Travel

I look back at last year and I realised that planning a travel program in India, with my friends, is harder than it was in London. Dates for leaves, suggestions for places, money and mode of transport -- all tend to rear their ugly head into our lovely dreams of meeting up in exotic places. From a week in Singapore to two days in the sultry Chennai heat, lots of plans have been blotched. Nevertheless, I have managed to travel a lot last year. With my friends and family.
(Mumbai-Mahabeleshwar, Chennai -- by default, Goa, Bellikeri [I am sure its called something else, ask Frank], Mysore, Mekedatu)

The thought that occured to me was obviously not a novel thought and hence I am refraining myself from giving it a dramatic entre. I suddenly wondered why I did not have a or start a travel blog. It will not aim to flaunt the places I have been to (or will in the future) but for the selfish pleasure of trying to manage another blog (or mabbe continue in one which is redundant at the moment) and to do something new in the new year! (Honeymoon period for a new year is only till Jan end).

P.S: The minute I write something in the "travel" blog of mine, I will end up not travelling... sigh :) Rules and 'happenings' need to be broken :)

Moving Forward

It makes my life easier. I have better control over my drawings, free art as I would like to call them (It is like free verse, not abstract but a try replicating the original, an imagination and I fail). You can find them on facebook. I try to convey messages to my friends through those pictures. Well, my drawings are not the point. What I want to talk about is the mouse, attached to my laptop, which helped me have a steady hand while I drew.

The mouse turned 40 today. Here is the link to the article in BBC. (Please do watch the first video in the article.) Dec 9th, 1868 was the first time Douglas Engelbart, the mouse inventor, demonstrated the usage of this technology which we all have grown to love. (And I thought and believed hands free was good and cool. My mistake!)

Yonder was the age of discovery
Now is the age of invention
Future maybe the age of creation or re-creation

Every week in the online version of The Guardian, Culture section and in the sub-section, Books, Billy Mills ( a poet and small press publisher in Ireland) asks writers to contribute poems about certain topics that he chooses. This week it is about Railway Lines. I am trying to widen my horizons and write about topics that are given to me. (To filter stuff in and out) Lets see where this leads me to... (Destination somewhere with success I hope!)

Two lines made of metal
That never meets,
Connecting each life in cities
Departs are anything but sweet

Pebbles skid off the wheel’s edge
Are far for none too long,
First a mountain, hill, now a hole
Train sings its arrested gong

Passing through a rocky cascade
Asks who to break the fall,
With unsure, cupped palms outstretched
Catching a single tear that says it all

It then goes back to begin from start
Train timings, like happiness is fickle,
Silently the windows watch stations arrive
Daily occurrence a repetitive miracle