the sion fire

i saw the after effects of the sion fire in the city. it was pretty devastating. the building which bore the brunt is actually a burnt out shell. some people were inside the burnt shops trying to make sense out of some papers and there was even one guy on a landline calling from inside the burnt black shop.

hell is a place on earth.
the place is here.
there, everywhere.
its just not something you want to be near.

no news from radhika?
maybe shes just not read
i dont understand some people
who could be frightened so
that there would be a new shell made

there is nothing worth commenting on the person. she is as anonymous to me as to you. maybe more

the WSF

it was where people from all over the world came. all the space on the walls, on the pipes inbetween dadar and borivali had been taken by the world social forum. it was also called the mumbai resistance, and beat globalization and so on.

i really wanted to hear joseph stigligz. plus, ofcourse, arundhati roy(who had come there i think), and just go there to see everything, feel the heat on globalisation.

but i dident. i dident have anybody to go with. i find it ironically funny that i did not have anybody to go with for a fight on glaobalisation. its more funny, since that just kind of proves that well, friendships and interests still havent been globalised. isint it almost perfect that i wouldnt have anybody to go with on a fight on globalisation. for if i had an entire army, then i would be, in a way, myself globalized. (please excuse the z's and the s' alternating in the big G spelling..its a globaliz(s)ation effect)

its even more funny that a friend of mine's friend are the ones who were organizing the whole razzmatazz. and i got to know that the day the whole thing got over.

one observation that a friend of mine made about this whole thing which stands out is

its funny that all these people who are fighting against globalization are coming from all over the world to do it. in a way, the entire group fighting is itself a globalized group. one which is against(if not for) a one particular cause. exactly the agenda of globalization. that, plus the fact that had it not been for globalization, these people could never have come together here.

what was dissapointing in the entire week that happened here, was that everybody was so busy protesting that nothing really got done. though i believe in protest, haveing an agenda less forum which addresses protest, but does not look at solutions, seemed to me like a huge waste of a lot ot time, effort and minds. perhaps the solutions will come out of the sustained protest.

whatever it was, i missed out on something for which i might just have to go to the other side of the world to see now. and that, is not a bad idea!

gprs(among other things)

my phone over here is trying very hard to get to the internet right here. i dont think it is going to be able to do it though. its still trying though. thats its job.

so i just got back from work. there is something very disconcerting about life in this city. somehow the good and the ugly are so close apart that it is uncomfortable. the biggest problem is that it is very difficult to realize what is ugly and what isint. you look straight ahead into the eyes of people and there is this defeatist look or this victorious look. both of which are just spiralling everybody down. sometimes, it all looks ugly. people taking advantage of other people. left right and centre.

all the ideas lost

through the day, there are so many ideas and thoughts which flow through and just whittle away. there is nothing that i am able to recollect by the end of the day. it seems like a big waste sometimes. some of the stuff is ofcourse, very visual dependant. but i dont carry my camera around. and the one on the phone isint helping since my computer is still a million miles away!

mumbai perhaps presents the best photo op there is in the world. just waiting, for the right angle and the right lens. i have many plans, none of which are working out. like take the 84 bus and go around the city, shooting snaps. or go to places just outside the city, and click away. or go to toto's or club9 or places like that, and do some of that disc photography. the expressions inside those places are probably one of the best. paradoxical expressions for a disc come up. guy and girl getting bored(with all that music), or the angry bartender(thats normal!). stuff. the lights. the mood. smoke. the 'i dont know what i am doing here' look. its all there. waiting for the right chemical.

but i dont do this. see, the sixth artist is right about some of the things. all the things i want to do, and just dont do.

latest book being read- the global soul(pico's)
the eastern stories- joseph conrad
52 weekend breaks from mumbai(!!)

latest chord learnt- G7 (i just know a few)

current music- a mix of rush, floyd and punjabi tadka on TV

another year bites the dust

somehow today, i am more beset with memories than with what lies ahead. the weather in mumbai is great today and there is this cool wind blowing. the world is a nice place today. people are happy and all that. as for me, i have started coping with my past much better than what i thought i would have been capable of. ofcourse, everything is there in front of my eyes like a film before the present, but the funny thing is, the film isint really blocking my view.

i am a 'move on' kind of person i think. i have always moved on. i dont really understand if that is the right thing to do or if that is a sustainable approach. but till now, it hasnt been so bad. or atleast, it is slowly easing off.

i am still not trekking, or listening to music enough. neither am i going around with any body. but there is a calm inside which is probably not going to stay on too long. i am going to start trekking again, and play my guitar more often. i am also going to see more movies, and listen to more music. in that entire space, i will continue to work jobs which make me feel like i am using my mind and seriously pushing it. that is something i like. solving problems. coolly, with death calm.

sang froid.

inconsistency

a blogger needs to have a sense of purpose on the blog. the uncanny look in his mind that allows him to focus on a particular object or discussion on the blog. so that it idnetifies with him.

what do you do however, when the person is not somebody you can identify? an entitiy uncertain of its being, unaware of purpose. infact, devoid of purpose. this person will be unable to relate and connect to a particualr topic for a long enough time since he himself is unable to sustain interest in things around him for long periods of time.

such a person is me. asif...

random thoughts pop into my head all the time. the location or the activity i am involved in do not affect these thoughts. sustenance of interest is another problem. it just dosent happen!
thats why, a lot of time, this place has become a hoopla of all kinds of stuff. moving here and there, but never really pointing anywhere.

i have started reading again. and the guitar sounds good in my headphones(thank god its only me who hears it!)

resolution

there is a theoretical construct for things slowing down at certain occasions. i believe that the brain's effective resolution goes up at times...it is able to see in higher detail. this results obviously in a drop in the effective frame rate. that would explain the slowness of movements sometimes.

comments to this post must be intelligently written.

there are moments when the mind is free.
but only moments yet.

the flow of things

the flow of things
is easy to understand
when the mind is like water
and moving like sand.

the horizon is moving
beneath my very feet
i hold out to stop myself
from falling into the deep.

open your eyes and see for yourself
how curious everybody is
they just want something different
it dosent really mean much.

going into my own vortex
i forget what is real(and not)
moving below or above
it all seems like being stuck.

wait up wait up
you went ahead too soon
its not even the second june
hell, what can i say
give it up and lets gets away

hanging out

i hung out of a train today. it wasnt bad. i was looking inside, so i really dident see how close the ground is to the feet when you have got one of them outside the train!
and i was in first class. so you can imagine how it must be in the other parts of the train. this whole train experience ofcourse pales in comparision to the movie on the left. i saw it on HBO. for all you chennai guys, i actually get to switch off a tv inspite of it showing HBO!

HA!

the heightened state of being
allows the mind to float
and find out what is the meaning
nice and slow.

i really like the song slow by kylie. i think it rocks.

getting low

every once in a while, the low thing hits everybody. for some reason, suddenly you cant put a finger on the reason for which you are going through life. this happens a lot when our lives are just going on, without any untoward incidents. normality is the biggest killer for a person. every once in a while, you need that burst of surprise. one which hits out of nowhere. to make you realise how delicate this normalcy is. but whenever it dosent, we go down to a low. from where getting out is difficult, and it requires will power, some event, to get you out of there.

i am not going through anything like this, but i got thinking about it. thats why i am writing all this. yeasterday, i was talking about the chaos theory and entrophy and how both these concepts form the basis for everything in this universe. just as god and love form the basis in somebody else's perception of the universe. not from the physics point of view, but from the conceptual point of view. its quite something. life.

another rambling post from a high point.

fireworks

we watched fireworks from a terrace. it was quite something actually.
we then went to club9 sometime around 2am for sometime. that was ok. atleast the music was different from what the dj usually plays.

we got back at 4, got up at 2, and then a and i went to buy second hand books from around churchgate. the amount of smut available over there is just unbelievable. i picked up a book on hawaiian guitar chords which was published in 1926!

quite something.
i also picked up an edition of loaded magazine. but only for the ads. i swear.

pls dont go to the site if you are a minor or are not interested in advertising. or not both. just dont go there, ok?!