It was well into spring and the sun shone in its splendorous best. I filled my chest with a breath of the cold morning air, looked towards the sun and closed my eyes; presenting a brilliant crimson screen displaying psychedelic patterns to the rhythm of the violins and a piano that played in my ears.
I sat there on my knees, holding my breath for a moment, letting the air cleanse my soul that sought absolution. I thought about life. I didn’t think about death, after all it was inevitable.
I looked at life everywhere. And life looked the same everywhere. There was pain and anguish everywhere. Always! Everyone bent their back carrying burden on them, men, women, children, trying to find the way, trying to find their destination. Everyone traveled the same path, in their babelesque journey, only worried about the burden on their back.
Life is a strange being. It lets you see the magnificent vistas, it lets you see joy and happiness, it lets you see the amazing thing that this world is, yet it ensures you are blind.
To be completed at some point in time..
How gullible is our media? How much do we trust them when they say, "reliable-sources" "not wanting to be named or identified" etc. How much of the news on our mainstream media is true and what percentage is not "sexed-up"? Tough one?
My conjecture is that except for the weather and the scores in the various sports news, everything is sexed-up for editorial compliance. This is the age where rumors are considered as authentic news and then there would be detailed analysis of these rumors as to how it is going to affect everyone (in reality, no one).
An hilarious prank, pulled out by a Goan blogger-group by the name of Pen Pricks, shamed many of India's media biggies and exposed them.
Many of the media houses in Goa and Karnataka received an e-mail from the Hamman Smit, the press officer for Perus Narpk, on Shede Road in Berlin, the Intelligence Wing of the German Chancellor's Core (Whatever that was supposed to mean) claiming to have captured a Nazi war criminal for allegedly having killed thousands in a concentration camp called Marsha Tikash Whanaab. The e-mail, it is claimed, contained a detailed press release where it described how the octogenarian, revealed his identity to an Israeli couple at rave party in Goa following which he was nabbed near the border of Goa and Karnataka.
However, the adrenalin leaking faux-media of our country failed to read between the lines of this hoax and exposed their immaturity in the business they are in and at the same time revealed the tenacity and zeal with which they publish vague news articles as authenticated by "unidentified sources" who "do not wish to be named" (most likely the illusions of the writer who might be on a high).
You name it, Times of India, Indian Express, The Telegraph, Deccan Herald, Rediff.com et al, jumped in to damn the 18th century German musician as a Nazi criminal, in hilariously detailed news reports some of which reported in detail as to how Bach traveled around the globe before he "reached India", "got apprehended", and got "airlifted to Berlin". Some of these media, even damned the Indian police and authorities for not having any clue of the covert German operation, that in reality never took place.
Apparently, Perus Narpk is a anagram for Super Prank and the concentration camp of Marsha Tikash Whanaab did not exist (not even on the internet) uptill yesterday when the hoax was revealed by Pen Pricks. There were many clues that these so called journalists and editors did not catch when the author of the e-mail told he was "hamming" and that his office was on a "shady road" in Berlin and that his office had a name which was an anagram for Super Prank.
The hilarious "story" is still available on the website of The Telegraph, which even has a map showing the travel path adopted by Bach, Indian Express and Deccan Herald. According to the map on telegraph, Bach having traveled to Yemen is "unconfirmed", which means, they were able to confirm the rest? The story on DNA is even more funny, where they added a new twist to it. They claimed that Bach an "alleged accomplice of Adolph Hitler" was "nabbed" by Indian authorities along with the GCC (German Chancellor's Core) and that Bach gave them a slip "while being transported in a taxi and entered the Khanapur forest in Belgaum district on the Goa-Karnataka border" where he was caught again.
Poor old Bach, must be turning in his grave. O' God! Where art thou? (wiping tears after a good laugh)
Pen Pricks' is a group of journalists from Goa who manage a blog by the same name, the purpose of which, according to the blog, is to "Discover the rotund flanks and the shaggy underbelly of the Goan media. And of course, the rare honest rib."
Read somewhere on the internet:
It's weird how you go from being strangers to being friends to being more than friends to being practically strangers... and it all happens so fast.
From the most widely admired and reputed American poets of the 20th century, Robert Frost, two poems that I happened to read a few minutes ago:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
There is a multitude of meanings hidden below the surface of these four stanzas of Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’. Some believe that Frost was referring to his own life. ‘The Road Not Taken’ is a mirror for almost each one of us as we look back at our own lives and think of the opportunities that we may have missed. On a more philosophical note, Frost might be conveying that fate is in one’s own hands and one’s present and future is nothing but the results of our actions in our past.
And here is one of the more popular of Forst’s contribution to this world:
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
This one reminds me of my school days when we had to memorize almost all of the poems in our language class text books and this so happened to be one of my favorites (In fact I adorned my final year college year book, with excerpts from this poem on the first page).
Like most of Frost’s poems, ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’, can be read on many Levels and the same time you can ignore this fact and still enjoy the surface meaning. This is one the eerie poem’s from Frost and at the same time it is beautifully evocative at the surface. Beyond the imagery that Frost has sketched, there is a strong Sleep and Death metaphor. Another thing that you cannot miss is the rhyming scheme used (aaba).
Dissecting this poem has never been an easy task for me, primarily, because I could not (or rather I did not want to) get together the surface level beauty of this poem with darker connotations. Frost, tells us about this person, who rides in to the deep jungle to give up his life.
The horse notices that something is wrong as there is no one else there other than the two of them, while the speaker is struggling with his choice, stuck between a rock and a hard stone (My little horse must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near, / Between the woods and frozen lake…). The metaphor doesn’t stop here. All this happens on the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice, the darkest day in his life (his sadness, depression and isolation). In the third stanza, the horse becomes the voice in his head and shakes him back to reality. He hears the sound of the wind and also sees that the winds can blow away all his worries as the downy snow flakes would cover it all.
In the end the speaker realizes that though death (the deep dark snow covered woods) is the answer to his problems, it is not the answer the wants as he has got a lot many more promises to keep before he went to sleep.
Go ahead and indulge in more Frost. :)
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me
For I must be travelling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see
But if I stayed here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you can not change
Oh! And the bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot चंगे
Lord knows I can’t चंगे
Bye bye, baby, it's been a sweet love,
Though this feeling I can't change
But please don't take it so badly
'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame
But if I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you can not change
Oh! And the bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows I can't change
Lord help me I can't change
Lord I can't change,
Won't you fly high, Free Bird
It was well into spring and the sun shone in its splendorous best. I filled my chest with a breath of the cold morning air, looked towards the sun and closed my eyes; presenting a brilliant crimson screen displaying psychedelic patterns to the rhythm of the violins and a piano that played in my ears. 
I looked at life everywhere. And life looked the same everywhere. There was pain and anguish everywhere. Always! Everyone bent their back carrying burden on them, men, women, children, trying to find the way, trying to find their destination. Everyone traveled the same path, in their babelesque journey, only worried about the burden on their back. 
Posts
