Into the moonlight he staggers 

In drunken haze                        

A dagger through his breast

            To her.

                                 

                                                She sits by the window
                                                Dreaming of tomorrow
                                                Happy chandeliers in her ears

                                                         He promised.

Amidst autumn leaves

He kissed her feverishly

Caressing worries away

     Wait for me.           

                                                                                        His hand found hers

                                                                                        In the crowd           

                                                                                        Shy stolen glances     

                                                                                                 Love...                                                                                     

                                             

       Rustle of skirts

       He turned to see her

       pretty hair swinging

           He smiled

                                                                             An enigmatic smile

                                                                             Through searing eyes

                                                                             Passionate soundless music

                                                                                 She blushed...

                   

Hatful of rain

Ok firstly, I'm so psyched about Kartik discovering them that I actually have goosebumps everywhere. There is no other way I can describe how awesome they are. A week ago, he sent me Always the last to know. I heard and liked it and that was it. But today I downloaded the whole Hatful of rain album and I'm so friggin, friggin blown away!. They're a scottish pop rock eighties band, and I'm sure half the teeny boppy population's heard it. But I still want to write about them, because that's how awesome they are...to be re-written about through years.

It's everything you want an album to be, whenever you want it to be. A rainy day album, a love album, a break up album, a nostalgic album, a how you doin' album, and so much more. Every song is not just a song, it's an experience. Currie (lead vocals, bass), with his smooth voice and Iain Harvie (lead guitar), form a brilliant team.

The Hatful of rain starts with 'Cry to be found'. Now when I first heard this one, I didn't particularly like it. But after the third time I heard it, I liked it. It's simple, it's cliched and yet, it works.

The album picks up with the second track,  Roll to me. It's one of my favorites and I'm pretty sure that we've all heard it at some point of our lives. It's a happy dancy song, and such a cheer up-er, even when you're not depressed.

Next is another of my favorites, Kiss this thing goodbye. Now this is apparently a break-up song, but also a funny one. I love the way they've used the instruments in this song. The music is so...scottish and bagpipey. Iain is, as always, quite awesome.

'It seems like weeks since you looked at me baby

without that look of distaste...'

 Driving with the brakes on, a hauntingly beautiful song, strikes a chord. For me it's about how there are somethings you can never move on from. Relationships, incidents, some seemingly offhand remarks, loss. No matter how ok and over it you say you are, you're still driving with the brakes on.

Tell her this is a beautiful, beautiful song. Though I can't make up my mind if it's love song or an apology song. But it's one of the most beautiful songs you will ever hear. It'll touch you right where it's meant to and make you wish all apologies were just as beautiful as this. Also, the lovely acoustic guitar in the background makes it perfect.

The album ends with Don't come home too soon, which was incidently written by Justin Currie as Scotland's World Cup '98 Theme. And a perfect theme it is. It inspires you, in the fear of sounding corny, to chase your dreams and to be yourself. But sometimes, corny, is what you need to be inspired.

So long, go on and do your best,

Let all France have whiskey on it's breath,

The world may not be shaking yet

but you might prove them wrong,

Even long shots make it...

Hatful of rain is not a good album. It's a great album. Go ahead, give it a listen.

Writing on the bench...

You know how you used to doodle stuff on your bench during those soporific lectures, where you would try to stab yourself in the eye with a pen just to make things more interesting?...Yeah, those. The scribbles ranged from the initials of your crush to the lyrics of some random emo song which you thought described your love life the best then. A couple of days back I stumbled upon the bench which I had sat on last year and found my doodles along with hundreds of other people's. There was my name (obviously) amongst a million of others, a line from open your eyes, which somebody had cut and written "jagya rulessss" on (....eeeyeah..), then there was a head, which looked like cross between the hulk and C3PO, but I guess that was the beauty of that head, it's non resemblance to any sort of living being, which gave people the license (creative of course) to label it as whichever professor/ girl/boy/backstreet boy they disliked the most. Then there were those doodles which were a constant fixture at every table, like the summer of 69' lyrics (always, always that one), a lot of ansty f***k yous and f***k off (for no apparent reason), a group of names with 'we rule/ rock' written all around them, a something which at a certain angle looks like a hand giving the finger, the sprinking of 'Zzzzzzzzzs' all over the bench, and names and more names, squeezed in everywhere.

It made me realize those scribbles on the benches are probably the best documentation of our growing up memories. Not the pretty pictures or grainy videos, not the drawing books filled with crayon scribbles, not the dusty Enid Blytons and Nancy Drews lying forgotten among the crisp Asimovs and Sheldons...It's those absent minded doodles...

Of zig zags and spirals,

and little stars and birds.

Of tiny hearts and sad songs,

and disconnected words...

Them hormones...

Cupid’s stuck that pointy thing of his, laced with dollops of love, lust and stupidity, in your rear end, yet again. Hell that’s what you attended college for. You float around like an albatross on a summer cloud, with the name of your current love stuck in your head like the omnipresent winter phlegm. That’s where reason deserts you, while you in turn desert classes.

The corridors swarm with more hopefuls like you, hoping to catch a glance of their prospective love interest. Animal Planet says that most animals groom themselves to stand out when they go mate hunting. Male peacocks ruffle up their pretty plumes; felines lick themselves to swanky shininess. The brightest and the shiniest one gets the prize!.Colleges are no different from any African forests. Females dress themselves in bright yellow and oranges, and splash on dollops of perfume, smelling sickly sweet and flick and swish their newly straightened hair, to catch the correct light, which will dazzle the opposite sex to fatal attraction or blindness, whatever comes first.

Males, the hypothetically superior sex, are not far behind. Oh no. They come with pointy shoes; they come with full wallets, even if it means they have to go without their usual liver massacring dose of cigarettes for a whole month, just so that they can take their lady friends to the places which overcharge for fancy lighting. They come with purpose and overconfidence bordering of irritating cockiness, throwing age old pick up lines like there’s no tomorrow.

All in all, its another a normal day at college, which is nothing less than a battle. The fittest shall survive, while the weak ones are forced to retreat into the confines of the classes.

Two different lives...

                                    

I've always wanted to lead multiple lives, not like Hannah Montana multiple, but something like Bruce Wayne multiple. But then of course, that’s not going to happen soon. However, I realized that I, in a weird way, AM leading two lives. One in Mumbai, with the college, and the people. And the other on the weekends, in Pune, with good food and mum and dad and the old friends. Though it might not be the superhero costume, dismembering bad guys, flying off buildings two lives. But in a way, it’s as...contrasting as that.

Mumbai, with its anticipation of what new crap is going to hit you the next day. Actually looking forward to the same. The taste of sweet success...bitter failure. The anticipation. The wonderment of surviving another day. Having to do your own dishes. Realizing that mum and dad had made cooking look so easy, when it actually is the most difficult thing in the world. Meeting completely different kind of people who have completely different tastes and ways from the kind you're used to. Being friends with them. Playing my baby in the wee hours of the morning, thinking that maybe...just maybe, I'll make it.

It's different in Pune. The tranquility, the serious life discussions with my food obsessed family amongst the clatter of dishes...

"Where are you planning to do your summer internship from?...chicken in dinner?......I hope you're studying enough...needs some more salt no?....which colleges are you applying for?... eat! you've stopped eating after moving out....I hope you're being safe in Mumbai....there was this new recipe on T.V with cashews and..."

The reminiscing of the old days with old friends, about how we never thought that we'd be like the way we turned out, doing things we never thought we will, but somehow knew we would. Planning endless trips which we know that are never going to happen anytime soon. Swapping stories of the most recent guy / girl interest. Eventually ending up at someone's place with a bowl of Maggi and that lovely warm feeling spreading to the tips of your toes, knowing that whatever happens they'll always be there with a shoulder and a steaming cups of tea and Maggi.

"I'm livin' two different lives, dividin' my time..."

Oh sweet lord! He can hammer-on!

Sometime back, this friend of mine sent me this video by the College humor guys, who by the by make the funniest videos ever, in which this guy was explaining that how playing or teaching guitar can help you score girls. I saw, I laughed and then disagreed hotly and fed my friend all that crap about how we girls aren't that shallow and how it's the personality we actually go for yada yada. But the fact of matter is that the ugliest of men with a guitar in their hands, get more girls than any college jock with a six pack body can. Sure they can gym and gym and get all those rippling muscles. But a puny guy with a simple strum and a hammer-on can send every girl in the vicinity in a frenzy which no amount of steroid induced packs will. Not drummers, not keyboardists, it's just the guitarists.

Every girl has a type of man she prefers, tall/ short, skinny/ fat, dark/ fair etc. But there's a universal type of men which no girl can resist, the long haired, tattooed, guitar playing type. The type who sit in dark corners of the campus strumming away, seemingly uninterested in what the rest of the world's upto. The type who roam around unshaven, with uncombed and messy hair, in clothes which seem like they've been through a holocaust or two. The type who make you toes curl when they play and sing and still manage to look manly. The type who make you wish that you were the guitar their hands that they're so into. The type who speak though their music and wouldn't even look at you.

One would think that knowing how to play yourself would make you immune to all these things. But sadly, the world doesn't work that way. It's in our genes. The way chocolates and chick flicks makes us go weak, it's an inbuilt primal thing, like bees and honey or kids and poops jokes or superman and kryptonite. But then...who's complaining eh?

Below are the links for the videos. They'll crack you up.

Vol. 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5QCs3PnQBc

Vol. 2

http://www.youtube.com/user/collegehumor#p/u/3/Q0Frja3_q3E

My In between...

My shifting to Mumbai and leaving the dentist behind in Pune, inevitably makes me travel to Pune and back almost twice a month. Now, I really don't like traveling, but in a weird way I have come to look forward to my fortnightly journeys. They are the one thing that is constant in my life. I mean, I know that I will hate the movie they show, I know that I will judge the person sitting next to me by the book he or she's reading, I know that the view WILL take my breath away even though I see it every month, I know that the bus will invariably be late. And that for some reason comforts me.

Somewhere between Mumbai and Pune is a dingy Neeta volvo inn where my bus always stops. It's like any other random Inn, Nobody talks to anybody, they eat and pee and go their own way. It is at that inn I sit with a bottle of pulpy orange, listening to the hardly ever played music on my phone and contemplate on things bothering me the most. The other day as I was telling a friend about it, it struck me about how important the place was for me. It's my in between transition place, where I'm neither in Mumbai nor in Pune, one of those places where there's no cell phone network, one of those places where I'm truly alone without Mumbai or Pune calling me. It's where I've taken the most life altering decisions. Every time I leave that place, I leave as a more collected and happier person. When I went there this time, I had a lot of things bothering me, but as soon as I sat on one of those rickety plastic chairs with my pulpy orange I knew exactly what to do. It's the place where I get my shit back together and that's what makes it awesome.

P.S – Yes, the picture IS of the inn. No, I don't know why I took it.

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