MUMBAI and its new tag

'BOMB BLAST at DELHI. Mumbai on high alert. IAC Mumbai condemns this dastardly attack.Postpones all its street activities. Please help authorities. Jai hind'.

The message caught my attention for not more than 3 seconds. I looked up and observed the surroundings. A local train had just dropped an unruly bunch of people..A family had settled comfortably on the platform and were 'laughing out loud' over lunch. There were a couple of 'rowdies' and 'corporate guys' (out-beating the number of rowdies) hastily crossing the tracks and jumping onto the platform. From the arched exits of the station, I could easily see the street 'bustling' with its regular activities. People were still bumping into each other in a hurry to board the trains and some were blocking the street regulation by communicating with the hawkers.
I looked down and read the sms again. I let out a sarcastic chuckle and said to myself....
WELCOME TO MUMBAI !

Mumbai - fast life, paav bhaaji, economical capital of the country, golas, open to PDAs, independence, glitz and glamour...and now...a fine target for bomb blasts...

so yes...WELCOME TO MUMBAI.

The shudders of PARENTHOOD

Mom 'losing her shirt' on me! 

"Do what you want! If you wanna come home, come home! Otherwise stay back at her place and give us some mental PEACE !!!" ...keeeeeen.....keeeeen.....keeeeeen...the telephone replied.... :/ :/ :/
I gave a blank look at Swats to my left and a helpless one at Katty to my right. One took my right hand and the other placed an 'understanding' hand on my shoulder...Sigh!!! "WHAT WOULD LIFE BE WITHOUT FRIENDS???", was what in my mind the next moment. Simultaneously, All the three of us broke the unbearable pause with our 3 differently pitched 'hyuk hyuk hyuk'!!! I carelessly fell on Katty's lap and relaxed my feet on Swats'. "Why the hell would she not hear me out before YANKING'!!!", I said while heaving a quick and intense 'sigh'!  
"Babes...You will know when you are in their shoes", came the reply from my 'feet bearer'. I looked at her with a crooked smile and rubbished, "yeah rite Aunty!". She spontaneously pulled my little toe and made me squeal. 
"I would be a very understanding mother. I would be my child's best friend! That way, they wont have any problems with me!", meowed Katty in her incredibly low and sweet voice and happy eyes. 

So who is a parent? How do we define them? They have seriously confused us by being very versatile in their behavior. God, guide, friend, teacher, 'never-understanding' yankers, 'it is my duty' tellers, 'extremely nosy' creatures, foretellers etc etc etc.  Why do we love them? Just because we were born out of their union? Is it like a 'karma' we are doing by bearing and living with them? Too many questions popped in my head at a time and was pressurizing my inner surface of my skull! ANd the following is a reflection of my thought process.

The day the POET in me was born!

2000 A.D. - It was the era of creative explosion in my life. It was raining Philosophy. I was so drenched in it that I became vulnerable to 'deep thinking'. Suddenly everything around me had an allegory attached to it.
A pencil and eraser would become an enemy and a friend respectively..(In case you dint figure that out, an enemy tries to make dark marks in your life while a friend is the one who perspires to erase them all...I KNOW...dont ask...) All of a sudden the 'chatterbox' in me went into hibernation mode and I switched myself to 'I see things differently' mode. That was when I chose WRITING as a medium. Writing wasn't 'catchy' enough for me. In order to make myself go through them again and again, I desperately tried to make them sound poetic. Seriously I was never a natural at that! Some times I was terrific and MOST of the times I ended up NOT conveying the message in the quest to make the words rhyme.

So my dear fellas...Here are a few 'bearable' ones I don't mind sharing with and tickling you ( I am sure this is soooo gonna happen).

MEMORIES OF MIDNIGHT...

 

As the shimmering rays awaken her in slow pace,

a smile adorns her delicate face...

oblivious of the events of her past night

and what she brought home before twilight.

As her eyes carefully open,

 reality stabs her like a weapon.

"Oh sweet Lord...I cant feel him besides me...

He is gone...just like that...

without a word...without a promise..."

DEVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Honestly, I am not a movie savvy. But I have sat through all the kinds. They have all made me cry. Either they were too good or they were a torture!
One and only movie that I have literally assimilated every bit is DEVDAS; the third directed by SHRI SANJAY LEELA BHANSALI (note the SHRI). The legend has directed a couple of movies but never have I seen the same magic existing in any of his earlier or later works. One of the reasons why I look up to him is he could pull off the impossible act of getting the real actor out of SRK! I watched DEVDAS only and only for Aishwarya Rai (Ash). After I watched the movie, I couldn’t believe that it was a torture! I somehow felt guilty about it. The 2nd time I watched it on TV. It was bearable that time. It was the third time I watched the movie that something caught my attention…apart from Ash and those award winning songs!
Once we had a little discussion about the various versions of the movie in college. The first had K.I.Saigal in it. The second had the dream cast of those time,Vaijanthi mala, Suchitra sen and Dilip kumar (the first two are in black and white). The third version(2000)had the dream cast of today’s times, Aishwarya rai, Madhuri dixit and Sharukh khan. The fourth was DEV D(2009), the most contemporary version of DEVDAS.
My favorite professor SIMON expressed his views about them. He din’t find the Ash starrer catchy at all.

Aishwarya rai in DEVDAS

I beg to differ here.