The Awesomest Person I Know.

Disclaimer: I have not written this post. It is a direct copy and paste from my friend and co-blogger's notes. Mostly, because I didn't have the thoughtfulness to do something like it myself. Also because, well, some days are universally okay-ed for emo posts. I've always known we share much in common, but it becomes apparent how much, when I read when she dons sentimental. 

Also, because it's a wonderful, heartwarming post for Mother's Day. Must read. 

ps: Yeh. She's no shot at brevity either. It runs in the bunch. Sorry about that. 

pps: Happy Mother's day, to all mommy readers! 

---

We'd thought, and thought some more. 

Or really, I'd thought. 

My brother had sat vegetating in his usual spot. Eyes on his game. His input, the intermittent curses uttered everytime he died in that stupid game. 

We'd fought. 

Not because we were disagreeing about 'ideas'. 

But because we were disagreeing about 'who' was actually 'thinking' for some. 

It worked, when he slammed the laptop shut and looked at me. Quite miffed - but good luck to him trying to intimidate me. 

In two some minutes, it had been all cool. 

We'd been thinking again, together this time. 

Not for an out of the box plan. 

Just something basic.

Something that would not fail.

Because fact is, we believe she works with the Mossad or something. She knows everything. And I mean, everything.

For one, she is the mother. Of course she knows everything.

For another, she is who she is. Knows exactly by how many decimal points of a degree a needle in the haystack has changed position, if that haystock is anywhere within the territory of her domain. No, I kid you not. She really knows. There are times it's not even real that it's for real. 

Which basically boils down to the futility of planning surprises for her. This one year we'd managed our grandest triumph. Only because the means to the end had nothing to do with planning "within her territory". My brother - interning in Delhi at that point - conspired together with Dad and me to land at the doorstep on her birthday, while all the time she assumed he was getting done only 4 days later. When I called her at her midnight hour to wish, sitting in Ann Arbor, I was on the edge, certain I would say godforsaken something that had nothing to do with the surprise, but she would get it somehow. Miraculously, it all went well. We made it, that one time. She *was* surprised. 

A couple years later when we could be together at home for her birthday again, we were more confident. Thinking we'd grown up and all, and could now pull smart ones on her. Everyone suffers their set of misconceptions, we are like everyone. Long story short - we got caught trying to smuggle the goodies into the house, *after* we'd thought she'd hit the sack. Dad had tried his best to cover for us, but his best could only stand so much up to her omniscience. She laughed at us fondly and told us that was surprise enough for her - but well. So much for trying to outsmart her. 

The following year, or maybe it was the one after, we got our in-house maid to fetch our stuff and then store it in *her* refrigerator so it could remain undetected. She had to lie to Mumma about going for some late night errand - *very* unusual for her, which goes to say it was the only time she sought such permission - but somehow we ragged her into it, and somehow more so... it kind of worked. I have a sneaking impression in retrospect that Mumma could smell fishy, but she played along very convincingly - and we were thrilled. 

Yet another year - and this was early on, back in school/college - we'd managed to acquire black and white pictures of her childhood from Nani and presented her with a big, though rather shabby, but very heartfelt collage of memories. At night, we sneaked into our parents room, and stuck it up on the wall she would wake up looking at. If she noticed us - and again, in retrospect it's hard to believe she did not - she stayed quiet, and let us go about our shenanigans. 

Now I sit here, typing this out, tallying scores of how many times we've managed to get past her, to surprise her. And these are the only three times I can remember. In two decades plus of our respective lives. Three measely times, two out of which might even be hoaxes. 

I think of other things too. Her other super powers. 

Like this very recent time I was getting back to the city and she was to pick me from the station, but called me just 30 minutes ahead of time to declare her car had a flat tyre. I got horribly guilty about her being stuck on my account, and worked up about how we'd figure out a way to get the car back home, since which mechanic would be around at a night hour, and who should be called for help... By the time I got off the Shatabdi to hail an auto to the spot she mentioned her car had broken down, she was calling me to give me a new address. To some garage. Another 15 minutes later when I reached, she'd gotten the tyre fixed, was paying the bill, and we were all set. This, from a woman who had a reputation to have shied from riding a bicycyle upto fifty and two years of her life. 

I'm not even going to begin about her independent handling of the home front for the last 2 years. Four of us at different stations. And three of us forever calling her with that same opening statement. 'Yaar ek kaam tha/ problem thi...'. As my brother once pointed out to me, in the middle of a discussion of mutual confessions, she deals with three batshit crazy people. You don't even want to begin thinking about how! 

She is our know-it-all. Our does-it-all. Our fix-it-all. Even when she doesn't get something that no one else gets about us either, she's the only one we know will get it, eventually. 

Her telepathic abilities are uncanny. She's called me in the middle of crazy happy and crazy crisis moments, uninitiated, and asked me how were things.  

When I land myself in situations like a bat or a rat in the apartment - and yes, I've had BOTH those encounters - she is the only one I can literally road roll with my hysterics. Dad? He begins on ways to capture the rat and drown it. Little brother - laughs at it, and me. Of course. Mumma hears me through it. Inserts a realistic 'you have no option but to deal with it' into appropriate spots, but its never like she's not listening, and not sympathetic to my retard phobia. 

Then there're shopping times. I'm not much at it, or for it. But no matter where I am, and what I am at, I still have to call her before making a purchase that matters. 'Listen, there's this dress for that wedding I told you about. It looks like this, this, this... what do you think?' If she tells me she can't say much without seeing it, but she's sure I'll figure it, I even get mad at her. She *must* tell me, doesn't she know? 

She's the only one I can go and rib about some stupid serial playing on TV, then plop down right there and watch it with her. Give away more unsolicited opinions about how ridiculous this stuff is, and then ask her what the character in the next scene was upto. All the while patronizing, and knowing, she will never judge me back... It's so intuitive, I'm not even thinking it through like this, in the moment. In fact, I'm never thinking in the moment, with her. 

In proof of which. When she sits in the passenger seat of the car, she must navigate. It doesn't matter if I know the way. It's like my already pathetic direction sense totally tunes off. Driving back home along the most regular of routes, I will still ask her - entirely out of reflex - at like the second to last turn to our house, 'Right, next?' She'll laugh at me, and I'll tell her in my defense that it only happens when she sits in the passenger seat. Which is the truth, I swear. 

The movies. All the ones that I'm late watching. Sometimes, it feels horrible dragging her to one I know she could never care about. But she is a sport about it like just nobody else. I will usually warn her about it, as an obligation to my conscience, but I know that she knows that I know it won't make her back out. 

Gadgets. I remember how it was early on in college. All of us talking about our mothers with their new cell phones and how it was just about the green and red buttons to them. Mumma learned to text, only for me, because I told her she couldn't just call me in class. Which was half a sham, because really, how many classes did I sit for anyway, and she knew it. But she learned how to text. It's one of my favorite stories to tell. A junior colleague of hers had come over for some papers to our house and in some context her messaging skills came up and my mother told her that I had only taught her how to text 'me'. I laughed at her over it for days - I mean what do you do when you're 18 something in a generation growing up with mobile phones and your mother doesn't default understand the phone book concept? So many times in retrospect, we've laughed over it together, and one of those times I told her she was the awesomest sport about it. After all, I don't think she was laughing at me when I couldn't walk one proper step straight, or say one complete word without sounding like I had put it in a grinder first. 

It's been like that since. New phones that followed. The computer. The laptop... the car. Sometimes I remember it may not all be so obvious to her. Sometimes I don't. Mostly, we laugh about it at some later point. But always, I'm secretly proud of how quickly she picks up. 

Cooking experiments. Don't even get me started. Every new recipe gets tested on her. She doesn't always like them, or say that she does. But she is always the willing and patient guinea pig. And I never have to think... what if this sucks. It could, and she would let me know. Then we'd procede to eat it all up, and all that time I'd be thinking out loud with her about what needs to be fixed next time.

And that's really the biggest thing about her. Next time. There's always one, no matter what. 

Which is perhaps why, she is who she is, that no one else can ever be. And its not like today should be the one day to tell her, or a month later on her birthday - but a name to a day is a reminder in the rut of life, to sit back and think of all that I usually let slide by. 

Everyone says it, and everyone means it too, but it's just what everyone can't but say. And so I must too. 

...to the world's most amazing mother, mine! 

Not... 'Just Arrived'.

Learning lessons is a constant process - luckiest and rarest are the lessons we learn the happy way.  

The two lessons I have learned by way of the happy news this weekend and beyond -  

- 'That if you do your best, life will one day return the favour and do its best for you.' - UnboxedWriters

- That '...there is more enterprise in walking naked.' - W.B. Yeats

When he first took the screen by storm, the most obvious, and perhaps easiest, way to label him was as an Underdog. In my opinion of then, over a year ago, an Underdog was intended every way as a compliment. Underdogs surprise you, how veterans never can. Underdogs inspire a belief system which makes larger than life feel within reach. Underdogs are exciting. They are the game changers you never saw coming. And best of all, Underdogs never strive to prove a point. That they do prove a point is just a part of what makes them. 

Some months later, in an interview, he mentioned his opinion of being identified an Underdog. It put the matter into an alternate perspective - into his perspective - but personally I continued to believe that being an Underdog was an accomplishment bigger and better than a veteran. In my head, he was still one. And for the better. He likely didn't get how we meant it for him... 

It's funny how things in life come full circle. Much after you've let them go, forgotten about them, and far from anticipated their return. 

This weekend, when he walked away with the trophy, he made me, and so, so many others, incredibly proud fans. I'd just ended a tiresome end of term month - and the news came as if on cue. I almost did what I have done on two occasions previously - got off to blog and gush about it. But then, I just wanted to hold the feeling within. The contentment of it. I don't mean to sound immodest about this, but selfless admiration is such pure joy, it's a pity one can't feel it often enough! 

Anyway, Reema Moudgil from Unboxed Writers - who writes the most amazing odes to this amazing artist - blogged, and I was happy I'd given my impulse a pass. She cuts to the core of the matter in the most heartwarming manner. Reading her posts make me happy just thinking of how much he deserves to be told, and retold to infinity, how far beyond being just a fan-girl mascot he goes, and why. She gets what he is about - at least to that segment of the audience who are so starved for real staggering art.  

Life was looking up. I wasn't even hating of having all the grading to do this week - and that is a mini miracle if you know what I'm half like about grading. Until... I watched a certain sourpuss video last night. No references. Those who should know, know it. And I won't subject the rest of you chance or intentional readers to the turn off that it is. 

Anyway. I had my moment(s) of temper about it. By the time I hit the sack last night, I was - at the best - wry about the the whole matter. But sleeping over is its own process. When I woke up this morning, thoughts of it hadn't left me. The raised dissent of that video - inane and self conceited and fuckall as it was -  the misguided notions about him, who in the list of nominations stood so little chance, for how un-apologetically un-typecast a character and actor he is, walking away with the award. Out of no particular where, the whole Underdog business came back to me. And belatedly though, I finally rued over it. 

Which consequently brought me here to making this post. Because I think I finally get it. What he meant back in that interview, addressing being tagged as an Underdog. He isn't one. And as exciting and enigmatic as Underdogs are, I also finally get why his not being one is the only way I want to think about it now. Times change... opinions evolve. 

An Underdog is a new, unforeseen challenge on the scene. He is not. And I don't mean it with respect to all the older shows he's done. I mean it for the challenge he has always been, in being who he is. Someone ever growing in what he does, never altering in who he is. It never stops amazing me, how comfortable he is being who and how he is. How being his own first priority in his life is something about him that is humbling, not vain. It is but under a year and a half, perhaps a year really, that the whole package of "stardom" hit him square in the face. More people know him. Many more. And more and more add to that number. The recognition has been exponential. The typecasting - or threat of it - is gone. But reputation is really what has undergone transformation - and reputations are surface concerns. 

Fact is, there is no 'then and now' about him. As if, however much of a discovery he may feel to all of us 'Mohan' fans of him, he is not a discovery unto himself. And just because all of us except him are so late on the scene of realization, we should hardly pass him off for an Underdog. Just because on a platform of sworn mediocrity and overnight stars, he has toiled a long, long way, to experience and explore the journey of fitting into his shoes, he is hardly a case of 'just arrived'. If anyone, it is we, the fans, true to the nature and definition of fans, who have only arrived. 

I'm going to say it again, because one can't say it enough. He makes me such an unconditionally proud fan. He manifests belief. On screen, rendering sensibility, and doing justice to such ambiguity around his character and the story. Off screen, being not just the actor with the skill and the difference, but the persistence to stick around no matter what. It's been a long time since I gave up on the show, forget its sequel. Now and then, when I go back to it, its because someone I heed to is raving about his bit. And every one of those times, I manage to defy my own determined resistance, and watch his delivery as a standalone, be awed by it all over again, like it was the first time. He doesn't get old at it, making his art. 

And his honesty in it, at it, makes me envy him. Because it isn't something I - or anyone! - can cultivate. It's just part of being who one is, and he just is. 

Kunal Karan Kapoor. An artist arrived a long time ago. Perhaps the conception of this actor arrived when you stood telling that guard you would become an actor one day... The number of people who can boast about living up to their word can probably be counted off on the fingers of one hand, half chopped. Whatever little or less you think of yourself, and your art, or whatever rightful assessment you have of it, there is the one thing you must do. Look into the mirror when you brush teeth in the morning and tell yourself this - you are an inspiration to those whose lives you touch.

(^^ (c) AreyYaar's Gallery Update )

[This post is now referenced on Kunal Karan Kapoor's Wiki page!]

For the Heck of It!

Disclaimer: Don't expect any sane, or even semi-sane, things out of this post. It is an outcome of 3 jaded minds put together over a much needed doze of tall coffee cups, fooling around.

And because some fool - none of us want to admit to it, so we're blaming a faceless passer by - brought up the never resolved debate of "rhyming" in poetry.

Three around a round table.
High on coffee, low on sleep.
Three voices speaking at once.
One note pad. And sadly, only one pen.
A scuffle over controlling the pen.
A few pages of scribbles to come up with a "topic".
A few more pages of scribbles to please the topic.
The battle for pen continues.
And many more pages of scribbles later,
8 lines finalized.
8 lines that rhyme.
8 lines with a common theme.
And 8 lines so far from being poetic...

Nonetheless, here it goes. The fail attempt at poetic drabble of the day, by 3 people who can't seem to wrap their heads around real work that needs getting done, while dallying over coffee writing stuff that will definitely come back to haunt them.

So conspired the Goddess, unbenign

Whose favors from she fell

Her beauty - once a song divine -

None but would live to tell. 

For the beauty's transformed plight

- Should a mortal of flesh and bone -

Behold for but a tempted sight,

Would stun him into stone. 

[I think the safe name to give this... thing, above, is calling it a riddle. Consider it a riddle. Only one name fits the description. Any guesses? Hint: Think Greek legend, vanity, and curses. Answers in personal mail, if you're curious enough to guess/ask.]

ps: I want to dedicate this post to Nina Arief. Not that this post is anything half worth dedicating. But reading her comment at 4am on Monday morning cheered me up even in the face of an inevitably long week. Nina, if you come back here, and read this - thanks for putting that smile on my face.

I would dedicate it also, to the 2 people who contributed legit to the content of this post - but I doubt they'd want to own up having anything to do with... that thing written above. So yeh. Just being considerate and all.

Of Passing Presentiments...

Words more ominous could be not

Than those which unassumingly thought

In any synonym, brief or long

'What could possibly here go wrong...'

I imagine the writing of these lines could have been in reaction to the events of the last couple weeks. Some of which have been really now! unexpected - only to have gone on and happened anyway.

But it was only today. The trigger to the muse.
A harmless discussion session with a bunch of volunteers about Shakespearean literature.
What common they thought, underlay all his works.
And someone, among many juxtaposing opinions, said the words.
What could possibly go wrong? 

A presentiment to every climax.
The comic. The tragic. The dramatic. The morbid.
Because there is an ironic antithesis to the very element of this instinct.
A niggling doubt that raises its head in rhetoric.
Reason that asserts itself against intuition, in vain.
What could possibly go wrong...

Because Art Is What You'll Make Of It...!

Marking 6 months of Na Bole Tum. And 6 months of following a performer who lends soul to his performance. 

Kunal Karan Kapoor - you're truly the coming of an artist! 

ps: Also (belated) Happy Birthday to a friend who's made many days of my life over the last one year feel brighter just like that! 

---

July 9th

The episode was, as I think has been sufficiently - and unless I entirely missed some drastic forum drama - unanimously established, as Kunal Kapoor's arena! Ever since I got done watching, I've been torn between two conflicting mindsets. How exactly does one react after an episode like this one? No team of show makers can really use an actor's genius, unless he himself will live it out and give it all - and I have never known moral, ethical or professional compunctions to become the motivation for an actor to truly deliver. If Kunal still managed to give Mohan and the Monday space what he did give - he's an artist in more ways than I have personally appreciated him for! Because working on correcting and perfecting a minor quarter of a castle of cards while the rest of it sways and falls to a heap is not something everyone can do - much less an artist who is genuinely a performer of his art... The Kunal fan in me was rooting with an admiration that had no way to be subdued, no matter what my sensibilities had to contend. 

And that is brilliant. As is it ironic. It's not just about a commitment he has towards this team and the show - "Mohan" has to be dear to him in more ways obviously than any reasons that he may find to detach himself from the character! I was saying this elsewhere, and for making my case I shall say again. Indian television is perhaps one of the worst cases of typecasting at the moment. An authentic platform that seems to "honour" mediocrity as a virtue that should trump difference and thought. It doesn't mean there aren't people who are different - it only means that survival for this minority is obviously more than just an artist's struggle to exceed quality "competition". 

For some like Kunal whose lisp I assume has landed him more often than not in roles of stumbling, fumbling, goofy, stammering sidekicks - "Mohan" has obviously been a life altering opportunity. And frankly - "Mohan" is the chance he is, because Kunal himself makes it out to be so! What he had in hand was merely a case of not being typecast the way he had been previously. I remember this Rangmunch interview where Rinku Karmarkar mentioned how at the start of the show some from the team had apprehended the makers' decision to bring on a hero who lisps. And then she'd trailed into what in commonly accepted parlance is Mohan-Kunal-jaap! Something the audience is far too privy with, and as it turned out, so is the cast and crew! 

Anyway. What Kunal's made out of this opportunity is an indisputable case for himself, as an actor who can no longer be recognized for or upheld on account of a speech fault and the consequential typecasting he may have faced in the past. It's not just while "Mohan" lasts either - even if yes, it's fresh and of greatest impact while that's there - fact is, Kunal has successfully managed to free himself of being "stereotyped". Whenever the tomorrow comes for "Mohan" to wrap up, he will not - or at least should not - have to apprehend going back to the sidekick roles which were casually put together to "accommodate" him to "fill up" screen and script space with more than just the protagonists. He is no longer part of the "baggage" and it is not unlikely a tediously earned spot - which obviously runs much prior to "Mohan" happening, even if for me like many others, knowing the gem he is has started with Mohan. 

Anyway. When NBT started off, and safely upto its 100 episode mark, and some weeks into it too - what Kunal had in hand was an asset. An asset he had struck gold with and turned into the chance of a lifetime. What he currently has in hand however, is at least in part an albatross. Mohan himself may not be the distorted character of the series even yet; but Mohan does not exist in mutually exclusive space. If he was the epicenter of a brilliant slice of life plot earlier - the SuperM(oh)an whose interactions with just about any other made the other stand out too; Mohan has now become the hold it together super-glue. He seems like a blackhole of authenticity at some level - because while words like authentic, vintage and logical fall flat over most of remaining charades, Mohan holds out like he's absorbed it all in himself! There is the possible bias of Mohan being a favorite, for everyone from the makers to the audience turning to Kunal to salvage the situation from dire straits. But honestly, like I said above, I doubt any artist can deliver as Kunal has consistently been (through much low and little high of recent times) out of the sheer pressure of "expectation". Curiously enough, expectations evoke a sense of obligation in most people even with respect to vocations that have been entirely of their own choice and interest. I find it very humbling to believe as a mere fan of this artist, that he may have succumbed to neither the "expectation", not the "obligation" it brings in the wake. Somehow, even as I find myself increasingly losing out on my front as a viewer - he holds on not in faith or optimism but with a sensibility that seems like a myth to me when I look at the big picture otherwise. I want to say for myself here - and perhaps most will disagree-  that if "faith" or "optimism" was all he progressed with, the conviction would not come through to me, ever. 

But what Kunal is managing to do here - something that puts me in another level of awe for him as just an artist and no strings attached - is delving so deep in the psyche of his character that he can essay sense even when there is an immense lacking of it. If you can lie like you believe it, sometimes it will not just seem like the truth - but actually become a truth in some alter universe. Sometimes, when a lie matters that much, somehow you make it real in some realm. And Kunal does that. Contrary to what most in his place would have done, he wasn't parading around with Mohan when the latter was in a soaring place, because he figured didn't have to. He was giving it all no less back then - but it was easier, because Mohan was in a place Kunal could easily slip into. He only had to slip in and out of shoes that nearly fit him anyway - and the onus was more about handling the center stage spotlight upon himself. At this point, the center stage focus is a heavier task. If Kunal was another kind of artist, a more usual kind in Indian telly industry, I would likely in all my judgment assume he's losing little sleep over disconnect or distortion. I'd probably go as far as assuming it either didn't matter so much to him, or perhaps even eluded him partly! 

But if Kunal was any percentage superficial or shallow in his understanding of the show, of Mohan in it and where and how he stands with respect to all else and others - he could never bring conviction to this point of the "story" (or lack thereof, if I may!). At a point where I in the viewing audience find the gap to be such a gaping hole - there is no way for him to not fathom its gravity. And yet, for an actor who consistently tried to establish himself as distinct from the "Mohan" on screen, in his real life bytes - Kunal has currently stepped right into the core of the caricature that is Mohan, and is what breathes life into it like a heartbeat. 

For all my saying all along of how Mohan and Kunal are intriguingly inseparable cases - at this dire stage I take back part of my opinion. A lesser actor could have possibly carried Mohan forth in the good times, and still connected with us - we may think not, accept not, being spoiled by what Kunal has made of Mohan - but fact is so. But what a lesser actor could not have done is what Kunal does now. When a lesser artist would have found it easiest, even inevitable, to "disconnect" with the character he was portraying, Kunal has only lodged himself more firmly in place. He has reinforced - not contrived - sensibility and conviction into Mohan! He has literally submerged himself into a place where he is only Mohan, where Kunal ceases to exist. The phenomenal part of it has been not just sustaining Mohan - who has constantly seemed like the least altered on account of I can no longer say the "story" or Kunal - but he's done so in complete awareness and understanding of the inconsistencies around Mohan. At more points than not, in his scenes, Mohan somehow lends sense to those who're sharing the screen with him. Somehow, you feel a little more sympathy for Megha. Somehow, you manage to connect with what Ved and Mohan have at another level beyond contentions. Somehow, you feel empathy for Indu. Somehow (in my case) even a sheer unwanted extra like Ridhima too feels ... tolerable. 

And that I believe has been his greatest feat yet. Carrying Mohan through times of reign was more a journey of ruling. Carrying Mohan through ruins is the tricky part. One that can automatically transition into seeming like an obligation, often irrespective of the host of an albatross wanting for it to seem so or not. But somehow, Kunal has done what Mohan does best. Strike a balance. He seems to understand the discrepancy of the script in a complete manner, and not just with regard to Mohan. And he puts his understanding to root himself deeper in the character of Mohan - the key to all the tangled webs which make lesser sense each day by themselves. 

I've always been one to believe no actor however good can carry on himself the weight of a failing story. And while logically I can still not challenge that fact - Kunal seems to manifest the contrary through his art day after day. I don't feel any more kindly for what NBT has been made into. I can't put aside all the contentions that rise for me as a viewer with respect to just about every character (mostly excluding Mohan). But on days like Monday's episode, when Kunal just takes over the stage and does his thing - I find myself in such a sublime place of content (even if "sensibly rueful" of it in bits and flashes of awarness, lol!) where somehow, for a while, I can just go back to being the NBT viewer who could for some 20 odd minutes everyday descend into another world that isn't my own, but still find myself "fitting in". 

I'm not sure how long Kunal can do this. I'm not sure where and in what he finds it in himself to balance the act of understanding fallacy and infusing sensibility in it. I don't know how many days I can come back to this place feeling like I do now - in such a conflict with my own domain between contention and conviction yet compelled to be here - but everytime that I do, I will always want to come back and say what it means to me. To know there is someone on this team who is capable of the very enviable feat of striving for change in a system, by being a part of its center. To have followed an artist who will truly, like an underdog that he is, exist with it, against it, without it, for it!      

---

I'd really hoped to write something for the occasion of 6 months. And I'm glad the muse to still feel the coming of an ode for this show and my love of it remains the one piece of the jigsaw that fits right in the middle of all the groves and cuts like it's no ones place or business but his - Mohan Bhatnagar! 

ps: I think the one reason Mohan somehow manages to retain himself characteristically - apart from Kunal's part to play in that - is what Sonal Ganatra once said about being quite like Mohan. Maybe, just like for Kunal, Mohan comes so naturally to her, that she can lend him sensibility even in the middle of a lot of lesser reason. So even if this is only an acknowledgement in the postscript, I want to say what's been her part of grooming and nurturing her baby - has been the making of a wonderful journey! Here's hoping that as she continues to spin stories for her followers, her pen will emerge as the mightier force to reckon with! 

Dear 6 month old NBT - Here's toasting to a way back home...! 

A line will take us hours maybe...

Like a tune - from the cafe - now stuck,

Early that morning she'd heard

Only in hindsight she discovered,

How the passing encounter had lingered...

His face as ephemeral a memory - 

As the eternity of an instant

Before rising from a dream

- all day long, had been her waking constant...! 

The luxury of finding a ride to-and-fro long distance drives can occasionally result in a fancy. Like this one. Since the drive was approximately 2 hours, one side, I'd say I must have taken at least about 3 (hours, yes) coming up with 8 very amateur lines... erm. In my defense, the drive was pretty and very distracting. In all honesty, poetry is obviously not my thing, lol! 

Anyway. I thought this would... could... make up for an intermittent something before I did up the proper blogpost that's been pending 2 days now with unexpected work, and stuff... 

Also. To indulge the fancy of a fancy, I put together this: 

Sadly, isn't everyday anymore that I put this "muse-notebook" to any good avail, although I still faithfully carry its weight in my bag. Since there is no saying when I shall next orchestrate a tryst between paper and pencil - I figured this deserved a spot in the archives.  

ps: Open image in a new tab maybe?

pps: Title credit of William Butler Yeats

xx

 J. 

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