Thank You

I should've written this post two weeks ago.

What has made me write this so late is the fact that it has taken me time to realize the amount of academic burden that has been lifted off my drooping shoulders; and that I need to accept what has happened as "success" and not mourn over the fact that I probably don't deserve it in the first place.

I have cleared the first group of CA Final. :-) One more exam to go, and, inshaAllah, I'd be an accounting and auditing post-graduate (I hate to call myself a Chartered Accountant: it sounds offending :-D). 

The day my result was going to be declared, I had stuck to my normal schedule and gone to the office. My two colleagues who had appeared in the exam were not going to be present that day; they were nervous like hell. I wasn't. I knew I'd clear the subjects individually and not get the aggregate. I knew I'd fail (I have this great talent of being dead-sure while talking pessimistic) and that I won't be too upset about it. I remembered the exact situation in which I had given the exams, and considered myself nothing less than a hero for just writing the tests with that less preparation.

Sitting in one of the computers of my office, hitting refresh after refresh every 10 seconds, with three juniors staring at the computer screen as if they were viewing a live transmission of an Indo-Pak ODI, I saw my result. The webpage took an agonizing 75 seconds to upload and my heart pounded like the colossal drum played in the Mangal Pandey title track.

I wasn't looking at my marks in any of the subjects; I didn't even care. I kept staring at the words 'PASS' while everybody present in the cabin clapped as if I had been awarded the Oscar[1]. 

The first thing I said to everybody who shook hands with me -- and I kept saying that for the whole day to everybody I met; I still do; and I always would -- is that this success is not my own. There are so many people who have worked really hard to give this bit to me.

There are so many friends I need to thank: KM, PA, SS, AD, AK, KA, CT -- not written in any specific order. All these are those who called me up before and after the exams; those who just heard it all when nothing that came out of my mouth made sense; those who helped -- academically and emotionally; those who were as nervous and worried about my exams as I was; those who believed in me more than I believed in myself. I can only tell you all that it wouldn't have been possible without either of you. If there was one difference between the May '05 exam (the one that I dropped, and did not recover until an year and my youthful academic exuberance was lost) and the Nov '08 one, then it was you all. You can tell me that it was ultimately I who wrote the exams and cleared (well, now I'd probably believe that too :-P) but it was you who gave me the courage to give it a shot.

All I can do is melt down my gratitude into two simple words: Thank You!

You know, my first emotion post the result-spectacle was more of a surreal disbelief -- and not happiness. After a couple of days, it rearranged itself into a sense of relief: the curriculum of the second group is extensilvely law-based (law being my Achilles heel) and extremely difficult to prepare with the first. But then, one of my friends, VK, when I told him about this feeling, said: "Sometimes, relief is happiness". 

I'm happy that that sense of relief hasn't rearranged itself since then. 

P.S. Not that I have forgotten the support of my parents. Just that I'd like to repay them, inshahAllah, with something far precious than words. :-)

[1] With my acting abilities, the only Oscar I may ever get is for 'Wearing the Most Colourful Underwear in a Love-making Scene' . That too if I end up with a love-making scene in the first place (presumably and preferably with a naked young woman). Heck.  :-((

Blah Blah Black Sheep

Have a look at this.

The global story of teaching children cruelty to animals goes long back. It starts from kindergarten. From those innocuous Nursery Rhymes.

It all starts from Mary.

Who I refer to as Mary here needs to be elaborated in as minute detail as possible. I'm talking about the Mary that "had a little lamb". Remember her? I still remember how I used to fantasize about her as a kid.(!) What I loved most about her -- I'm definitely not going to elaborate over the kind of frock-lengths I used to design in my imagination -- was her "loving and caring nature".

I still remember everything. The lamb had followed Mary (and the view beneath her frock-skirt) to the school. Mary, of the "little lamb" fame, when asked by the rest of the class in an echoing dramatic unison, about why the lamb loved her so much, was at a loss of speech. She was choking due to a flush of emotion. The choking bit was explained by the unexplained swelling of her esophagus at that precise moment.

What happened thereafter is nothing less than Divine Intervention: The Teacher spoke up. He got up from his chair (it was the same chair on which Mary had put exactly a dozen nails last week and punctured his ass at exactly eleven places) and said: "Because Mary loves her too."

The whole class was in an awe. It was definitely a dramatic moment -- had there been an Ekta Kapoor cinematographer in the vicinity, he would've captured the frames well for you to understand.

I, being a faint-hearted person, fainted along with my heart.

Also, the Animal Rights Activists need to sue the person who has ripped off three full bags of wool from the black sheep and distributed to the Master, the Dame and some arbitrary boy who happened to live down some arbitrary lane. The situation is grave: three full bags of wool are at stake.

Isn't the fact that the narrator of the poem (oh, "nursery rhyme" I mean) is the sufferer himself? Imagine what would be crossing the heart of the sheep while telling the world that the wool is not his (or hers) and it belongs to the Master, the Dame and some arbitrary boy who happened to live down some arbitrary lane? Isn't the moment poignant? Doesn't it wet your eyes? (It'd definitely wet the eyes of Barkha Dutt, I'd say) Doesn't the sheep have any right/patent over it's own wool? Can we imagine a sheep shaving our skulls and making human-hair wigs -- blonde, red-head and like -- to have fashionable sheep-face? 

We need to be compassionate, dudes; we need to have a "loving and caring nature". 

She, too, like the Horse in the Lakdi ki Kaathi song, would roam around naked. And it's freaking chilly out there in the European countries. It also needs to be noted here that for centuries, it is always the "black" sheep has been robbed off its wool -- and not a "white" one. There's severe racism involved, for which a separate agitation must be initiated.

And O Animal Rights Activists, you never have paid attention to the atrocities inflicted upon the three innocent tails of the three blind mice. You should have seen them running for their lives when the cruel, amozonian Farmer's Wife was running behind them with a butcher's bloodied knife. Oh how inhuman that was! (I mean her running and not her cutting: she had trampled seven neighbourhood children while running behind them.)

The Farmer's Wife had (allow me to be poetic):

brutally cut down the tails of the three of them with a carving knife;

and dudes, you would never have seen such a cruel thing before in your life! 

The Farmer's Wife, as we come to an ironical end, was allegorically the "Bloody Mary". 

Nazm: Be-lafz (नज़्म: बे-लफ़्ज़)

I don't have the energy (and the desire) to sit down, read this all over again, edit out the mistakes I've made, and make it less shoddy. Personally, I think of it as a brainless bombardment of clumsy metaphors.

बे-लफ़्ज़

न जाने कितनी सदियों से मैं,
अपने हाथों में,
एक क़लम में सियाही भर के,
मुन्तज़िर बैठा,
कोरे काग़ज़ को ताक रहा हूँ ।

ज़हन में कोहरों-से उठते मिसरे,
काग़ज़ पर,
ओस की बूंदों की मानिंद,
मुकम्मल नही हो रहे ।

ज़हन में दरियाओ से उमड़ते,
अनगिनत अफ़साने,
सियाही के समंदर में,
पूरे नही मिल रहे ।

ग़ज़ल का कोई बहर,
चाशनी-सा मीठा नही;
नज़्म का कोई तसव्वुर,
मेरे अपने दिल का नही ।


मेरे सारे लफ़्ज़ ले गया कोई मुझसे शायद,

और बदले में मुझे,
बे-लफ़्ज़ दर-बदरी दे गया ।


Be-lafz

Na jaane kitni sadiyon se main,
Apne haathon mein,
Ek kalam mein siyaahi bhar ke,
Muntazir baitha,
Kore kaaghaz ko taak raha hu.

Zahan mein kohro-se uthte misre,
Kaaghaz par,
Oas ki boondon ki maanind,
Mukammal nahi ho rahe.

Zahan mein dariyaon se umadte,
Anginat afsaane,
Siyaahi ke samandar mein,
Poore nahi mil rahe.

Ghazal ka koi bahar,
Chaashni-sa meetha nahi;
Nazm ka koi tasavvur,
Mere apne dil ka nahi.


Mere saare lafz le gaya koi mujhse shayad,

Aur badle me mujhe,
Be-lafz dar-badari de gaya.