The Greatest Game Ever Played

She decided, this time to win the Greatest Game Ever Played.

She knew the perfect opponent to pick, the player who never strayed.

He owned the game and she’d been hurt at it,

It wasn’t a situation he would forfeit.

And so when she asked him ‘What the rules for the Game may be?’

He said ‘Whatever you want them to be’

He thought he couldn’t lose at a game invented by him

And she thought she couldn’t lose if the rules were hers.

His only condition: ‘No one knows about this but you and me’

Hers: ‘You can’t fall in love with me’

The rules and conditions were quickly agreed upon,

Coz it fit what they each wanted right from the dawn.

And so the Game started, and for sure it was like no other.

No candlelit dinners, no long walks and surely no promises of forever.

Such an easy relationship they had never known,

where regrets and emotional burdens were never borne.

She cherished her little secret; glad the world didn’t know every bit of her life,

He loved that she didn’t cling, and that to pamper her he didn’t have to strive.

So ‘blissed’ were they in their assumed victories approaching fast,

Neither realized the day either should have won was long past.

Alas! As happens often, when things are going too right,

Reality hit them right in the face with a light shining too bright.

While they still followed each of her rules to the book,

The conditions, they both seemed to have let off the hook.

They both wished to share their joy with a world so down in sorrow,

They each had started to wish a little more for tomorrow.

But he still thought the game was his,

She thought she could still bend the rules slightly and still win.

Until one day he could take it no more,

And said to her ‘This game doesn’t seem like mine any more. It has to end’

She knew she could take it either way now, maybe give herself another chance,

But she said instead ‘The rules are still mine, and the ball is now at your end’.

They both knew what had happened. She had given him the ‘trump’ card.

If he wanted to keep this game on, he’d have to initiate their steps on this boulevard.

He still thought the game was his, and could not let her win.

Even as he felt his heart break he said ‘Game over’ and left her in the din.

Neither had lost, but no one won. The game left at a stalemate. The pawns stuck in their places with no place to go

He was out wondering if the Game was ever worth his state. She sat writing her story so that the world would know.

Author’s note: Yay! Another try at writing a poem. This time with words that rhymed :) I find this poem extremely hilarious. Did you get the joke? My poem, my story ends here. But I told a couple of my friends I’d give them a happy ending at least once. If you wish to read, it, carry on.

A day passed, and then some.

They each realized the Game lost would not have felt so lonesome.

They bumped into each another one day, while their lives were still a mess.

At a romantic diner overlooking the beach none the less.

The irony not lost on them, they smiled honest smiles,

They fumbled over the first few words that seemed to lessen between them the miles.

Finally, he asked her ‘What the rules this time may be?’.

She smiled and said ‘Sill what I shall want them to be’

Authour’s note again: I know it should have ended ‘Whatever you want them to be’, but I couldn’t resist :-p 

And I feel like I’ve betrayed myself, but there you guys, there’s your extremely overrated ‘happy ending’.

One year and counting.

Like almost any day when something out of the ordinary happens, this day will be remembered for years to come. Maybe it will go down in history books. Earlier they’d think up grand names for such periods in history, like the ‘French Revolution’ or ‘The revolt of 1857’. Now since there are so many such events happening so frequently, it’s down to just dates like 9/11, or 26/11 for which I’m writing this post. When the attack happened last year, I wrote about it and my feelings/opinions on it. I won’t be doing that again. It’s tough, still, to go back to how absolutely frightening those 21/2 days were. It gives me the shivers. The bad kind. But another event that happened shortly after, gives me goose bumps for an entirely different reason.

They say it started with a blog. One post, by one guy, about the attacks. The post ended with ‘I will be standing outside the Taj Hotel on Wednesday, December 3 at 6 pm. Join me’. That simple.

And I did. As did (reportedly) over 20,000 others. Word spreads faster these days, they say. When I got there, I couldn’t see an inch of the road. All we saw was a river of people. The emotions I felt there, cannot be put into words, and I can barely try. I didn’t write about this then, and I wont write much about it now. Sometimes, memories are really sufficient, without having to be written down. But that is what I shall choose to remember each year on this day. It was supposed to be a peace rally, but it wasn’t a boring walk with lit candles. It was a huge, huge group of people who were angry, upset, hurt and humiliated what for what had happened to them. There were random bouts of slogan shouting, patriotic songs being sung, and placards flowing over peoples heads, passed from one to another. There were thousands of people, but it seemed, one soul, one voice. Hurt, tired of being quiet, wanting to be noticed. Asking for a change long due to it. The march crossed all the places where the attacks occurred, starting at CST station and ending at the Gateway, where people lit candles.

The march ended, people headed back home their separate ways. But that soul, that voice still waits for justice to be done to it. Will that ever happen? Call me an optimist, but if the world doesn’t end in 2012, like they claim it will, then it HAS to. It absolutely has to. There is just no other option, is there? The way I look at it, this event is the turning point, at least for India. There have been attacks since then, and I daresay they might be another or two. But in the history books, this like the revolution of 1857 will be the event that changed it all. It took us 90 years since then to be called an independent country. No great event has ever happened overnight and it won’t now. Hopefully, it doesn’t take that long now. Hopefully, the same generation can live to see the new independent India. Free from fears of terrorism, external and internal. Free from the forces that stop it from being the super power it deserves to be. Is that possible? If I live to see the day, then I’ll write about it. If I don’t, then maybe more than 90 years later, that soul and voice is finally paid heed.

Maybe it’s the voice and soul at fault. Maybe it needs to be more than that. One body. One person. It’s all that’s needed for a start. That simple.

Click

“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

 ~Richard Avedon

Each day, or should I say night, as I travel back home from work, navigating through hundreds of vehicles,  cursing at traffic signals that just have to turn red when I reach them, and trying hard to avoid killing pedestrians oblivious to vehicles and moving as if they own the roads, I pass homes, lots of them. At the time I travel home, thanks to my oh-so-exciting job, the lights in most windows are turned off. Some windows however, still shine bright with light. My eyes seem to search for these windows, seek them out in the otherwise dark backgrounds behind streetlights. Over days, I’ve noticed a pattern. If you look long enough, closely enough, these windows seem just like paintings, the view seeming to be almost the same each day. I know it may sound perverse but the people behind those windows, their routines, seem mine now. For the fraction of a second (or a minute or two depending upon the traffic really), that I pass by these windows, I feel like I’m living those moments with them, like they are my family, away from family. Today, I decided to stop and take a picture of each of these windows. Life seems so uncertain; you never know what tomorrow holds. I want to treasure these few moments with my “family”, and what better way then pictures?

Picture 1: A man, old enough to be my father, sitting at a table, eating dinner. The light here is almost always candle-light, like it is tonight, and the soft glow of the flame, lends wonderful color to the image. He sits at an angle, and I can’t see if he’s alone but I assume his wife keeps him company. Oh, for companionship at that age and a wonderful home cooked meal to come home to!

Picture 2: A couple, cuddling together on a couch. The woman gazing up lovingly every few minutes at something the man says, and the man bending down to kiss her forehead or smiling down at her an equal number of times. Oh to be in love, and be loved, and want for nothing more!

Picture 3: A teenage girl, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, with headphones on, dancing away to glory. No particular dance form, but yet so graceful. Dancing without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, she moves from one end of the room to another, sometimes frantically picking up pace, sometimes slowing down to just moving on the spot, the tiny LED’s above her head casting her in various colors. Oh to not have the worries of a ‘grown-up’ world!

Picture 4: A boy, at his study-table, studying by the light of a table lamp. He seems to do it each day, with the same amount of concentration, even when I’m sure the exams have passed and the next one is far away. Oh, to go back to a time when all that mattered were exams or more importantly, the holidays that came after!

While I have several more pictures, these 4 seem to strike me the most. The ones I’ll treasure for years to come, because they represent people with whom I’d gladly exchange my life, if only for a day.

The view from behind the window:

Rate my work

I’ve added a tiny feature to my blog, that lets you rate a post.

At the end of each post, you’ll find the text ‘RATE THIS POST’ with the options:

‘Good’, ‘Average’ and ‘Below Par’.
All you need to do, is check the appropriate rating and wait for the checkbox to turn blue, and the counter next to the rating go up by 1. It's that simple!

While feedback in the form of words is still my favorite kind of feedback, this just makes it a little simpler for you as a reader. If you don’t have the words for a comment, this rating will help me know whether the post was ‘Good’, ‘Average’ or ‘Below Par’. :-p

Looking forward to being rated. (But do keep commenting)

And yes, it is anonymous.

Jai Ho

If you’re the kind that doesn’t watch movies in theatres, then you probably won’t know what I’m talking about, when I speak of the national anthem being played before every show. Now I don’t believe in forced patriotism and I’m not really a big supporter of the practice. But to me, like I am sure to many other proud Indians, the national anthem means something. It demands and deserves complete respect. And while some people might argue that standing at attention does not mean you are a true blue patriotic, it’s the thought that counts. It shows that you are taking a minute to simply give your attention to your country, think about it, salute it and feel that pride.

Besides the forced patriotism, what irks me is the different versions played in different movie halls. I think I read about it somewhere too. Some play the instrumental version, some play the sloooooowwww one that goes on for quite a while, and gets the little kids (and some not-so-little-kids) quite restless by the time it ends and some pay it like its on fast forward, with some words actually skipped over.

This brings me to the actual point of the post, which is people’s reactions when the anthem is played. While most stand up respectfully, you do get to hear the odd irritated sighs, like the 2 minutes that the anthem is played, is a huge waste of time; irrespective of the fact the next 3 hours may be a bigger waste. You see the few people, coming into the hall, not stopping looking for their seats, disturbing everyone in their row as they get to their corner seats. You (rarely) get to see a few idiots actually mocking the anthem (and that makes my blood boil). You get to see parents with young children doing some of the above, and it gets you to wonder, what sort of example they are setting for their children, and how dare they go about calling others bad examples for their children.

In a country where respect is often misplaced and overrated (my not-so-humble opinion), this to me is highly disrespectful.

But amidst all this, sometimes, like yesterday when I went to watch a movie, you get to see a guy standing tall and proud, actually saluting the flag on screen, and you go back to that feeling of pride for your country. The best part, once the anthem was over, the man loudly called out ‘Bharat mata ki…’, and the majority of the crowd in the packed hall (including some of the afore-mentioned), replied back, ‘Jai!’

My Jai Ho moment. :)