Red roses...

Each year he sent her roses,
and the note would always say,
I love you even more this year,
than last year on this day.
My love for you will always grow,
with every passing year."

She knew this was the last time
that the roses would appear.
She thought, he ordered roses
in advance before this day.
Her loving husband did not know,
that he would pass away.

He always liked to do things early,
way before the time.
Then, if he got too busy,
everything would work out fine.

She trimmed the stems and
placed them in a very special vase.
Then, sat the vase beside
the portrait of his smiling face.

She would sit for hours,
In her husband's favorite chair.
While staring at his picture,
and the roses sitting there.

A year went by, and it was
to live without her mate.
With loneliness and solitude,
that had become her fate.

Then, the very hour,
The doorbell rang, and there
were roses sitting by her door.

She brought the roses in,
and then just looked at them in shock.
Then, went to get the telephone,
to call the florist shop.

The owner answered, and she asked him,
if he would explain, Why would someone would
do this to her, causing her such pain?

"I know your husband passed away,
more than a year ago,"
The owner said,
"I knew you'd call, and you would want to know.
The flowers you received today,
were paid for in advance.
Your husband always planned ahead,
he left nothing to chance.
There is a standing order,
that I have on file down here,
And he has paid, well in advance,
you'll get them every year.

There also is another thing,
that I think you should know,
He wrote a special little card...he did this years ago.
Then, should ever I find out that he's no longer here, that's the card that
should be sent to you
the following year."

She thanked him and hung up the phone, her tears now flowing hard.
Her fingers shaking,
as she slowly reached to get the card.

Inside the card, she saw that he had written her a note.
Then, as she stared in total silence,
this is what he wrote...

"Hello my love, I know it's been a year
since I've been gone.
I hope it hasn't been too hard for you to overcome.
I know it must be lonely,
and the pain is very real.

Or if it was the other way,
I know how I would feel.
The love we shared made everything
so beautiful in life.
I loved you more than words can say,
you were the perfect wife.
You were my friend and lover,
you fulfilled my every need.
I know it's only been a year,
but please try not to grieve.

I want you to be happy,
even when you shed your tears.
That is why the roses will be sent to you for years.
When you get these roses,
think of all the happiness that we had together,
and how both of us were blessed.
I have always loved you and
I know I always will.
But, my love, you must go on,
you have some living still.

Please...try to find happiness,
while living out your days.
I know it is not easy,
but I hope you find some ways.

The roses will come every year,
and they will only stop,
When your door's not answered,
when the florist stops to knock.
He will come five times that day,
in case you have gone out.
But after his last visit,
he will know without a doubt!
To take the roses to the place,
where I've instructed him
and place the roses where we are,
together once again.

The best poem that has ever been forwarded to me... don't get shocked at me posting senti .. sniff sniff...

Seven nuggets

Tagged by Chaavi.. who recently turned 21! Happy Birthday!

I found some titles depressing. Like "Seven things i want to do before I die"... made some changes there...


Seven things I want to do in my life:

1. Buy a house in my native village and make it a retreat
2. Teach
3. Run a NGO(not pseudo-socialite types, but touching a few lives)
4. Organise a complete Family reunion, school reunion........ and hopefully my kgp batch's reunion
5. Learn to ride a horse and go for a horse-riding jaunt in europe
6. Learn to fly a plane/glider
7. Play a musical instrument to my satisfaction
   

Seven things I can do

1. Listen
2. Lie
3. Work like crazy when required
4. Sleep like a bum when not required
5. Finish any book/TV series/Set of movies in one go
6. Procrastinate endlessly and Plan needlessly
   
7. Market/Sell stuff ... (A skill recently discovered)

Seven things I say the most

1. See... / Dekh...
   
2. Aisa kya?
3. Sahi!
   
4. Shit be!
5. Abe yaar, frust ho raha hoon
6. Oye, khaane ke liye kuch hai kya?
7. Chal then...

Seven things I can't do

1. Keep my room clean
   
2. Resist bhaating with friends for many many hours
   
3. Diet
4. Remember birthdays (except a very few)
5. Flirt
6. Get a smile off my professor
7. Understand fashion

Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex

1. Eyes
2. Smile
3. Sensibility
4. A sense of humour (preferably mine :P)
5. Poise
6. Reaction to smaller pleasures in life
7. Down-to-earth attitude

Seven celebrity crushes

1. Julia roberts
2. Preity zinta
3. Tanushree Dutta
4. Angelina Jolie
5. Allison Mack (Chloe sullivan in Smallville)
6. Keira Knightley
   
7. Jessica Lucas (Sue miller in 'Life as we know it')

Seven people I tag

1. DD (yaar the main post is in draft... will be done this week)
2. Krishna
3. KTda
4. Iyer
5. Priyanka
6. Himanshu
7. Bagru (Saurabh)

Damn!! I thought this would be easy!! :)

Crepuscular

Tagged by dd.

1. flip open a dictionary and point to a word / get word of the day from dictionary.com
2. type the word into google images.
3. pick an image that strikes you.
4. write a 10 line riff off the image.
5. use the word or the meaning at least once within the first 5 lines.
6. tag 3 other bloggers on your list.

crepuscular \kri-PUS-kyuh-lur\, adjective:
1. Pertaining to twilight; glimmering; hence, imperfectly clear or luminous.
2. (Zoology) Flying in the twilight or evening, or before sunrise; -- said certain birds and insects.

The morning beckon,
with the call of seagull and the shimmering ocean,
timid waves caressing the sand

"Ahh, look at that pa! Those auroral rays!!"
"Not auroral. Crepuscular.", said he.
"Oh, Cre-pus-cu-lar"..... "It's beautiful"

Light stabbing the darkness,
through the wispy clouds spread over the horizon
heralding a new day, a second twilight

"Hmmm, Crepuscular. "

3 people I tag:

1. Sandy
2. Chaavi
3. Iyer

Reminders

As you can see, I have updated my blog after the longest break yet (just scroll below). And I have missed out on writing about some of the busiest and tumultous days of 'me liph'! So blogs I have to write

• Illumination... in full detail
• Chaavi's tag
• DD's tag (the riff needs to be addressed)
• Garba
• My new handset
• Winter
• And few more wisps of thought which I can't quite verbalize yet.

End-sems are coming up... in final year, with one Humanities course and one management course and a 4 day gap between the two technical courses, that means a LOAD of free time!! I am sure I will get myself to do it....

Jai hind! :P

Triskaidekaphobia!!!

I am generally a pretty sane bloke. Decent habits, concrete beliefs and sufficient abilities. But one blot that I have been unable to rid myself of is that slightest sense of superstition i have. I know, I know... Superstitions are for morons, idiots and George .W .Bush; but nevertheless I have these these moments when hesitation in action occurs just because some vague superstition pops up in my head.

I come from a pretty orthodox family. As in, Amma strongly believes religion and has never been 'away from home' (until she got married obviously, but that was her home then!). And Appa truly believes in the core (true) values of our religion and he HAS been in a hostel environment. So i often am exposed to the myriad set of beliefs and superstitions that our religion has. The most prominent example is the "Rahu kalam". Apparently this time of the day belongs to the demon Rahu (who in one of the mythological tales, swallows the sun). I have lost count of the number of times that we have had to start journeys and reschedule shopping for auspicious occasions due to "Rahu kalam". This is the maximum superstition I permit mother to entertain (or is it?).

Anyway, in this complex human life bound by black cats and sneezes, I have managed to largely avoid most of this tom-foolery. Well... most except the strange uneasiness i associate with the number 13. Yes there it is.... ladies and gentlemen... I am a patient of Triskaidekaphobia (not too severe though). It is defined as:

S: (n) triskaidekaphobia (a morbid fear of the number 13)

Although I wouldn't say that my feeling for the number 13 is 'morbid', it sure exists. I feel this is absurd as the fear of thirteen has started only in the times of christianity. So quite often on the 13th of every month i used to get jittery and would attribute every bad experience of the day to the number. Well, I don't do so now-a-days because i rarely realise what the date is.


But it was not so on the 13th of this month... yes the one that just went by. I had some divine foreboding of the day. I say the clock on my mobile at exactly 12 am of the 13th. And i was like... "Grow up, u moron! Ur 21 now... hmmm 21... 13+8... so i have to look out for 5 years hence... when i will be 26(13 X 2) ... OH SHUT UP!! there is no such thing as unlucky numbers.... why in the name of gaia should god create a number and then make it unlucky????!!!!??? ... one big moron you are... someday i should blog about.. HEY THE LATEST EPISODE OF LOST IS ON THE LAN"

So in that fashion I spent the first few hours of the day oblivious to the impending agony that awaited me. The whole day reaffirmed my beliefs in:

1. Murphy's law (more fun facts about it)
   
2. The old hindi adage: "Bhagwan jo deta hai chappad phad ke deta hai". I find this true for torture and agony also.
3. "Larger you are, harder you fall" (Old proverb)
   
4. There is no "Happily ever after" moments only "after every happy" moment. (Sudarshan, circa 2005)
5. A blog is like a girlfriend. Fun in the 'fling' stage, but requires maintenance in the long run. (Sudarshan, circa 2005)

Now I shall explain the impeccable logic behind these beliefs from my own experience.

It started with my tonsils... I took a 2 hour nap and when i wake up, my tonsils are the size of africa. The bloody things got in the way of swallowing, drinking and even talking. So i relaxed a bit and hoped it would go off soon. I have had the tonsil problem since a loooong time. But never got it operated due to the bad experience that amma had in her operation (gave her a tinge of double voice). So I forgot about it... and it became something that was hidden under the blanket and instructed never to pop out again. After over 6-7 years, it found this very day to come forth in undimming glory.

So in the afternoon, when i opened GTalk, I noticed my project supervisor in Harvard online (Yes, I am doing an extra project... Husssshhhh .. my guide doesn't know about it). Sudden pangs of guilt struck as I was to give him results this weekend and I had been TOTALLY tied up in academic stuff and also was stuck at one place in the project. So I opened the software, checked the model and started a few runs. And then all hell breaks loose. My UPS stops and I have to wait for 5 minutes before booting the computer. I got totally frustrated with the efforts as the monitor went yellow and I needed a proper colour monitor to do image processing!!

So quit that and went out for snacks. After snacks, I went to the loo and with my hands and feet being all wet, I stopped to talk to a hallmate. I happened to keep one foot on the wall and the other normally on the floor.... Although I made no sudden movements in fact no movement AT ALL, I was in the air... and in a second on the floor. I don't know what did it. 'Cause i swear there was enough traction on that slipper to compete with michellin and I had been standing without moving for 5 minutes..... Anyway there I was ... on the floor.... forcing a smile when the hallmate, half-bemused half-concerned asked me if I was alright.

Yes, I was alright... How could I not be??? I still had the remaining day to face. Then I walk into the room and see a couple of offlines from a close friend. "Hey..." "Just wanted you to know that me and ________ broke up" "happened a couple of days back..." ... I grrroooaaanned my heart out. See... this friend of mine and I had an amazing connection until last year. Both of our lives sucked and we used to be happy that we atleast compete in "World's 10 most suckiest lives!" reality show. Then the latter found a nice relationship and was pretty happy (or recently just seemed to be). And I was really happy (Not because I was the undisputed reality show champion) but because its good to see a friend's life going on well.

So the day trudged on... and i felt pretty morose by the end of it... I had some vague stuff going on in my life too. Actually since then I have slept at such odd times that i forget what happened when... but the above 4 are entrenched in my mind as happening on the 13th.

So what made me write this blog? I opened some friends blogs today and got tagged twice(one by chaavi and other I got myself tagged at DD's).

So I open my dashboard rite? and it says... "A journey to absurdity...." --> 13 posts.... I was flabbergasted ... the longest break in my blogging just when the going was good. And in these past 50 odd days, I have wanted to blog atleast 15 times... 15 different events... Just couldn't get myself to do it... Had work or just forgot...

So I have started writing this post at 9.15 PM ... and its 3.55 AM now. 13 has tried its best to stop me from writing .... with umpteen distractions and one UPS failure... But I saved the drafts... I know the crafty ways of 13. So 13, be warned!! ... The gauntlet has been thrown... please don't hurt me!


Shit happens.