Kasam tumko watan waalon, kabhi mayoos mat hona;
Manana jashn-e-aazadi, na mere vaaste rona.

While there have been many great patriotic songs, many of them much more popular than this one, the lyrics here capture the selfless nature of the freedom fighter unlike anything else that I remember to have heard – Not only is he willing (in fact, very motivated) to sacrifice his life for his country, but he’s also insistent that at the time of freedom, his countrymen rejoice and not feel sad at his death… Living in a time and place where such revolutionary patriotism is quite uncommon (at least in the parts of the world that I have touched) and where the craving for individual success supersedes most other emotions, I feel almost dwarfed when I think of how huge the vision of freedom fighters of that time must have been.

I’m not saying that such sentiment is needed today or otherwise / is good or bad – that’s a different debate altogether. I’m just amazed that such powerful sentiment once existed (and likely still does in parts of the world that are still at war).

Is it just me or these lyrics are actually as powerful as I think they are??

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

Meanwhile, what got me really kicked about this photo-blogging thing is the awesome weekend I just had! Rahul and Gareema visited me over the long weekend and we drove up to Napa on Saturday, went for white water rafting the next day and spent some time at Golden Gate Park in SF on the third day. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend, which could have been even better had we got to skydive on the third day, as we had initially planned!

Saturday: Day trip to Napa Valley

Rahul and me at Dairoush

The Black Stallion

Napa was pretty, as always. Driving down the winding roads through the serene landscape around always calms me down. And once the wine starts flowing from one wine tasting session to another, life becomes happier than it’s ever been . This time around, we visited Dairoush, Black Stallion and Silverado.

We also visited the Napa Valley Casino in the evening, although it’s probably one of the most non-descript, non-glamorous casino you’ll come across so don’t bother about it if you’re heading down to Napa anytime… (i.e. unless you’re a total gambling addict)

Sunday: White water rafting at American River

On Sunday, we went for rafting at the American River (South Fork). To say that it was a lot of fun would be an understatement, as is evident from the joy on our faces in the pictures below:

On one of the rapids, I volunteered to ride out the waves sitting at the front of the raft.

Like the captain of a ship, I led the charge against the waves from the front! Well, the next wave threw the Captain back into the raft and the sight didn’t look as stud-ly anymore…

…but it was fun, nevertheless!!

I was pretty bummed that we didn’t get to Skydive on Monday as we had planned – the winds made it too risky a proposition on that day. Anyways, we’ll get around to doing that soon. I’ve begun to travel around the US quite a bit over the last couple of months – Outside of this weekend’s travel, I have driven down to LA, have traveled to NY and Minneapolis, and have been on a few hikes in California over the last few months. A trip to Mexico is on the cards next and of course, I’ll get around to skydiving before that! So, more posts to come soon. Yeah, life is good these days …

…the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart.

I saw this movie, ‘Without Limits’, on Steve Prefontaine, the famous American Olympic runner, a few years ago and somehow haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since. For the unaware, Pre (as he was popularly called) was a long distance runner who at one point held the American record in every running event from the 2,000 meters to the 10,000 meters. The movie is a treat to watch not because it depicts the life of Pre, the sportsperson, but because it depicts the philosophical view that Pre took to running. Pre said ‘the only way I know how to win a race is to run out front, flat out until I have nothing left. Winning any other way is chicken-shit.’ The movie has some outstanding dialogues between his legendary coach, Bill Bowerman, who later on founded Nike, that capture the essence of the way Pre wanted to run a race – flat out, while Bowerman tried convincing him to pace himself through the race and save his best for the last.

Below are some of Pre’s quotes that I particularly liked from the movie:

• To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
• A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself.
• A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.
• I’m going to work so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.
• Someone may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.
• The only good race pace is suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.
• What I want is to be number one.
• Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.
• How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races? All my life people have been telling me, ‘You’re too small Pre’, ‘You’re not fast enough Pre.’ ‘Give up your foolish dream Steve.’ But they forgot something. I HAVE to win.

Pre died at the age of 24 in a car accident and below is what Bowerman had to say at his funeral:

All my life, man and boy, I’ve operated under the assumption that the main idea in running was to win the race. Naturally, when I became a coach I tried to teach people how to do that. Tried to teach Pre how to do that. Tried like hell to teach Pre to do that. And Pre taught me. Taught me I was wrong. Pre, you see, was troubled by knowing that a mediocre effort can win a race and a magnificent effort can lose one. Winning a race wouldn’t necessarily demand that he give it everything he had from start to finish. He never ran any other way. I couldn’t get him to, and God knows I tried… but… Pre was stubborn on holding himself to a higher standard than victory. ‘A race is a work of art’ is what he said and what he believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way.

Of course he wanted to win. Those who saw Pre compete or who competed against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But how he won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart. That he did… No one did it more often. No one did it better.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

How I wonder what you are

The endless night
Gazes into my eyes.
My tears will make
A million stars.

Thus writes Kamini Banga in her delicately penned set of poems titled ‘I promise to be a good girl, God’. Kamini Banga wrote these poems over the ten year period when she was battling with breast cancer and its aftermath. In her foreword, she mentions ‘I found writing helped me grieve – something that we are not allowed by our loved ones… I believe grieving is a big healer; it helped me realize what must stay and what I could leave behind.’

Each of the poems has a pain unmistakable in its depth and almost unbearable. The harsh truth expressed in the simplest of phrases, the futile but unavoidable sadness that is an intrinsic nature of such situations hit you and hit you bad. I don’t know who to recommend this book to – not because it’s not good (it’s exceptional) but because it’s so depressing… but still, I’ll say: Read it. It’ll make you feel fortunate for what you have. In any case, poems are meant to be sad and these capture sadness like never before.

Meanwhile last month, a dear friend of mine from IITK, Abhishek Chaudhury, took that gigantic step of getting married. While we’ve constantly been in touch, Abhishek’s marriage announcement came as quite a jolt to me. One fine day, he calls up and tells me that he’s got engaged and is getting married in a couple of months. Boss! Kab? Kahan? Kaise? The suddenness of the whole thing being one (to which he had an arbit explanation that I don’t wanna get into here), Abhishek’s marriage announcement was also a reminder of how quickly the last seven years have passed and how much we’ve all grown from those heady days of our first semester at IIT. The ever-smiling and mischievous Abhishek, who once childishly declared “Main bhi bhaaag ke shaadi karoonga” after having watched Saathiya and said that he would go bungee jumping on his honeymoon, was getting married! The images of that childish Abhishek are so deeply embedded in my memories of him that I found it hard to believe he was getting ready to shoulder the responsibility of a family. So last month, I went to Abhishek and Kirti’s marriage ceremony and they make a handsome couple and I wish them the very best that married life has on offer. Knowing Abhishek, there won’t be a dull day in their lives.

Also, sometime back Diwaker tagged me (by the way, he finds this whole tagging business to be quite silly but apparently, that doesn’t stop him from passing on the tag to others when he gets one!) and since I have nothing else to blog about these days, here goes:

I am thinking about…
how to bring some discipline into my life.

I’ve said…
a lot of things that I didn’t really mean .

I want to…
be better at my work and find more time to read.

I wish…
life was quieter.

I hear…
a lot of noise and cribbing and gyan. Oh! Just shut up people!

I wonder…
what is the meaning of life? Is there a meaning at all?

I regret…
not having learnt a musical instrument when I was a kid.

I am…
a nice person ! Really!

I dance…
Uh!! Never! I have the worst two left feet in the world!

I sing…
songs that I really love when I’m alone .

I cry…
hardly ever.

I am not always…
as disciplined as I’d like to be.

I make with my hands…
nothing much actually! I’m too lazy for cooking and all.

I write…
quite poorly these days. I think I wasn’t that bad till sometime back.

I confuse…
people’s names all the time.

I need…
someone with me when I’m having a meal.

That’s it from me. Umm… I’m quite bored off this taggy business myself so let me not pass it on to anyone else. But if any of you are interested, have a go…

Courage is doing what you believe in.

‘Sammy!’ attempts to depict the transformation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from an ordinary man to a Mahatma, and in the process delves into the confusion, dilemmas and internal conflicts that this man, often looked upon as the one who lent a moral force to the nation’s freedom struggle, would have faced during his momentous journey.

The first half showing Gandhi in South Africa disappoints though – the disappointment being the attempt to portray him as a simple and humourous man in a barrister suit resulting in the character showing Charlie-Chaplinish mannerisms, cracking jokes and breaking into a freakish smile after every second line that he utters. And it can be quite irritating; after all, one expects to watch something thoughtful and meaningful when it comes to Gandhi, definitely not something comical as it seems during the first half.

For a play to redeem itself from the situation above to the point where one feels ‘Okay, that was good’ is something. ‘Sammy!’ manages to do that with its second half. As the play unfolds, we witness the various exchanges Gandhi has with his own conscience debating the internal dilemmas he has at different stages of his life – the right versus the wrong, the moral versus the immoral. Even as he gets more and more involved in politics, Gandhi never loses sight of his basic principles and morals and throughout draws courage from his convictions and his righteousness. The dialogues Gandhi has with his conscience, his guiding light, are quite interesting and thought provoking. The play also does well in showing a human angle to Gandhi’s otherwise larger than life personality. There is a slight hint towards his guilt and regret as a father. His sadness and the fear of loneliness on his wife’s death makes for an insightful moment – the Mahatma, the father of the masses fearing loneliness.

All the actors, other than probably the lead, Joy Sengupta (with his overacting in the first half), do more than justice to their characters. Neha Dubey, essaying the role of Kasturba Gandhi, is exceptionally good.

In their last conversation, Gandhi’s conscience (with a sense of premonition of his death) asks of him to show courage and Gandhi replies back saying ‘Courage is doing what you believe in’ and smilingly walks away for his evening prayers, only to be assassinated by Nathuram Godse. But by then, he has already done his job and made himself redundant to the Indian political scene. For a shy barrister who was too nervous to be able to speak a word in his first case, Gandhi came far doing what he believed in.

A couple of days ago, I said something really stupid, thinking it’d be taken as a joke. Only it wasn’t. Shucks!

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

…. Beautiful poem, isn’t it?