I crave is my coupé. I always wanted to have a coupé because it gives me a marvelous sensation of sovereignty. As if those are not wheels but wings.
Someone very special to my heart asked, “Maya, you are still in Bangalore?” I said, “yes and I’ll be here for some more time, am kind of settled now.”
We spent a short span of some remarkable times as a…..(I believe I cannot name this relationship.)
We lost touch for almost 3 years. So he asked, “how is life?” and I said, “Been good. Nothing extraordinarily great, nothing to grumble about either. Just a smooth ride.”
Smooth rides on the journey of life are boring. So I always try to do something different, something that makes my life more exciting. But it ain’t easy to find the right kind of activity that would keep me entertained.
On meeting some one unique:
I didn’t tell anybody but I have been knowing him since three years and been knowing him more with each day, finding out more unique things about him. Moreover, when I say ‘unique’ I mean weird.
He is the man I always wanted to meet. Somebody whose wit is hidden in his sarcasm, care is hidden in ennui, compliment is in criticism, somebody who is an awesome personality and a community guy and lastly some one who demands to be and almost is my boss. And I let him be my boss because he takes my opinion on everything anyway. This has been my idea of romance always, to be everybody’s boss and to be with a special someone who could be my boss. To lose myself when am with him and be a child he would take care of.
It’s fun to be with this person. From time to time I’d do something to challenge his position of being my boss which would piss him off to the extent of we fighting like cats and dogs calling each other names and promising to never talk again. But few moments or days of not talking and we’ll be just fine. I look forward to see him on gtalk not to have a sweet talk but to crib and complaint about something he did or didn’t do. And we fight again and again.
We are quite like a couple except that we are NOT. But it’s interesting to know him, as long as I know him for one day we would really stop talking and would really not see each other ever. I know that as a matter of fact. I don’t know why and how but this would end. It’s a pattern about my relationships with most people, coincidentally most of them being Cancer men. Great start, swift growth, and a sudden crash.

But I still feel this Cancerian is an exception!!!!!!!

Unwind

In a light drizzle
In a Starbuck shop by the lane,
Wafts a warm coffee smell.
I sat with my steaming cappuccino
A soft piano music,

Quiet between

An occasional

Clutter of cups.

A brief conversation…
A surreptitious eye contact…

A drizzle of piano music

And nothing else to do,

No hurry,

Just a quiet reflection

Unwinding itself.

Imaginations

I pass your home in a slow Vermilion dawn.
The blinds are drawn, and the windows are open
The soft breeze from the meadow
Is like your breath on my face.
All day long, I walk in the intermittent rainfall
Picked a vermilion tulip in the deserted park
Bright raindrops cling to its petals
At five o' clock it's a lonely colour in the city
I pass your home in a rainy evening
I can see you faintly in between lighted walls
Late, at night I sit before a white sheet of paper,
Until a fallen vermilion petal quivers before me.

Calligraphy Of Desire

My velvet brush dips deep and lingers there

In the warm inkwell of your endless desires

The ink of passion flows for me tonight

To let me show how it feels my muse

To be so truly in need of you,

I yearn to write poems on lover's power

Upon the warm supple parchment of your skin

Secret words that only you can comprehend

Till my brush dries and I return to dip again

In the ink made by Gods for

the Calligraphy of desire.

Prelude

The pale evening glows Outside my window,
A ray of evening glow
Bathes my room
Your smile zingles
In the corners of my ceiling,
The echo of your kiss
Is the sound of pearls
While poured into wine cups
Your eyes have a celestial light,
You are a circle of blue Around the edifice of my thoughts,
I sleep and wake; wake and sleep
But ceases never my dream…
(At 12 o clock)
When nights are long and loneliness haunts
When eyes starve for response
And heart fears dejection
When nothing pacifies…
I sit by my window staring at the pines of distant parabola
A silent whisper…
A silent tear…
With all my heart I wished you were near…
Dawn of silence
Coerce me with explosion of emotions…
And then …

Loneliness

Dashing against the wall
All but Dashing against the wall
Caught up languidly for suffocation
As the morbid silence sneaks
And the vessels are all void
My sunstroke eyes looking
At a captured Eifel of radium skies.
What captivity all aroud,
What dance of shadows in succession
A kaleidoscope of metamorphoses
In my defracted inner universe
Every sip of coffee burns
The world of my private shrouds,
In drab loneliness of this city

Rendezvous

Like the shells strewn on some shore

When the heaving ocean bosom

Could contain them no more

Your mind which I can't fathom

Has reaching out flung ashore

Thoughts anew ,from its brimming bottom!

Like the shells that play 'peek-a-boo'

Your thoughts lie stranded face down

I search the sands on my rendezvous,

With fervent faith, at sun-down,Flip the patterned pieces, gently too

To delight in their design,or but frown.

Satpada......an idyllic retreat

Every once in a while it becomes imperative to break away from the humdrum routine of daily life and escape for a brief moment to a secluded haven far from the madding crowd. For those fond of the sun, the sands and the gentle sound of water lapping at one's feet, Satpada seems to be an ideal retreat.Coming down to Orissa situated over one hundred and twenty kilometers from Bhubaneshwar, there are two approach routes to Satpada.It can be reached by land via Puri. However, the more preferable route is to go to Chilika by land and then on to Satpada by motor launch. The second route is definitely the more picturesque one. It offers the added advantage of a journey over water and a chance to see the famous Chilika Lake.For travelers wishing to take a brief breather or a quick lunch, there's the Barkul Government Guest house, which offers the specialty of the area luscious crab curry.Before going on to Satpada travelers have to traverse Chilika Lake and even the Dolphin sanctuary. However the dolphins are largely reclusive and rarely can travelers catch sight of one still, the main thrill of the journey lies in the beauty of the lake, the sun shimmering idly on its waters. The journey takes around an hour or two; depending on how leisurely a pace the travelers wish to take.On reaching Satpada, the place is just a tiny island, one of the many on the mouth of chilika. In geographical terms, it may be said to be situated in an estuary. Satpada, relatively unknown to larger masses retains it pristine purity. It hardly covers an area of two or three square kilometers, with one solitary bungalow, a pine grove and a small retinue of tourism officials.Any tourist accustomed to the bristle and bustle and crowds of vendors on the beaches of Mumbai and in Puri, would be delighted to see the total absence of commercialization. Itâs a pure visual and auditory delight, a welcome surprise for anyone who had despaired to find such an unpolluted place.The sea is the most wonderful shades of blue with the purest sand, unspoilt even by human footprints.Though provided with the most elementary necessities, the overwhelming presence of the sea, dominating all human presence is enough to compensate for the lack of amenities.The weather is temperate, with warm days and cool nights, with a perpetual breeze and incessant music of the waves .the pine grove that covers one-fourth of the island offers a shady recluse for al fresco picnics. The entire stretch of the beach is virtually deserted and a virtual paradise for collectors of shells and various colored pebbles that letter the shores.On the other side of the island lies the expanse of Chilika Lake. About the most beautiful parts of the island is a hillock upon which one can stand and in front lies the endless sea and on the other, the sparkling waters of the Chilika, an inspiring sight for any poet. The beach is also perfect for camping and bonfires. The island itself a birdwatcher's paradise, with many varieties of birds coming over in winter.If one is looking for a truly restful holiday retreat, an idyllic Garden of Eden for tired minds, we need look no further.
Here is a place where we can put one's feet up and really rest and feast one's eyes on nature in all its unpolluted finery.

Love Story

'What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died?'The essence of Love Story by Segal is all about the tender yet intensely realistic love between Jennifer Cavilleri and Oliver Barrett. The book translates love into a universal emotion, something that can be felt by anyone, anywhere, that every being can relate to, atleast anyone who has remotely felt love.The main theme of the story is the unique relationship between two entirely different individuals. 'Oliver Barrett IV went to Harvard and Jenny to Radcliffe.He was rich, she was poor. He was sporty, she played music. But they fell in love. This is their story.' One of the two other relationships in the story is the affectionate father- daughter relationship between Jenny and her father, and the tense father - son relationship between Oliver and his father.The focal point of the novel is the matter of fact and witty dialogue, at times soft and loving and at times full of brilliant repartee. But at all times the undercurrent of love is omnipresent.Love story illustrates a particular point:" love means not ever having to say you're sorry"Viewed in all its totality, the book can be said to be exactly what it is named after - a love story.

Great Expectations

Great Expectations is characterized by a peculiarly nostalgic, retrospective tone. Despite the title which points towards the future, this a novel in which many of the characters attempt to deny the passage of time, or to refashion their own pasts through manipulating the course of other lives. It focuses not so much on the idea of forward progression as on the motif of returning, or trying to return. Even the narrator and the central character's name Pip Pirrip, is palindromic, turning in, like the narrative movement, upon itself.The greatness of Great Expectations begins in its title: modern society bases itself on great expectations, which if ever they are realized, are found to exist by reason of a sordid, hidden reality.The themes in the book are prisons and criminals, cruel and unjust institutions, helpless and unhappy children, greed for money and power. They all appear in Great Expectations and are woven into an interlocking pattern of great subtlety and intensity among the four central figures.Before the adult relationships develop, an eerie atmosphere of depression, alienation and isolation has established itself. The two background equally dismal surround young Pip. The opening scenes paint first the tangled overgrown grave of the churchyard and beyond that the dark flat wilderness of the marshes, the empty sky and the 'savage layer' of the sea in the distance. Then at Satis house in semidarkness lives Miss Havisham who halted her life on the morning of her wedding day, twenty years earlier when her faithless lover, deserted her.Both these backgrounds suggest emptiness and desolation and mingled with them is another suggestion, which permeates the whole book: human guilt and imprisonment.In the opening scenes Pip meets the terrified convict Magwitch who is to play so vital a part in Pip's expectations. Pip's sister's attitude towards him has always been that towards a young offender. Pip finds his expectations are to prove nothing but a cage. Finally, he discovers that he owes his expectations not to miss Havisham but to Magwitch, in whose miserable fortunes both he and Estella are inescapably enmeshed.The bulk of the book deals with adult suffering and with states of mind of imprisonment, isolation and lovelessness of the concrete illustration of the marshes, the decayed house and gardens, the prisons, the cruelties towards the helplessness and weak. The lives of the main characters are all deformed by the lack of love, or by the distortion of love into revenge and emotional greed.Pip's 'great expectations' of money and of love are all finally reversed into ironic paradox, as are the expectations of those with whom his fortunes are entangled. Pip's snob's progress begins on the first day as he goes to Satis house as a child and he meets Estella and accepts at once that her standards are correct and he and his connections are coarse and common. He leads an existence of empty futility, and becomes absorbed into a world of make-believe, self-deception, and discontent and tortured by the guilt of his reputation by Joe and most of all by the compulsive centering of all his hopes of winning Estella.Into this world of false hopes breaks the harsh truth .The reader has been partially prepared for it by the constant interweaving in Pip's life of episodes involving convicts and criminals. But pip has consistently ignored everything except his romantic preconceptions. The shock is overwhelming with the arrival of Magwitch, his illusions shattered and his world in ruins.As Magwitch's story unfolds it is clear how much more victim he is than victimizer. Pip finds his own identity as unselfish loyalty and love gradually fill his heart. Finally he sees in Magwitch a better person than he has been to Joe.Each character is forced to face the mystery of evil, passion and pain. Reconciliation and forgiveness come from the discovery of the basic element in human relationship and understanding: that true identity and escapeis reached in humility and compassion.The restrained evening glow which suffuses the novel's last sentence has the quality of the final theatrical performance: it also reflects a contentment of mind without which, surely the narrator could never have undertaken his long exploration of the events and attitudes that led him and Estella to this final meeting in the deserted garden which is about to become the center of rebuilding and new life.In contrast to the world of fantasy the moral universe is quite different: there our acts have consequences, our choices matter, our privileges entail responsibilities.