Anastasia

AS delicate as a petal, as innocent as the mountain snow, Anastasia was perfect personification of the compassionate love for being alive. You could keep looking at the fullness of her eyes and let the depth in them capture you inside out. The beauty of her innocent soul would manifest itself in the light that flows from her eyes. Her smile – like beautiful scenery on the canvas of her aura, paints itself on you making the complement universe unworthy of any notice. Her long black hair, kissed by the ecstasy of silent breeze, rubs slowly past her face, as if being jealous of revealing any more of the divinity in her beauty. And while you’re still looking at her, your eyes meet, and that single glance makes impossible vivid romantic fantasies come alive in your heart.

She could be a little cute baby one moment – bubbly with richness of life and emotion, and a symbol of humble aged wisdom the next. You would be carrying that silly smile thinking about such sweetness being existent, when suddenly the warmth of her thoughts would consume your existence in totality. She was as real as one’s belief in oneself. Possible, it might be, for the existence of your existence to confuse you someday, but her essence inside you would stay forever. The same essence which gives you heavenly pleasures to make her happy, but then the pain it instills when you miss her, never goes away.

You could give up everything just to be with her, holding her hand, playing with her hair, feeling her breath, and the warmth in it. You want that softness of hers to be yours now, and yours forever – to never let her go once she is so close that you breathe in her presence and she breathes yours. Her aroma would intoxicate you with powerfully deep emotions and an urge, uncontrollable, to hold her within you and make all boundaries cease to exist for now and forever.

All one would know in one's heart was that blatant truth - With her love, you were not two with her, but one.

K

27th November 2012

KLARKE opens his eyes, and a sudden gush of blood explodes through his veins making him suddenly feel the cold metal around his arms. As his pupils dilate, everything seems so white and pure. The serenity instills a hybrid emotion of beauty and enigma. He feels something beneath his nose - his breath – being alive! As he takes in the alien cold air into his system, a sudden curiosity shakes his inner foundations vehemently.

"Where am I?"

He wants to feel his arms and legs, but the force pulling him down is too strong. He blinks his eyes furiously to gain vision - desperate to push away the ghost of ambiguity clouding his consciousness with patches of fear and impatience. A 'tick tock' sound synchronous with his heartbeat catches his attention, and he looks up to see a blurry huge ball of light suspended over his head, with a bottle of medicine suspended up on his right, and a meter beeping some vital stats in electronic signals. His mind works out the equation, and he has no idea how he ended up being there - in a hospital.

He wants to feel his feet, his legs - to stand up and walk and explore this place of which he has no evidence in memory. But his body fails him badly, and he still feels heavily bolted down to the bed.

He looks towards the side, shuts his eyes hard, and opens them again to look at a beautiful slim face enveloped in fair slim hands, with long hair covering portions of her face seemingly possessive of that beauty. Christine sleeps like a little fairy on the chair beside the hospital bed, her face resting beside Klarke's left arm, as she seems to embrace his left hand and sleeps with her mouth slightly open like a little girl. Klarke smiles, though even smiling takes up a lot of effort. He moves his fingers and suddenly feels her soft lips. He forgets why he is there, and just keeps looking at her. Exhausted with ecstasy, he feels the pillow behind his head and closes his eyes, unable to take that ecstatic strain any more.

His hand leaves contact and he looks up to see Anastasia, who seems to have a complicated emotion spread across her face. Her eyes gleam with tears of happiness, but her forehead shows signs of pain and grief. But Klarke doesn’t want to think about this, and he smiles at his cute little angel, and remembers how she still takes care of him like good old college days. But he’s so angry at Christine for suddenly going somewhere and leaving him alone. He tries to gather energy to ask, but neither his body nor mind seems to have the strength to do that.

Anastasia embraces Klarke’s hands and goes out to call the nurse. The nurse enters and starts preparing an injection. Anastasia whispers close to his face – “Everything will be alright, Babe” and with a beautiful smile spread across her face still so full of worry, she silently leaves when the nurse indicates her that the patient needs complete rest.

It’s a warm sultry evening when Klarke wakes up to find the doctor standing beside him examining his Medical Record file while noting down readings from the beeping instruments. He has been unconscious for two days after the injection, the doctor says. Klarke can feel his strength come back to him in bits. Anastasia sits beside him, looking extremely exhausted. But even with that she manages to carry on her serenity and gives a strange comfort to Klarke. But the coldness of her face brings out a lot of unpleasant questions in his mind.

The doctor suddenly speaks up. He asks Klarke if he remembers anything before the ‘accident’. 

“Accident?”

He lays there in shock, in misery and pain. As his consciousness is less cloudy now – he uses logic, he shakes in agony, looks towards Anastasia and whispers -

“Christine?”

Anastasia is choked with tears and grief. She turns towards the doctor, who silently looks down and says –

“I’m Sorry.”

14th October 2012

KLARKE lie on his bed, looking outside at the beautiful painting-like scenery, embraced by the golden rays of the morning Sun.

It was truly miraculous, he thought, to find time to just lie there, without moving much. Feeling his warm breath while acknowledging the soft sunny embrace - much in contrast to the cold winds that struggled victoriously to enter the room aiming to challenge any entropy resistance. Everything else seemed to be a part of one game or another. Everyone was a player participating in a rat race – the result of which was silly moments of superficial satisfaction, too temporary to last even a microsecond on the Universal clock. But then, so was life, he accepted with a grin.
His last week at the University had been a strong evidence. It was strange, yet pretty self-explanatory, to see how people would sing songs of selflessness, while striving to push all others back when it came to their own race. This was a pseudo setup being worshiped since ages not recorded by human history, but which continued to infect the basic driving gears of our subconscious existence inside mortal structures of flesh and blood.
A hand gently moved over him, like being humbly jealous of the thoughts that occupied his mind. He glanced towards the delicate fingers – which seemed to draw random shapes on his bare chest. He remembered this illogical addiction of his - with how childishly possessive Christine would suddenly be for him at times. Earlier anomalies faded into nothingness, and he was wearing a smile gifted by the thoughts of the delicate figure lying on his side.
Mimicking legs using two of his fingers, he started a walk from her finger-tips, passing by her shoulders and neck, finally stopping on her lips, where his fingers skated over the crimson reddish shade. Christine, still in sweet slumber, squeezed into his curvature like a little child, her head resting on his chest. He could smell the scent of her soft hair, as they brushed past his face. He held her close, while the warmth from her breath on his chest increased their intimacy even more. He locked his fingers in hers, and kissed softly on her neck. She chuckled from the tickling, still half-asleep. She was like a snow-white charcoal sketch of his – just a lot more real. With his thumb, he traced the corners of her lips, like trying to smoothen the redness which seemed to increase more and more as she blushed. As he kissed on her forehead, she opened her eyes and closed them again, shrugging softly against the warmth of his body heat, intoxicated with pleasure. She looked at him – at the roughness of his young face, at those eyes which seemed to always say so much, feeling his strong arms hold her tight around her waist. She put her arms around his shoulders and bringing her face closer, gently stroke her nose against his. He gave a soft bite on the top of her nose, after which she giggled and hugged him tight. They stayed like that for a very long time.

K

6th October 2012

LAST night, Klarke sat looking up at the dull reddish moon, fresh after the full moon a couple of days back. A thought suspended in his conscience, like a copy of him, kept on talking without a pause. As he saw the gradient at the corners of the moon – sudden but smooth - reddish white light dimming into darkness of the night, he felt a deep connection with this gradient. Men were, he thought, like this gradient, sailing in the dark sky of our life.

We take birth as a bright white moon, glowing with a heavenly smile. Time passes on, and we rise – moving up the ladder. The glimmer seems to dull gradually, and spots of impact appear on our contour as we experience 'life' as it is. But the fight remains, and the light struggles to keep the darkness away. Teenage, adulthood, old age – they come and go gradually - a sharp contrast to the actual speed of our life where each moment seems so important, that we forget that all it is, is to rise one day, and set another.

And then this man reaches his peak. He stands conquering the darkness below him. His elegance is unmatched and unquestionable. But then he looks at himself – at his own dark spots. He wants to hide them, forget about them. But his life is an open book, inaugurated by none other than he himself, a book he would hate to read. 'Hate' was somehow inadequate – hate and dread, maybe.

But time is merciful, and all this passes away, like an obvious joke on all what was felt. The progress now, is towards the end. The man knows his inescapable destiny. Some wish to face it with a smile, others accept comfort in shooing the thought away.

Time would, meanwhile, sit on its couch, eating pop-corns, watching the second half of the movie – aware that soon it will have to get up and switch his movie off. It watches man, with his billion emotions, each given worth too exaggerated.

Klarke stopped the thought for a second, looked up again, and smiled. This was our success, he thought, the most successful failure. To be embedded immortal in stone, or to die in a gutter, seemed synonymous to him now. But his reflection was not to conclude here. Suddenly, he spotted a shooting star. The star seemed to smile at him, a humble calming smile. And Klarke was overtaken by a gust of joy – that there was, indeed, one exception!

The exception was love. An abstraction, and a reality. Suddenly, his conscience was filled with a billion thoughts – yet he felt he knew nothing about it – that there was so much more to learn – so much more to experience. The love when a mother watches her new born child. The love when a father ties your shoe laces on your first day of school. The love when a child sees his first toy. The love when a child watches his elder brother fight for him. The love in the eyes of the grandparents, as you touch their feet.

There was so much love around him, he felt delighted. Love, as he deeply felt, had the divine power to warp time. A long walk with a loved one passed away in a matter of microseconds, while a hug seemed to last a lifetime. He realized he had found a small scratch on the smiling ego of time, and this thought was highly elating.

He looked at his hands, felt love in abstraction, when for instance, he touched the dew on a morning rose, washed his bike, plowed the garden when he was a kid, made his first sketch, stood looking at the sunrise on the Ganges, took a deep breath of fresh morning air, and...embraced Christine's hands.

The thought brought back the pain lying dormant somewhere in his heart. He tried to recall if ever he was in love with a girl. He was together with a girl a year back, but that was more of a 'growing up' than love – at the same time, his recognition of the impurity that humans are prone to induce in the purest of gifts given by God. She was a passing phase, long gone, without leaving its mark on the sands of time, forgotten as quickly as the thought had come.

But Christine was an impossibility he would be in love with forever. Each time the name came in his mind, the brightness in her eyes filled his dark sky. She was like a shooting star – and he was the moon. For a couple of moments, she would come and his night sky would glisten with brilliance. He would lock his fingers among hers and get flooded with a divine warmth – a bidirectional connection of two souls. It was worth living life this way – howsoever temporary it might be. Klarke wondered - how easily this four letter word – love - stood powerfully facing two more four letter words – time and life. How easily the thought of Christine changed his conclusion that life was going to be a tragedy no one could avoid.

He wondered what Christine might be thinking at that moment. If she could feel his heartbeat increase more and more every time he thought about her. If she knew that Klarke could feel her scent enter his system and intoxicate him with her beauty.

Something inside him said - “Yes she does” and he wanted to think no further, say no further.

K

2nd October 2012

KLARKE had a talk with Christine on phone, today. Though the urge to hear her voice was stronger than the urge to breathe, it was he who did all the talking. Strangely, the reason was pretty clear - the lesser he heard her voice, the lesser would be the insatiable want to hear her more.

The conscious mind knew it pretty well – her camp starts today, and for the next 10 days, they won't be able to share a single message, a single word of everything that was impossible to be expressed in words. He collected himself and asked the formal and obvious questions, afraid to jump to the uncomfortable ones, from where there was no turning back. She answered his questions in her own sweet way, each word of her's hitting him like the world's strongest, most pleasant intoxication. He wanted to be drugged, to be carried away by those careless words to the lips which spoke them. The sweet notoriety in her voice was tempting and teasing – like she could actually see him trying so hard not to say it again and again – not to say how much he loved her and wanted to be with her.

Occasionally, she would chuckle, and Klarke imagined her smiling like the evening when they sat together holding hands, he caressing her slim fingers, looking into her eyes, noticing how her beauty could make angels swell in envy. He did not mention this. He knew of no known language with which he could communicate his thoughts in their pure original form. All he could say was 'Take care', with the same degree of pain and pleasure – pain of being so away from her, pleasure of still being able to love her more and more each moment.

Somehow he felt that she could sense the beating of his heart, and he could sense hers. The rhythm of two hearts, of two souls, so far away, yet so near, so synchronous and pure – it was like living in the childhood dream where everything was good, everyone was happy, there was no grief, no guilt, no despair, no hatred, just love...pure untouched love.

The 2 minutes 52 seconds on the phone were like a beautiful evening walk – by the sunset at the river bank, golden rays of the setting sun meeting the sharp corners of her smiling lips, her eyes looking into his while he puts his arms around her waist and brings her closer. Planting soft kisses on her neck, he whispers something in her ears, and they both – Klarke and Christine - together watch the sun hide behind another majestic beautiful evening.

Suddenly the crude reality of life strikes Klarke, and he knows its time. There is an uncomfortable silence lasting various microseconds – there is so much more to tell, so much more to talk about, and yet no means to express any of it now in that moment. The fight inside him finally ends, and an unknown voice unwillingly whispers - “Goodbye Christine”.

K

Klarke

Some men personify determination. Klarke was not better than them – he was the superlative. His personality radiated itself everywhere he would go – to the walls, to the machines, to the people around him. Sometimes it would make the aura uncomfortable for the ones who felt it, and made them almost certainly sure of standing not with a normal being as themselves, but with a divine heroic presence. But the chapter would not close there. It's not natural, they would say, in this age, for men with sharp determination to be honest and humble as well – words whose origin must certainly lie attributed to a prophecy or a vision of Klarke's, by the men who invented them.

He relished learning – and that seemed to be an unstoppable motivation towards his self-actualization. The level of detail with which he could absorb the observable enabled him to mix his essence with the unspoken beauty around him. Many a times, he would just stand close to random subsets of random universe, feel the rhythm, accepting it with a strange intimacy.

His sight was sharp, as sharp as his other senses of hearing, smell and taste. Somehow, they seemed to symbolize a non-stop information flow between him and his compliment – consisting of everything else. But the 'touch' was the most sensitive – his fingers would elegantly trace the outlines of a morning rose, like it was someone's most prized piece of art. With a pencil between those fingers, he could create abstraction and reality in unparalleled synchronization. With his thumb, he could feel the piece of a charcoal sketch freshly prepared by him – breathing, sensing, having a life of its own. For him, it was not just carbon spread on paper in a randomly ordered fashion, but the ability to give birth – to be a miniature God.

A die-hard romantic he would be. His philosophy about life - “Live each moment like its your last.” He could have silent abstract romances with the beauty around him – beauty not just noticed by normal humanly perceptions, but whose sole existence could make you forget the concept of 'me' and 'I', as you delve into a universal plurality of homogeneity. These moments were rare – rare but glorious, and for days altogether he would be mesmerized by thoughts of capturing it forever – giving it the immortality it truly deserves.

At times, he would imagine of a beauty surpassing all previous unchallenged notions in his mind. A strange consciousness would tell him the moment was near – he knew not why, he knew not when. He did not know the sweet beautiful pain that was to flood his heart. All he knew was that when the time comes, he and his lady would be intoxicated with the purest forms of emotions impossible to be captured by any known tools of human brilliance, including he himself.

K

Christine

HOW does one react when all your learnt concepts of beauty seem universal fallacy in front of a fragile figure of a girl about whom you've never known till this moment in time? How would you look into her eyes, and not reveal your thoughts, afraid of them being an insult to the miraculous beautiful dream-like moment which is as real as the eyes which look into yours.
Suddenly, you feel that strongest sensation, of those eyes meeting yours and dissolving in an uncertain ecstasy of love and sweet pain. You want to capture those seconds for an entire lifetime, and even more.
You sit close to her, so close that her aroma fills your existence beyond your personal recognition. You realize the sense of yourself dimming into nothingness, like getting captured by a strangely beautiful purpose of love and selflessness, and you don't want to be free anymore.
Her fingers meet yours, the delicate slim fingers which artists dream of in their most beautiful of dreams, and still fail to capture every time in their best of attempts. Her soft palm rubs against your coarse skin, and you don't want it to hurt her, but you are too weak to accept that. Her fingers play carelessly with your hands, ignorant of every time your heart skips a beat, and you don't want her to stop, even if that skip lasts a lifetime.
It seems like an impossibility of her being with you, caressing your hands, looking into your eyes, looting you of all sense of comfort and selfishness at the same time. An impossibility made so possible by forces unknown. You would kill for being together, melting into a single existence, and yet you would never do that, as the existing separation itself brings more impossibility into picture, more ecstasy to be sought.
And while you cherish these thoughts, the pink blush on her cheeks explodes as a gush of pain in your heart. But this pain does not bring misery. This pain brings a sweet soft sense of pleasure, because the pain is due to her, due to her being real, due to her being close to you, due to the taunting tautology that she will always be real, and not a dream, that you can never forget this moment, and it will come and haunt you again and again, and each time it will make you realize how much you want to seal your souls with a divine kiss of immortal love. And suddenly, you know this pain will be more immortal than immortality itself.

K

30 seconds - Me and My Bangalore

Team performance - Down2Earth

Reflecting on the awesome time spent at NetApp, some of the best memories that I have are of the Street Show practice by our team - Down2Earth.

I still remember people laughing their wits off, as we had modeled our play not only to give essential details about our theme - "Go Green and Save the Earth", but had used humour too, that too to the limit of saturation!

A salute to the team for such an awesome performance!

I wish to personally acknowledge every member of our team, and jot down the awesome memories they have given me.

Rajesh Sunkara
"Hatt pagla! Sab bhool gaya hai !"
The 'Happy tree' of the group, I first came to know him during our official team outing. Full of life, full of energy, highly enthusiastic, and fun-loving...he would always make the environment light with his occasional punches. I really am impressed by his ability of 'Stealing the show away'. He helped me in some tight corners, and I'm very thankful to him for that and a lot more :)

Arvind Sundriyal
"Arey aa gayi...Dhaniye ki lugai !"
A.K.A. 'Bakar King', his comments were better than the best performances of Comedy Circus or Laughter Challenge! Totally super-creative, spontaneous and witty, he assured us that we should never be sure of what he is going to speak there on the stage. Got an opportunity to spend some more time with him during the last week when I car pooled for office, thanks to him.

Mahesh VS Vemala
"Bhai tujhe kya ho gaya? Hum toh judwa the !!!"
My judwa bhai, 'Sheher' :D Mahesh bhaiya made everyone go crazy with his 'Yo Yo'-factor! He might look like a class 8th kid, but don't be deceived...he's a total all-rounder in his game! An active volunteer, a foosball champ and someone I could always look up to for help and masti both! I met him for the first time in gym, and since then, everytime we met, it would automatically bring a smile on my face :)

Vivek Mattur
"Mom! Look at my brand new diesel car !"
I saw him as the 'official'-most guy among us during our initial days of practice, although as time passed by, I became buddies with him and then we all had our share of fun time. I still am sorry for the 'Donor' joke that I cracked during the play, which was totally spontaneous! Chalo isi bahaane Vivek won't forgot me for a long time to come! Haha!

Vineet Abbi
"Aam ke paed lagaunge yahaan pe...Dasheri aam !!!"
The boss of everything extra-curricular. I am not surprised that be it any event, people used to look upto him for arrangements and management. Totally multi-dimensional, I'm really impressed by the way he manages everything so well. Not to forget PS3 @ 5th floor - thanks to Vineet Abbi (And I was stupid enough to ask - "Aap khelte hain PS3") Haha :D

Pavithra A. Kumar
"Now Karan...TELL !"
I met Pavithra in NB3 reception just before leaving for the official team outing. She has an exceptional ability to share with you and make you feel light and calm. Totally in love with her expressions and how cutely she tries to frame hindi sentences, while me, Mahesh bhaiya, Antony bhaiya and our gang made fun of it! She became my 'sister' once, to help me out of a big locha (Remember, Pavithra? ;-))
Not to forget the Universal rule - If Pavithra says TURN RIGHT.....Just Turn LEFT! :P Haha

Chetna Samant
"Mujhe nahi karna yeh lugai-shugai wala role ! :-X"
Inspite of all attempts of protest, she ended up doing doing roles of mother and wife both! Haha...
As with Pavithra, I met Chetna just before leaving for our team outing, and the initial impression that I got was 'very strict and senior-ish'. But when we both became the 'bali ka bakras' and had to Emcee Official Team outing events, it made me know how fun loving and full of energy she was! She's a foosball pro, and another active volunteer from the great MPO! But I still can't forget the fact ki Ape mujhe party nahi di :P


An lastly...me...Karan Bajaj
"Namaskar bhaiyon....aur UNKI behno ! :P"
Someone who is all emotional about the awesome moments he spent at NetApp. It was more like a family than a group of MTS Seniors and Managers. These two months went away like they never had some...like it was all a very beautiful dream. I'll miss you guys a lot, and hope that 'Chalte chalte kahin na kahin yeh zindagi fir milne ka mauke de...'


Cheers to good times! :D

Down2Earth

So finally the day has come for us to show our dramatics skills!
Me with my team from NetApp had been working on preparation of a Street play for an event here at NetApp, Bangalore - theme of the play being "Go-Green" and "Save The Earth".

In a single word - it was hell fun to participate in this activity, and most of the time, we guys were involved in making fun of each other's characters. :D

BUT all throughout the play, there were a lot of things I got to realise and accept, and these are heavily participating in causing problems for our mother nature -

1. Continuous use of AC - getting addicted to be in a cool temperature
2. Intensive use of paper-cups : Intensive deforestation
3. Petrol prices on hike, still you see more and more people using personal vehicles even for small distances.
4. Health hazards
5. Industrial pollution contribution to water, soil and air pollution.
6. Careless disposal of wastes
and the list is endless.....

Solutions do exist! But for implementing them for longer term benefits, we need to move out of our comfort zone....and there is where the problem comes.
I will play my role to the best, and will encourage my close ones to do the same. With little efforts brought together, we can bring about a major change!

Lets hope our play goes well. I will be posting feeds about the play next. :)