Holidays, Get-togethers, Parties and FOOTBALL! :P

WOW! An Amazing time indeed! :D

In the final stage of the 5 day long extended weekend {sat-wed} that I'm enjoyin' with friends and all. Monday being Dussera and the next two coz of Karnataka Bandh! ;-)

Have been freaking out... movies, night-outs, chillin' at all the joints here... and still am left with a day to go! :P Well, today we guys played football after a long time! Bought it from Commercial St out here for 550 bucks... a beautiful piece of leather...! Warmed up dribbling and passin' and the Beckhams and Roonies and Ronaldos in out came in the forefront! haha

We five guys were doin' our stuff in society ground... {where already a couple of football matches, 3-4 cricket matches were already goin' on! ;-)}... When all of a sudden the other teams came towards us and asked if we would play a match with them... Well, now we have five of us in our mid-20s and these college guys... ! We readily accepted... lookin' at each other, and giving a wry grin... as if we are gonna grill these guys... lol

We got the first surprise when they made the goal post each side not more than a meter and a quarter! We were like... "Ye goal hai???" We realized that these are not gonna be a cake-walk...! And soon after it started drizzling{it always does in bangalore in the evening!:P} and still we played... Playing football in the rain! This was something I have done since my school days... Have been an out-and-out cricket person since then... But it rocks...!

The game went on according to our plan and we posted our first goal! Hurrey!... But they were really agile... legs 4-5 yrs younger...!

After 45mins the score read... 5-3 in their favour! We lost but had a wonderful time...!

In a cricket crazy world{I'm a fanatic too... a die-hard Sachin Fan}, football is still a low priority sport... Needs a lot of stamina... But I'm waiting for the day, when India will participate in the World Cup Football 20xx... And we'll have our Ronaldinhos, Lampards, Henrys to boast of... Woh din kab aayega??? Well, gotta get back to office mould... monday se friday... :D

Oops! I forgot we gotta come on this saturday as well!!! OMG! Anyways guys... God Bless! Enjoy! ;-)

And it poured...

RAIN...! The very word brings up so many memories into my mind... Reminds me of the golden school days... How we came back from school wet and dripping {I somehow always used to forget the raincoats/umbrellas}, the careless jumping in puddles... the washed-out roads and trees... everything seems so beautiful... Cars and bikes zipping past you splashing droplets everywhere... And when at home, its time for you to 'order' mom for hot samosas and pakoras... with ginger tea... :P And watching the rain belting down in different tempos... listening to it go tip-tap-tap... looking at people getting soaked from head to toe... with polythene bags on their heads saving precious little... lolz... Rain also makes a lot of {or should I say MOST} people quite romantic... or does it just help mainfest the subdued feelings and emotions... Rain is a lot of different things to a lot of different people...

Talking about rains... getting drenched, precisely when you're trying your level best not to get wet, is a humbling experience... I have this long history of getting drenched in rains; sometimes driven by my own desires, sometimes by reasons divine... beyond my control! :P

Was driving home from work yesterday... It was quite Sunny and was just thinking of the prospects of calling *someone* for a coffee at baristas... :P Cool romantic breeze was blessing everyone around... Everything was right with the World...!

But within minutes, I don't what happened, as if the Heavens were conspiring against me, it waxed darker and darker, the clouds came out of nowhere. And before you'd know, I could feel a stray big drop fall on me... Still, I was quite hopeful of reaching home before it went all 'bang-bang' as I did luckily the last 3-4 times... but Luck was not just by my side... Got stuck in the traffic red light for 5 mins and Heavens came down with all their fury... And soon I was dripping... cars and autos honking... puddles forming every where...

You know about getting wet in rain, once you are drenched completely, it doesn't matter how much it pours over you. It can't get any worse! :D The damage has already been done!

Reached my apartment, hurried up the stairs just to avoid anyone I know... was opening the main door when all of a sudden a voice{a neighbour} from behind said, "Kya hua bete... bahut bheeg gaye ho... Barish huyi thi kya?" and her daughter giggling away to glory... Got reminded of Murphy's laws... "The probability of anything going wrong is in inverse proportion to its desirability.. "

That's not all! The irony is this that as soon as I reached home, it stopped raining completely{not even a light drizzle!} , and the Sun was shining resplendently as if mocking me... I guess, "Mission Accomplished" for someone! lolz

Hurray!!! :-)

Well, today is a very special day for me as I launched the website for a Yahoo! Group which I had been managing since a long time! I am really happy about it after the grueling nights/mornings I have put while building it. Though surely, there are several sections which I need to improve on... but atleast I have Version 1.0 now! :-) The later versions would be much much easier!

I had been dilly-dallying with this idea of having a website for JW since a very long time. Maybe more than a year or even two! But then I thought that web-design is only Flash & Photoshop, and I had limited skills in them. Now I know that's not the only thing!

Had been involved in too many activities in the past and itw as difficult to squeeze out time for one more thing! But this time I decided to do it come what may! Coz if dint happen NOW, it NEVER would! The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step... And the journey of a thousand-page website starts with a single webpage! :P

Now as I reflect upon it, it has been a great journey starting May 30th when I bought the http://www.jatinder-wonderz.com/ domain and now today 24th July 2006 when I have finally launched it! All the pain & toil has been worthwhile. My eyes will stop burning from now on...{as would sleep at the usual times! :D}

Thank you God... Thank you all! Be Inspired!

"The future belongs to those who believe in the Beauty of their Dreams"
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Screen! God-Damn Screens!

Screens! Have you guys ever wondered how many hours of your life you spend in front of those myriad screens? Your computer screen... your idiot-box screen... your mobile screen... your laptop screen... the movie-theatre screen... and so on...

So many screens which are actually *screening* you from living your lives as it should... ultimately making you their slaves...

Charmed. Addicted. Wasted.

Living this supposedly 'wonderful' life vicariously... grinning at other peoples' dialogues, laughing at them, becoming sad coz of their trials & tribulations... euphoric, nostaligiac, excited... all because of them. I ask, do you even have any feelings of your own? Is watching things as exciting at doing them?

Have always wondered, wouldn't it be great if there were a knob on the TV to turn up Intelligence? Wait! There's already one knob... we all know... Well, it's called 'Brightness', but it doesn't seem to work, eh? :P lolz

Frankly speaking, I have always wondered who are these people who watch those never-ending ho-hum serials ... Are they SO Bored and Directionless that they will gobble anything & everything served on their plate? Anyways... there are enough interesting things happening in my life, giving far more excitement and satisfaction than these can ever do... But sure I don't avoid the TV altogether... For me its more of Business News, Music, Movies and Sports! :D I love to meet like minded people... So, if you{dear reader :)} think we are on the same wavelength, do comment!:D

Well, talking about screens, being in the software industry, it sure is pretty hard{impossible} for me NOT to look at screens... And these days, I'm not even spared from it at home{but thats something constructive}... as am building a website... almost complete... Lets see... when I get to launch it... Should be pretty soon.

Life is SO VERY Beautiful & Wonderful to be gifted away trapped in the world of screens... Planning to go on a bike trip again soon to some place... maybe pondicherry or mysore or someother... The destination doesn't matter much to me coz I've always been interested and enjoyed the journey more!

Life for me is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed... To LIVE is so startling it leaves very little time for anything else...

Gone in a Blink?

Blink! That's what's happening in my Life right now... Everything's goin' on so fast... Don't even realize when a day comes and goes... What have I been doin'? Well... nothing... And yet quite a Lot...! I guess, I am meddling in too many things at the same time. Work, guitar , collecting and organizing stuff for my group[JW], learning Flash & Photoshop so that I get equipped to make my website, Gym, watching the Ind-WI cricket series and now World Cup Football... Not to forget reading a couple of newspapers[TOI & ET], watching TV, reading books, practising my mouthorgan, squeezing out time to hang out with friends... Now... where do I find the time to blog??? I'm think I'm too busy in my life to take out time to blog...!

Life these days is like a roller-coaster gone berserk...! Am I living in the moment? Every moment spent is so complete & hectic in itself that you never stop to wonder where you're heading... You are just content with the fact that you're atleast moving {somewhere}, led by a ephemeral sense of purpose - A faint flicker of light. And time has this way of disappearing into nothingness under the blanket of monotony. Blink. Six months. Blink. A year. Blink. A life time? And before you realize, you have been goin' around and around in one vast vicious circle that will take you nowhere. All you have been doing is to try finding your way through this eternal darkness following a bunch of fire-flies.

Too many things. Too many people. Too many fire-flies.

The swift-footed Time... I wonder whether even 48hours a day would be enough!

A canvas is never empty!

"AMAZZZING!!! *YOU* drew that??? WOW... Priya... Tum kamaal ho... Dhamaal ho!" I said to Priya{name changed} as she showed me some of her paintings that she had done recently. Teasing her I continued, "Especially I love that expression in her eyes... those deep mesmerising eyes of hers... They sure are talking{sense or nonsense!:P}... but oflate I'm a lil out of touch of that language... So would you care to tell me what's on her mind... and yours, ofcourse! :P " I know poets & painters are very possessive & sensitive about their creations but I just love bustin' & criticizing and cracking 'em up!... She sure is a very talented painter {no two ways about that!has been paintin' since school... that's what she told me...}, very sure of where her strokes have to be... their weight and dimensions, colors & hues, shades & brightness... It just occured to me then that this was the one thing I hadn't dabbled myself much into... I was a lil surpised coz I've always been a out-n-out out-of-syllabus guy all my life... {doin' and relishin' everything for which I was not marked...}

But frankly speaking, I've never understood this Ultra Modern Abstract Art... I mean... paintings done by kids these days are so much more meaningful and aesthetic... I think even Chandan{my ex-roommate} who has never picked up a brush in his hand can draw one while he is half-asleep... It all looks so bizarre like someone has just splashed some colors here and some there with a negligent hand recklessly and viola! you have a painting that'll sells in hundreds of thousands of dollars...! Holy Cow! How do people decide the worth{both in an artistic and monetary sense} of it?

Not that I don't love paintings & art... I do appreciate the medieval & renaissance works esp. the ones done by Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci... also have seen some modern art by Picasso... Truly amazing... Real art sure elevates... I believe painters... are the most lively observers of what goes on in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds. Painting then becomes an exploration of the inner world rather that what we all think. Surely, art does not solve problems but sure makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine. Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind.

You all must have heard that a picture is worth a thousand words{a chinese proverb I guess}... I feel that a well executed painting is silent poetry... As a masterpiece-of-a-poem has be read, re-read several times to be relished & understood consumately... the same way you gotta go through every stroke of the painting to appreciate it fully... Also every time you see it you would see something new... in a different light... Needless to say, the mood that you're in greatly reflects in what you see... As they say Beauty lies in the eyes of the beer-holder... Oops! I mean beholder! :P But a true work of art, in my eyes, must actually have the power or should we say magic to bring you more towards its *own* mood and tone...!

For me a painting is like a strange crypically told tale which stimulates the imagination and draws the mind into a place filled with expectation, excitement, wonder and pleasure. Well... what more do you need in life?... a bottle of exquisite wine, romantic weather & beauteous surroundings with a cool breeze, a {comely} muse and a canvas with a pallette full of red, blue and green... and all its derivative colors! Not asking a lot, am I? ;-) Now I sure am inspiring myself{and you all?} to try my hand sometime... lol.

Art & Poetry must be conjoined twins... I don't think one can live without the other... You know, I sometimes feel that writers are painters as well... one can actually sense the pleasure writers get by describing the landscapes and scenic beauty in words so picturesquely that you feel that you're actually there... in flesh and blood... Have always thought that readin', writing, paintin', sculptin' and all those art forms are ways of getting out of life... forgetting life... this harsh unforgiving life... this ever wasteful life...!!!

Oops! Lemme return to Priya... Well, we talked like a good hour about art and painters she liked and her boyfriends, of course! :P... It had just stopped raining and was time to leave when I heard her say, "Jatin... Just hand me the empty canvases on that table... I wanna draw that tree... Its so CUTE! " {Guys... I have never understood how anything & everything which girls like can be cute... A monkey is cute, a donkey is cute, that ugly undertaker is cute, shahrukh is cute?!? It sure is a mystery for me...! But its kinda okay and bearable if they call me that... lolz :P}

I was about to handover the bunch of canvases to her when out of the blue, I said... "You know Priya... a canvas is never empty... It has in it endless possibilities... only limited by your imagination... " I said it matter-of-factly, being very casual about it... She looked at me and gave me a wicked smile... God! I'm good at giving fundas! haha ;-)

That's all folks! Do post in your comments... Anyone of you paint??? Do lemme know about your views... Thanks in advance!

Some quotes on Art by Pablo Picasso

• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
• Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
• Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
• Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
• Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them!
• I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.
• There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
• Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.
• Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
• The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.
• If there is something to steal, I steal it!.
• Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do its bidding.
• When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.
• People want to find a "meaning" in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.
• Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
• Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
• I don't say everything, but I paint everything.

The Fountainhead

Heylo Guyz! So, here I'm again... Well, these days I'm devourin' The Fountainhead, a you-just-can't-put-it-down kinda novel written by Ayn Rand.{finished half of it already but couldn't stop myself from blogging it!:P} Though I remember reading several quotations on varied topics attributed to Ayn Rand earlier {as am a sponge[sucker:P] for good quotations!}, I never knew{ or rather never tried to find out} that she indeed was a brilliant writer. Not just another writer but the author of several bestsellers; "Atlas Shrugged", "Anthem", "We the Living" being the other ones, {which I intend to read once I finish the current one...}

The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress," and is a more specific version of the book's theme, which is in Rand's words, "Individualism and collectivism in man's soul."

The Fountainhead plot revolves around the central character Howard Roark, the genius in architecture who refuses to conform to another man's ideals (or rather the lack of them!)... who refuses to copy the classic {Rennassaince, Romantic, Italian etc.} building styles of the past... who was expelled out of his architecture college coz of to his ultra-modernistic designs which were MILES ahead of his times... But he chose {dared} to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his creative{radical} vision and is constantly opposed by "the hostility of second-hand souls" and those unwilling or afraid to recognize his creative ability. He believed that every building like a person should have its individuality and integrity if has to survive in this tempestuous world.

"You want to stand alone against the whole world?"

If you ask me, I would say that he was a rebel in the true sense of the word. Totally bindaas... DGAF kinda dude! I somehow got reminded of Amitabh Bachchan and his angry young man image while reading the scene in which he was introduced. The dialogues, "main jahan khada hota hun, line wahin se shuru hoti hai", "main aaj bhi phenke huye paise nahin uthata" trully reflect the character of Howard Roark. Something similar happened in the novel... Following is the excerpt{later part of the convo} in which the Dean of the College had called Roark for an exit-meeting where he intended to somehow change his mind and coerce him to renounce his foolish unrealistic idea{l}s and join the humdrum monotony... the crowd... the stale styles in those days... needless to say he failed... utterly...

Dean: "Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?"
Roark: "Yes."
Dean: "My dear fellow, who will let you?"
Roark: "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?"

He dared to stand alone against the whole world... and won! He is the kind of guy that you would draw inspiration from, whom you would love to emulate... Someone who would cudgel your brains up, wake you up from your ever-wasteful inconsequent slumber and challenge you to strive for the impossible... {coz the impossible CAN and WILL be acheived... coz... IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING! }

Ethics & principles... bestowed genius and courage... indifference & stubbornness... The Fountainhead also reinforces what I've have always believed that its always a lone ranger, a single daring man, a single radical idea that changes the whole world... and never a mob... The mob ALWAYS follows... At first, the mob might oppose{due to inertia}... coz its never comfortable changing for people... even if its to something better... If you wanna rule the world... you gotta care less and less about what the herd thinks of you... They don't matter a dime... not even 2 cents! They are just there to follow the *next* leader... They are just there to watch you rise in awe... They are just there to talk and crib and waste their lives... They are not worthy of your attention... at all!

As it often happens with me, I get reminded of a lot of quotes whenever I read or talk to someone... Someone once said, I guess it was George Bernard Shaw that "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. " Wow! What a thought! You'll find plenty of examples in real life... but sadly you'll find a a hundred{thousand? million?} times more instances where 'the reasonable man' quitted... succumbed... failed the battle of Life and adapted himself to the world. I feel, the greatest tragedy in life are not the earthquakes, the famines, the hurricanes, the tsunamis or the bomb-blasts that take thousands of lives each year but rather a man with unrealized potential{and he knows it!}... the man who dies with dreams still unfulfilled in his heart... the man who didn't dare to believe in his dreams *enough*... who reconciled himself to fate without even a genuine full-hearted attempt at his cherished goal... the countless regrets of 'Had I...', 'If only ...', 'I should have...', 'I thought that idea too ...', 'I wish I could turn back the wheels of time...' gnawing his soul every now and then... These are the real tragedies... !

I'm sure you wouldn't want to die like that... Trully speaking, you aren't living your Life at all if your next step is governed by what's popular with the mob right now...! Dare to stride off the beaten path... leave a trail that'll become a path... a road for many travellors many summers later to follow...!

That reminds me {yet again! :P} of a fantabulous peom by Robert Frost which most of you must have already read... "The Road Not Taken"... Another poem in the same lines is "If" by Rudyard Kipling...

Oops! I've talked only of Howard Roark {and the related philosophies towards Life}, while there are several other characters as well... like Peter Keating his rival architect, Henry Camaron his equivalent several decades back, Catherine who's Keating' beloved, Ellsworth Toohey a critic/writer/humanitarian & Catherines's uncle, Mike Roark's fellow construction worker, Austen Heller a guy who recognizes Roark's greatness, Guy Francon owner of a famous construction firm, Gail Wynand the publisher of The New York Banner and others... But Howard Roark is who *really* matters! ;-)

The only other character I loved is Dominique Francon... Roark's equal! :D

I've purposely not disclosed much of the plot{the theme you know but not the turn of events, which are really interesting!}, as I don't want to spoil the fun for the readers... You gotta read it to know exactly what I mean! {but do share your comments after you read it! :)}

Till next time... Jatinder!

P.S. : Feel free to post your thoughts... and if you've read The Fountainhead as well, do lemme know what you feel... Your comments are appreciated! Thanks in advance!