Just thinking...

Right now I am sitting in office waiting for the clock to strike 10:15 so that I can leave for home. Ya its Friday night and I can't wait to get home but that's not the only reason. Its been a day with very little work. Comming in this shift has its cons and one of them is that most of your office mates have already left for home; so now when you have lots of time you don't have someone to spend it with.
I tried playing but after sometime it felt strange to play in office and so I stopped.
No friend is online so no chatting.
Already had 2 cups of coffee today so no more of coffee.
Went out for shopping as well today.

Fridays are supposed to be good but I am not feeling that way right now. With not much to do the mind is playing its own games, twisting and turning in and out of thoughts, getting caught in its own web before breaking free and again getting caught, sometimes catching my attention and at other times wandering aimlessly, giving new ideas only to dismiss them soon, at times listening to the song being played with a quick glance at the clock and maybe thinking about what to write next.
Last night I felt as if I lost my touch for writing (not that I am a good writer but whatever little I come out with the words failed me yesterday as I couldn't write anything on something I wanted to) but the words seem to be comming at this moment. That's encouraging at this point. I am already thinking about the next topics to write on :). Till then ...

a thing beyond forever

I have been reading a lot for the past few months. In fact I have read quite a few books in this period. Last night I finished another book which is titled 'a thing beyond forever' by Novoneel Chakraborty. The book also goes on to add this after the title 'The reward for every true love is not love...'.
I must admit that this is not one of the best books I have read but still I am talking about this book because there's something that happened as I was reading the book yesterday night. A certain section of the book sent a shiver across my body which I can still feel as I write this post. The section talks about rebirth but its the sequence of events before it that create the plot and its written beautifully. And it made my mind wander into a place reminiscent of what was described in the book where I was actually trying to visualize the possibility of such occurance. I ended up thinking for sometime before returning to the book; and then again thinking about it once I finished the book. The book ended up in the only way it could giving me more to think as to why things are the way they are. And I couldn't find any answer to it.
But there were few lines in the book which I really liked and I will mention some of those here -
"the right ingredients make the food tasty but sharing the food with right people makes it special"
"Everyone is someone yet to be identified"
"at times a food needs time to cook itself without the chef having to do anything"
"All unreasonable things have a reasonable reason and all reasonable things have an unreasonable reason"

A tryst with plays

A few weeks back I went to see a play. Its hard to believe but I really did go; on some insistence from a good friend. The whole concept of theatre seems old and outdated to me so I am not a big fan of plays. Its not that I hate plays or something like that, its just that I don't feel like going to see a play. I must admit though that there are times when I actually think I should go and watch something similar but its few and far between :).

So I and my friend went to watch a play. A third friend was to join us but he got some last minute work and couldn't come. The play was at some auditorium near Mandi House (oh I don't remember the name of the audi). The play was titled Kanjoos. As we bought the tickets I couldn't help but notice that there were few in fact more than few people who had come to see the play. Most of the people were either more than 35 years old and/or looked artistic (men in kurta, long hair/beard; women with jhola type bags). There were a few like me also - you can call them out of place. Seeing the crowd "Duniya mein bewacoofon ki kami nahi hai" came out of my mouth and my friend gave me one of her usual angry looks. Her reply "Nahi dekhni to mat dekho". The play was scheduled to start at 4 PM but didn't start until 4:20 PM. Everything from selling tickets to lighting was managed by the group. I expected the play to start on time but it didn't which convinced me further that this was going to be boring. But kehte hai na "Okhli mein sir de hi diya hai to mooslon se darna kya" - so I went ahead. As I entered the audi and saw the surroundings it reminded me of an old college auditorium. I couldn't believe that it didn't have ac; it had the big fans (baba aadam ke zamane ke) and when the fans were switched on I thought they are going to fall.

Well as the play was about to start my friend assured me for the upteenth time "Its gonna be good" and I gave her the same smile for the nth time. The play finally began. It didn't start off well and so I started looking at other people - mostly to see if there were others getting as bored as I was. I saw a few young couples enjoying (each other's company and not the play); which gave me one reason to watch a play - watch a play when on a date and you get a place where there isn't much crowd and no one disturbs you :P. The play continued meanwhile in the monotonous way and I wondered if anyone was actually enjoying the play; but one never knows what one likes (in other words there was no way of finding out). As the moments went by I found that even my friend wasn't finding the play good.

The play finally ended and it was the best thing to happen to me in the last couple of hours :). As we came out my friend said "This wasn't good. We will go for some other play sometime". An expression of surprise crossed my face. I said "Isse ji nahi bhara? You are asking me for another one" She just smiled and said "Plays are good and next time I will take you to a better play". I didn't say anything and we came out heading to our respective homes.

The play didn't turn out to be good but the entire episode made me notice that there are people who still watch plays and there are people who have theatre as profession. For someone to actually start liking plays the plays need to be much better. And so needs to be the ambience. Cost is a factor but if plays are to be made popular the ambience needs to be better. As for me, well, if plays are like the one I watched I won't be going for any more plays; but if plays are better I might try it out again.

Catch up/Get-together/Party - whatever it was, it was fun

Last Friday I had a dinner planned out with my friends. I have been asked not to reveal their identities so I will call them M, V and S. We started as cab mates (although now we very rarely go in the same cab) and now we are friends. We had planned to meet at 7:30 PM and go to a place called Barrique near our office. We were planning to meet for sometime but there was no concrete plans so one day I had sent a mail to finalise the plan. The plan came through and there we were at 7:30 PM on Friday evening in front of our office building. The others had decided to come 10 minutes early while I got down just in time finishing a call. And we headed towards Barrique.

My idea of it was a restaurant but it turned out to be a bar. There was no seating available when we reached so we came out and decided to go to Mojo. On the way I asked "Are we going to drink?" The three of them gave me a surprised look and replied "It's by default." M asked "You don't drink?" I replied "Not if I have to go to office" V said "You don't have to return to office. I can get the cab booked for you." I said "No thanks. I have some work left and then its a question of ethics" They didn't say anything then and we reached Mojo.

As we were given the menus they asked me a second time about drinks and I politely refused. We ordered our drinks and snacks - M went for white wine, S for Whisky, V for Beer and I for a drink called Tantra which was some version of lemonade. For snacks we ordered chilly chicken without capsicum (that's for me) and chilly mushroom.

I noticed quite few things about the others that evening. I didn't expect M to be ready for a drink during office; it was quite unusual for her to do so from what I knew of her. S was somewhat subdued the whole time. I thought it was because of his lack of preparation for an interview the next day. I guess all 3 of us thought so. We found out later that it was something else. With less than half an hour to go for his cab he said the first thing he would do is to have a smoke when he went down. V said "Smoking is allowed here". S was pleasantly surprised and exclaimed "Really". He then looked at M and she said she had no problem. The moment S heard that he lit up a cigarette. His joy knew no bounds and he was a completely transformed person thereafter. I didn't know S was so shy as to not even express his desire to us; and also that he was so much addicted to smoke. V turned out to be connoisseur in terms of drinks and food. The food he ordered was really tasty. In fact I ate mushroom (don't tell my mom :)) which I don't like. In terms of drinks he asked for the wine bottle and read the contents to find out if it would be bitter or sweet. And he went on to tell the various wines he had consumed - ranging from 4 pounds to 100 pounds - when he was in UK. And he also told about the last few days when he had been drinking like anything. And he went mentioning what are the best foods available in the nearby food joints. I had never thought he would be so much into these things.

It was after a very long time that I was having lemonade when others were having hard drinks. Not that I drink too much but I am game for one once a while. And I had this urge to have a glass of red wine but I resisted. After all I was the principled guy :). The conversation went from food and drinks to future plans to have similar get-togethers. S suggested we could meet on a weekend as well as we all lived nearby to which V replied something like "I am a family fan" while M responded with "And I am a bahu" to which all laughed.

Moments like these spent with friends when there are no worries, no deadlines, nothing to attend to, just being yourself and enjoying the moments, is a rarity these days. So when you do get them you feel like staying there forever. But like all good things come to an end the evening ended with 3 of us heading to office while S to cab.