Silence...

There’s no song any more….no music. The cosmos has come to a standstill, like a muted audience, coming together to watch you in your silent world. There is no music for you anywhere, anymore

Not when you wake up in the morning, to listen to the birds chirping. But are they chirping? You can’t hear the sounds any more…
Not when you go to sleep at night…You don’t hear the moon singing a song for you…
Not when it rains… You don’t hear the rhythm in the rains anymore…
Not when you are happy, if you are… You don’t hear the song in your laughter…
Not when you are sad…You don’t hear the beat of your heart…
Not when you are trying to reach out to something, someone…You don’t hear the cries of desperation…
Not when the box of sweet memories you have gathered, tried to preserve, falls open….Not when you are surrounded by these memories….You don’t hear the music in those memories

It hurts…It hurts to be a part of a silent world, to be silent spectator, to be a silent actor. To be just a puppet in the world someone else is creating for you, and is calling it your destiny. Is it right to give you so much pain, just in the name of destiny?

Poems & Me....

The earliest memory I have of ever having written a poem was maybe when I was 10 or 11 years old and had written a poem called “A Clown”. It was a 4 line poem, which talked about how a clown makes us laugh. And then came the next one, in a couple of days. This one was called “Seasons”. A longer poem this time, it talked about the 4 seasons and what I liked about each one of them.

The next memory I have of any connection to poems is when I had to learn a Hindi poem written by Atal Behari Vajpayee in class 7. It was called “Pehchaan”. It was a long poem but I fell in love with it. Today, even after 13 years, I can recite the 1st 4 paras of the poem from my heart and a copy of it hangs on my pin board now. I got it the last time I went home.

But in these 13 years, I have had no connection to poems other than a few ones I might have read. Until last year. When I started writing poems. The 1st one I wrote after this long hiatus was a hindi one, my 1st hindi kavita. :) I was quite proud of it. will probably post it some day. Then came a few more, some of them I have posted earlier. They might not be a true poet’s poems but they reflect what I feel or the way I imagine certain things. They might not be very polished, but then I’m not a poet. So I guess it works. :)

The question is: “Why such a long gap?” Or rather “ Why poems now?”. I think it could have been a result of the fact that I had been hanging out a lot with people who wrote shayaris and poems in my 1st year. Maybe some of it rubbed onto me. Or maybe I got the right inspiration and felt deeply enough to write. Or it could have been simply the right moment. Whatever it is that inspired me to write, I’m happy about it. It helps me put down thoughts, thoughts which I couldn’t have written otherwise, thoughts which were just a part of an imagination and could only have been communicated through a poem. With that, I think the right way of ending this post would be to post my latest poem. I still haven’t named it. Maybe you can help me find a title for it. Its not among the better ones of the lot, but what the hell. :D


You sit in front of me,
Sometimes oblivious of the way I look at you,
The way I trace your face with my eyes,
The way my hands reach out to you but fail,

Sometimes you look back,
With an expression of surprise, to find me looking at you
You think you can ignore it, and look away
But you look back, and find the same stare

I know it unnerves you,
More so now that you know, what these stares mean,
More so now, when you can read my eyes,
Eyes that want a lot, but don’t expect anything

It affects you, I know
You wish things weren’t like this, that they were like before,
And I apologise for the changes, for the mess,
And can only hope to make things easier for you.

What’s in a name??....

The day I signed up for my blog, I was in a deep dilemma : What was to be the title of my blog? And what was to be my display name? The first one was a bit challenging but not difficult. It was fun to sit during a class and brainstorm over various names with my friend who was sitting next to me. We tried everything from the simple “Surobhi’s” to wackier ones like “Random Thoughts”, “Something fishy”, “Sleepy Surobhi”, “Stars and Fishes”, “Grey Scale Fish”, “Miski’s thoughts” and even “Miski’s fish bowl”. For the uninitiated, MiSKi is my dorm name (a nick name given to every student in WIMWI; will post about it in detail some other day). And my friend, who was sitting next to me, has (for some reason unknown to me) started calling me ‘Fishy’. Hence, so many combinations with “Miski’ and ‘Fishy’ in them.

But obviously, these didn’t sound very convincing to me. I wanted something which explained something about me, or the way I am. Or maybe, something which I believed in. And that’s when this name came up, “Nothing Grey About It”. It was perfect, coz that’s just the way I am; no greys, its either black or white, a person who sees the world in extremes. Donno if that is a good thing or a bad thing, or if it is neither, but that’s just the way I have been.

So now that the first problem was over, I had another bigger dilemma: my display name. There’s something I had never realized/accepted before: that I don’t like my name so much. ‘Surobhi’ is an ok name, but not very nice, or atleast that’s what I felt. Nicknames were used, though didn’t like them as much. I have always felt that it is of utmost importance to have a good name, and there are times when the first impression I have of a person is through his/her name. It isn’t a judgmental impression though. But yes, the name is important.

Miski ain’t a very bad name, in fact, I quite like it. I guess that’s also one reason why it got stuck. Indeed, almost everyone on campus calls me that. But I never wanted to have my display name as Miski, the reason being simple enough: Miski is just what I have been known as for the last one year or so. And this blog was about me, not just the past one year of my life.

So that was when I eventually decided that the display name had to be ‘Surobhi’. It was time I started liking my name. Infact, I quite like my name when it is spoken with a Bengali accent, ‘Shu-ro-bhi’. :)

"You"

Another of my poems...wrote it a few weeks back...Enjoy!!!

It may seem I have forgotten things, even you,
And this was a lie I believed in, and made it true,
Moved on with my life, to never remember the past,
I never thought one look at you would break it at last

There you stood in a queue,
Oblivious to how my eyes pierced you,
A feeling of love and hate rose in me,
And that is when I forgot to see

That you should have been just another face for me,
Just another face in the crowd,
With your ego in place,
And nose high, in vain and proud

But you were special, as I had always known,
You never let me control feelings of my own,
Every time I thought I had forgotten you,
You reappeared, making my worst fears come true

How I tried and tried, day and night,
And still I do...., with tears I fight

One day, I will let go,
And maybe that day is sooner than I know,
Till then, you stay on in my thoughts, and my mind,
With a force that is difficult to unbind.

The Six Fundaes

As I sit on my desk, in my room, my mind wanders. I have been doing enough timepass on my laptop: surfing the net to check my mail, checking my scraps on orkut (knowing there are no new scraps, yet thinking that by clicking the “Home” button again & again, new scraps will appear), to continuously unbold any NB name which was bold, on Dbab, constantly checking my Gtalk list.

As my mind wanders, my eyes wander too. I see the various things I have pinned to my pin board: a newspaper article which reads “You can change your destiny”, an article with an SRK pic on it, an A4 sheet with a compilation of my pics taken when I was in SF, my time table for this term, a small Santa Claus kind of a thing (isn’t red and white though) given to us on Christmas last year by our floor Tuchchis. My eyes finally settle on a single sheet of paper stuck to the pin board right in the middle.

It’s a sheet which has 6 very simple rules of life written on them. These rules or rather fundaes were given to me by a person who probably disliked me then, and maybe still does. Or maybe not. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter what I think of that person, doesn’t matter that we don’t talk to each other anymore. What matters is what the person said, and the fact that they made sense to me. These 6 fundaes have stayed on with me and I try (if not always) to follow them.

1. Live life simply

2. Do not complicate it

3. Don’t look for support

4. Be ready to provide it

5. Don’t reject what people say

6. Don’t accept everything too

They might not be the best, but they really suit me. Even though I don't follow them all the time, someday I will. Coz I know they make sense for a person like me. Coz the person who said all this knew it made sense for me. :)

The Voice

This is a poem I wrote sometime back. Thought of putting it here.
And yes, strictly "no inspiration/dedication disclaimer" :)

He speaks, and how he speaks,
With a voice so sweet,
And a tone so caring,
It makes you feel special

A voice that is
Compelling yet calm,
Urging yet not hurried,
Trying to convince and yet not trying,
Reaching out to me but failing,
Hitting the wall around me

Is it him or is it me?
Doesn't matter anymore,
The voice that rings in my ears,
Leaving me wanting for more,
Touches my heart so deep,
Making me want to weep

But weep I can't,
As that is something he doesn't want,
So I smile and my heart cries,
In an attempt to hide

When he calls out my name,
My knees go weak, and my heart skips a beat,
The effect it has on me,
Is an experience which has never been

But I have a lesson to learn,
And I have to stop to yearn,
Yet it's a difficult chapter, in the book of my life,
Which I haven't mastered yet, leading to strife

Life goes on, with or without him,
But the voice is something,
Which stays on in my heart and mind,
Forever and ever and ever.

My 1st blog, and the hour at LKP!

So, first question first: Why a blog now? Why now when everyone thinks that the “blogging phase” is over? And so is, all the hype around it?

I don’t know exactly…though that might be precisely the reason: that the hype around it is over…Or maybe the fact that I have always loved writing and its only now that I have the time to actually start a blog.

Whatever the reason be, the fact is that I have started now, and intend to be regular at it (big hopes!!!) But yes, I will try my best.

So what is it that I want to write about in my first blog ever? I thought of a lot of things and almost settled on one of my biggest passions, food. But then it came very naturally to me. Of course I knew what I wanted to write about. The hour I spent at LKP yesterday. J

For non-WIMWIans, LKP = Louis Kahn Plaza, the most famous and architecturally, the most beautiful, perfectly scaled space in one of Louis Kahn’s most famous creations, IIM Ahmedabad. All through first year, each one of us yearned to spend time at LKP. To just sit there, doing nothing at all, just gazing at the stars, or chatting away with friends you have made in this place, and doing all this without any worry at the back of your mind. Without thinking that you have to go back and mug (IIMA lingo for study) for one of those numerous cases, quizzes, individual/group assignments, mid terms, end terms, etc etc etc. But that was asking for a lil’ too much.

It is true that usually we did not have time. And when we did, it was never without the thought of going back n mugging at the back of our minds. And even if not that, it always felt as if we were wasting our time, sitting in LKP. So, we pledged that when we came back after our summers, we would spend nights galore at our beloved LKP.

But it was not to be. So, yesterday, after much coaxing, me and two other friends went to CT (Café TANSTAAFL for the uninitiated) at 2:15 am…from there we proceeded on to the LKP. The setting was just perfect: cool winds, soothing grass, a full stomach from having had Maggi at CT, a bottle of Thumbs Up with us, and to top it all, no submissions to be done. (Well, not entirely true, as one of us did have a submission today) I don’t remember what we talked about, nor do I want to remember it. Just the feeling of sitting there for an hour was enough. And yes, there was something in the end which did make my day. But that would just be kept a secret, wouldn’t it?? ;)