THE ULTIMATE TRUTH

Due to so-called ‘busyness’ on the professional front, I am unable to spend much time thinking about any topic to an extent that I can dedicate a blog to it. The ‘Random Thoughts’ series of blogposts are going to be quickies, and quickies though efficient, lack finesse! Apologies.

1) The past week has been a Nostalgia week. I accidentally happened to browse through my chat conversations on both yahoo and google. My, my - it was one emotional roller coaster. What started off as 5-10 refreshing exercise turned out to be an endeavor close to 3-4 hrs spread over couple of days! Conversations, letters - some which I read twice, maybe thrice and some which didn’t even matter; Photographs - some which I wanted to frame and keep them in my bedroom, and others which I despised; Letters - some so genuine that tears trickled down, some so sham and artificial, I wondered why I even had stored them. Some thoughts evoked a feeling of ‘The world seems to have drifted a thousand miles and left me alone’, while others ‘Mann! I couldn’t have said that’ types. As happens with nostalgia, you feel happy and sad at the same time - with some thoughts still active, others dormant and most of them dead.

2) I might not be qualified to say this - but I find some of the things newly-weds do absolutely hilarious. To the risk of sounding cynical- ‘Oh! We went out for dinner. It has been 3 weeks since we got married and we thought it was time for celebration’ - Some achievement, eh? Oh my God! Look, people said we couldn’t even get along for 3 days and now we have completed 3 weeks!! Bah! Another distinct feature of newly married couples - When they sit in a group, they slyly look at each other and smile, wink and to top it all, try to ensure that noone else in the group has noticed that! I mean c’mon - if you slyly look at each other for 30 min out of a 45 min gathering, others are bound to notice you guys. And We know what you guys are thinking and smiling about - we exactly aren’t products of immaculate conception, are we? So, how about some ‘actual’ social gathering rather than a ‘sly’ social gathering!

3) I haven’t been getting much time to read books lately - but I am stealing a read here and there. I would definitely recommend Khaled Hosseini’s ‘Kite Runner’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ - both extremely well-written and gripping. Given the current state of Afghanistan, these two books give an excellent perspective of the state.

4) Some of the readers’s comments I received through my email - would like to put them here

a) ‘Why are majority of your short-stories based on this boy-girl theme? You write them well…so why can’t we have a diverse set of topics?’

My response: Well, probably it has to do with my age However, will definitely keep your comment in mind whenver I embark on a short-story.

b) ‘Can we have more posts like ‘State of Indian education system etc?’

My response: More such posts found on Desicritics.org. I write about generic topics on that site; I put in one or two such articles on this blog. I would definitely love your comments on that site too.