New form of Cricket

I am not sure if I like IPL...the new form of cricket India is gearing towards. The thing is, cricket was the single most important thing that had united this country. No really, if you want to see unity in diversity, go watch a game of cricket...people from all regions, all religions would go berserk at an India cricket match. It was INDIA playing and not just 'team India'. And now we have mumbai kings, mohali lions or whatever...and am afraid that if this kind of cricket eventually takes over the one event where we all crawl out of our compartmental world of north and south, east and west or punjabis and madrasis and bengalis would be lost. I am not too much a fan of cricket...or for that matter any sports...any more, but I will miss India playing as one.

The elusive spring!

Its amazing how it is, that spring feels the same everywhere. Summer and winter might be vastly different but the spring air has the same feel and the same confusion to it, wherever you go.

Walking back from a client site today, I could taste the eagerness in the air. I realized how perfect this time is and how, unlike the extremes of summer or winter, this would pass by so quickly.

I was content just to wallow in the precious feel of the warm cold air on my face. I was contently warm in my coat yet the air had a chill to it as if to reassure me that it is not summer yet. Somehow it felt like nature was confused on what road to take yet - should it charge ahead and move towards summers or should it embrace winters just a while longer?

For once, I was content in just walking. No thoughts in my head, no rush to catch the next bus or train, no furious planning away the rest of the day, why, not even a song haunted me and burdened my mind. It felt good to be so devoid of any feelings, staying in the moment and deriving such a simple pleasure. I felt light, unencumbered and a little like a child again.

It is the first time in my life that I embrace spring. I wait for it with open arms and my face turned towards the sun. Maybe for the first time am not afraid of daylight.

Memories

I am a gatherer. I always have trouble throwing stuff away - old cards, old letters, old toys - anything. Maybe that's coz I want to live my life in the past? I don't know. it's not that I ever get to look at them, but it's a comfort to know that I can go back and touch memories. And then throwing things away seems so rash, so final. Once thrown I will never have them back will I?

I guess relationships are like that too. And I am a gatherer there as well, it's hard for me to let go. Probably why I get kicked in teeth so often. Sometimes people get taken for granted because others know that they won't be left alone. I just threw away a relationship which died long ago. It felt like parting with a piece of myself, and it was sort of like burning a bridge - I know I will never get back what I gave up. The funny thing is, I knew long ago it would never be mine again, but doing the final acts is like lighting the funeral pyre - it's like saying goodbye forever and acknowledging that life's never going to be the same again.

Like many other who have read the novel "Gone with the wind", I too fell in love with Scarlett O'Hara. She was a hard to like character, marked by a selfishness that is unseemly in heroes. But still, I admired her as her character developed more and more as the novel progressed. The same was with Rhett Butler. People wonder how anyone could like a man as Rhett Butler was. But the fact is, the reason he was a hero was because regardless of his failings, which were many, he stood up and was willing to change himself for the sake of his children. A highly admirable trait, and something way more heroic than the qualities of a usual do gooder. For, it takes a lot of courage and gumption to change your very basic nature.

Armed with the desire to read more about this ungentlemanly hero, I decided to get "Rhett Butlers People" from the library. It was pretty hard to get hold of it too since the book was checked out the first couple of times I went in. Anyways, finally got hold of the book. The first couple chapters, as expected, were pretty boring. But that is usually a problem with longer english novels, it takes a while and lots of drivel to go through, before the book starts becoming interesting. I read through the book off and on over three weeks, it never gripped me enough to make me sit and read it or feel like knowing whats next. And unlike its prequel, this one left me totally unmoved - maybe because of the happy ending? Or I think mostly because I was so bored of Rhett being portrayed as such a good guy that I wondered what a woman like Scarlett saw in McCaig's Rhett? Now Mitchell's Rhett and Scarlett were made for each other, but this guy? I think not!

And I started thinking, why do our heroes have to be good? Well, okay let me rephrase that. Why do our heroes have to be do gooders or nice inside people? Why can't we accept as our hero a selfish, cynical, practical, shrewd, fearless man who transforms himself for better? Why did McCaig have to go and make Rhett nicer than the his holy highness? And with a traumatic childhood to boot! Didn't he realize how that takes away from his character?

The world is full of people like Rhett...people who have all the 'villainous' qualities and not all are because of abusive pasts. We are all different kinds of people here, and we all have to make a life on this planet. The world is also full of people like Rhett, who are compelled to change themselves into someone better and more acceptable to society for some reason or the other - mostly love for someone. And those people, I find are way more interesting than the usual nice guy for they are more human and easier to believe. The good ones just make me wonder whats wrong. Oh well...am a cynic.

Second life

A friend of mine long back told me about this game called second life - the virtual world. Read about it on wikipedia and since the idea was enticing enough I decided to have a go at it and downloaded the software. Had enough free time in those days.

The software loaded I made a new identity for myself and logged into the deeper make believe world. Putzed around for a while, chatted with a few people who were going through the training rounds as well and then in the end, once I logged out I uninstalled the software forever from my computer. One real life is hard enough to manage, I didn't want to start another even virtually.

But this thought has been nagging me for a while. Especially what with the reports of people actually making real money in the virtual world and second life having banks and exchange systems etc. - what drives people to start another life, what blurs the line between what's 'real' and what's 'unreal'? How can we get so caught up in the world of make believe? And how is it that we try to turn a virtual life to represent a close to real life - something we were running from in the first place!

For example take many of those who closely follow soap operas or tv series and actually end up so involved in the lives of the characters that they forget that those characters are actually fiction. It takes the place of real flesh and blood people for them. Or the second life example, where it has actually developed on to be so close to the real world with the same kind of tensions and problems - so much so that now there is probably going to be a SEC like regulatory authority to control the monetary operations. So, how is it thatg those who invested themselves in this world of make believe, probably to escape from their real lives, actually let their sanctuary turn close to represent what they were running from? And if it is so like the world we live in, then do we really need a virtual existence? Have distances grown so much that we would actually prefer to live inside our own minds and interact through computer wires than head out and see the sun and smell the flowers?

Real life sucks big time, but it has it's rewards too. One thin is for sure, one life is more than enough for me, am not heading out to get a second life any time soon. No sir!

Ashes & Dust

When a person dies, there are ashes to remind you that they once existed. What remains when a relationship dies? How is it that you are just supposed to pick up the pieces and move on as if nothing was ever there. As if, just by saying the words we have banished it's very existence...and it will disappear forever. Did it ever exist then? Why is there no tangible evidence of it's presence...Why is there no blood, no gory remnants? Tell me I didn't imagine it, tell me I wasn't just one of many, soon forgotten, not even left with a dusty old photograph to hold near your heart on cold winters evening and reminisce of when we were young and stupid? No not stupid, if only we were...it would never have ended. Sometimes being wise is the worst thing.

Music: Fare thee well Love - The Rankin Family

I will love you forever you say
but some day soon
you will forget my name
just a distant memory
that lingers by the day
can't say I wasn't told
the rules of the game

to have loved and then lost
I wonder why it hurts
I once thought that the memories
would carry me through
but day after day
it just gets worse
I wonder when it will be
that I won't ache for you

I will love you forever I say
but some day I hope
I will forget your name
For I know what it is I need
to move on with my life
to find someone else
to rekindle that flame