Personal Jesus... now on Winamp

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer

Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus...

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus...

Reach out and touch faith

Always on My Mind…

It feels surreal, its six ‘o’ clock in the morning and I am in office with Willie Nelsons version of “You are always on my mind” pouring in through the earphones. It’s a wonderful song and funny too.

Always On My Mind
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
And maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have

If I made you feel second best

*A female vocalist croons softly, almost whispers “Yes you did…yes you did”.

Girl I'm sorry I was blind.
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind.

I find that bit hilarious, “If I made you feel second best….” and the female voice goes “Yes you did…yes you did”. I mean can’t she be happy that ‘ol Willie Nelson is singing her a wonderful little love song? Does she have to add her self-serving, bitchy two pence worth “Yes you did…yes you did”?

But it’s a wonderful song nonetheless, the King Elvis has a version of the same and that’s great too in its own way. But all I can think of now is cars and long drives. The time when we were drunk silly and we sang “Susanna” till we were hoarse. Three guys in a car, singing totally out of key, driving through a bumpy dimly lit Calcutta Street and thinking we were on Highway 69.

The time when we were coming back from Kerala, the middle of the night, me standing at the rear exit of the bus – with Bob Dylan playing on the Discman. The cool moist breeze blew across the backwaters and pelted my face, the chaotic sounds of a bus hurtling through the night and Bob Dylan’s contemplative voice stoically struggling to drown it all out.

Peace.

I feel like knocking on Heavens door...

Mama take this badge of me
I can’t use it any more.
Its getting dark too dark to see
Feels like I’m knocking on heavens door.


Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door

Mama put my guns in the ground I cant shoot them any more
That long black cloud is coming down,
I feel like I’m knocking on heavens door

Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door
Knock knock knocking on heavens door

My Movie

The copywriter Shalini ‘lived in’ with the Media Boss Rajan. She dreamt of the red carpets at Cannes and Locarno, ended up in a dingy police station with cops strip-searching her with their eyes. What happened to the Media Boss Rajan? He is now in Delhi, wheeling dealing and living the big life. But do you know he will have this big car crash so very soon?

The artist - Arjun and the writer - Anjali. Romeo and Juliet. They thought it would go on from now till eternity. But it lasted two months.

Shiva, the Software Engineer from San Jose, engaged to Lakshmi, a girl from his village west of Rajamundhri. He made the trip back home, living the “American mind Indian Soul” sham. She liked someone else…Venkatesh an Interior Decorator from Hydrabad. A guy who bought old design magazines and adapted alpine interiors for noveau rich IT engineers in the middle of Banjara Hills. Shiva went back to San Jose a six-hour stopover at Manila, with the pride of a martyr and the delusion of a fool.

The toy-boy Aakash who was “doing” his lady boss every weekend, she was “doing” his brains everyday. He realized all of this on his thirty-fifth birthday with a rave party at a distance and the sea at his feet.

A Birthday and four Candles of Thought

It’s a week since my birthday (nearly), friends have often told me “You think too much for…my own good”. My usual repartee is generally a pithy like “We are… because we think”, delivered with an erudite and contemplative sigh. Not that I live by the maxim or something, but it serves its purpose as a conversational equivalent of a “Stone cold stunner”.

Anyways coming back to the birthday, birthdays have always given me occasion to “think” more than what is usual. Birthday week has generally been a week of thought. The celebration and the contemplation all at once creates a frame of mind congruous to the Mar de Gras revelry smack in the middle of Ramazan.

Well I didn’t make any Birthday resolutions or something, realizations and revelations were more the order of the day.

1. As a child I believed that 10% of the world is abnormal and 90% were nice regular people. But now I know this is a statistical fallacy, the truth is that 10% of the world is normal and an overwhelming 90% is abnormal. In which silo of this statistical distribution I find myself, is another matter all together.

2. While hindsight is indeed 20/20, it is rather difficult to get oneself to look behind the left shoulder. Not that we are drenched in positivism and are forward-looking by nature, just that we often don’t have the “balls” to look back. And yes “Look back in anger” is more than just a fine book, movie and stage production.

3. We will never really know what we “want” in life, so we just basically have to expose ourselves to multifarious people and situations, to know what really works for us and what doesn’t.

4. At age 25 I find my set of values, beliefs and convictions at odds with those of a large number of people. I shudder to believe how incredibly “out of sync” ill be when I am 50.

Of You and I

Of holding hands on an evening of falling rain,
Forgotten passages on a gin soaked afternoon,

Of falling hair and laughter on a bar stool,
Solitude sunk in plush leather,

Of talk and hours vanishing like smoke,
An empty inbox at an airport lounge,

Of a planned vacation, waiting sheets in little hotels,
Shards in the breeze now and tickets before,

Of reaching out for the clasp of eternity,
Staying on to pick up the pieces for my scrapbook.

Of a life passing you by, going somewhere
A moment of indecision scared it may never end.

Of standing in the midst of Beethoven’s circle of joy,
Screaming into the lonely night, in a lonely city, in a lonely life,

Of waiting for your footsteps on the early morning floor,
And the knowledge that you never meant to come,

Of the warmth and chill of a room in winter,
The early winter wind freezing your soul.

Of attributing your happiness to happy serendipity,
Realizing yours was a walk on role in a grand design.

Of thinking our lives were scenes from our movie,
Knowing now it was someone else’s dream.

Of thinking about us together,
Were actually just you and I.