Visual vestiges of a cherished obsession!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

An endless journey through the seamless rails..

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Towards the horizon, vanishing and uniting with the ultimate..

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A delayed arrival @Trivandrum Central. An evening blend of colours above the rails..

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Ahoey! I reserved this for you, my invisible companion! The vacant face..
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Barred and unbarred!

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Aqua power – captured and un-captured!

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MEMU days – The scary double doors.

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MEMU days – Share the window – Single Window System!

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The bridge to traverse – unfinished as ever!

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What I never got bored of – the curves and the bends – drawing spirals in my head!

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This is not all about my train journeys. But this definitely is an indispensable part of my rail-days!

The obsession!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

The most recent and dominant obsession that stayed in my life has been…what? I never had an answer to that question ever, as infinte things popped up in my mind, right from sleep, to books, to food. It never seemed too sensible to just pick one as ‘the’ obsession. Looks like I just resolved that confusion of mine. I have never been so obsessed about anything else, as I am about trains now. I am just so much in love with these train journeys that I am finding reasons to travel, which fundamentally doesn’t even exist! In the past week of 5 weekdays, I was travelling up and down for 4 days! Amidst which, I had too lab exams (which obviously is irrelevant!). My point is, for no real reason, I am lingering around the railway station. And today being the last day of the wonderful week, I even wished the train delays. And yay! My journey got extended by 30 precious minutes!

Meeting newer people on every trip, wondering at some people’s sheer piss-dom (the one that pisses off people in general!), running errands, leaning across the blowing wind, arguing for the right quantity of tea, prying at the near-by passenger, making sure he’s not a rapist, and the deluge of railway sirens and track cracklings! Each train journey is a unique experience, that could always make a post of its own in the blog, everyday! Not to forget the awesomeness of infinite picture-peferct photos! A couple of those photos may weave a story of their own, all by themselves! I miss the overnight train journeys, with the wobbly berth and the gentle lullaby of the train that puts me to a peaceful sleep!

Coming soon : Have a few photos and even a video, from my numerous train days. The ones with divine solitude and unbounded-ness! They will fill the voids I left in the post.

Gone are those days!

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Which days are gone? I lost the whole thread of my thoughts, whilst I was thinking on it. And debating with my cousin, (relevance as she’s a new generation mom). The topic of discussion was vaguely about the new generation kids, their growth atmosphere, overall outlook to life, blah blah.. And I felt, “Gone are those days…of innocence in ‘my’ childhood.” Which AGAIN, in my parents’ or a preceding generation’s point of view, would be missing lot more from their childhood. So I kinda have a self realisation that it’s just recursive. So I halt my thought on this.

P.S. This photo triggered the post. Adding to it, my three year old niece’s progress report depicting her scale of consideration and compassion. What the fuck indeed!

Yet another marathon!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

All geared up for yet another 30-day blogging challenge! This time with a friend, with whom I shared all of my school-days writing passions! Like, only I’d understand what she was attempting to say to the world and vice versa. We both sucked in what we did. But funnily enough, we never got tired of trying again and again, to improve and prove to the never-pleased critic in both of us! Is it too common to find people who’d put in infinte literary activities in their New Year to-do resolutions? And actually take the pain of cross-checking with eachother, if the literary ‘resolutions’ are being kept! Well, you just found us. Its like, we’re good at almost nothing else but playing with words. The not-yet-pleased critic says, we’re not even good at this. But as ever, we aren’t tired of trying again and again. To you all, who are supposedly the ‘vivid readers’ of my blog, check out my blog-mate here. Read, comment, criticise. (Compliments are also welcome!) 🙂

Hope the co-blogger does the same, as a token of forgiveness to me for sharing the link and publicising the blog! Seriously, why would someone have a blog if there aren’t any readers!

Official flag off to the marathon!

Happy birthday to me!

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Nah, it’s nowhere close. My birthday is way over. But looking back from this precise moment, that was one of the only best thing that happened to me recently, making me want to find goodness in every other thing! It’s like this one good day, promising you to give more, making you want more. I had cake! Yay! (Doesn’t matter I shared it with the cousin, whose birthday falls the same day! That WAS the fun after all!) I had midnight birthday wishes! Again Yay! I had wake up calls. Again Yay! I even had a total surprise birthday ‘mug’ with my photo in it. Gifted my cousin-childhood_friend-buddy-my-lechu! And yay is just not enough there! And the surprise birthday card, which technically was the only one this year! And not to forget, I had two full big yummy ‘chocolat’y ‘silk’y heaven, all for myself! Besides all, I had a surprisingly relieving conversation with an old pal! She didn’t talk much. But whatever little we spoke, the spirit of it stays alive to the moment and gives me a all-new drive to life! And there I said ‘Same to you’ to devi akka when she wished me! We missed it all these years perhaps! As if it wasn’t enough, I have aniecenow, born with me, 21 years delayed!

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Birthdays have been more good to me in the past. Much better than this years’, where I was away from family and loved ones. But this one seems more special. May be coz it’s the 21th! May be coz it’s the one surviving 2012! May be it could be so many other things. But most of all, I think it was special, coz it was the only good thing, in a long time now. The most beautiful flower is the one that blooms in the face of a catastrophe! Symbolising survival! I survived. Yay!

P. S. Oh wait a min! Did I forget to mention the new Olympus 620! All thanks Vidya! Amma and appa just flipped me out this time! 🙂

Learning and unlearning!

~ Soumya ~ 2 Comments

EntSo is the definition of the New Age success mantra, according to career guidance experts and professionals from the field. You learn things, aka the academia, and then you join the company and unlearn all that you learnt. From the Company’s point of view, it may so happen that everything that you have acquired as ‘seamless’ ken, may seem outdated and statistically irrelevant to your hirer! Now, that’s the twist in the story. Your ‘x’ number of years of ‘intense’ and ‘dedicated’ education unfold as a pile of futile acquisition of multitudes of ‘knowledge’! And this is when the key roles enter the drama. The trainers, come boosting you up, cheering you up, and finally ‘groom’ you into what the companies always wanted of the ‘Human Resources’! You now turn into ‘resources’, that can yield a huge market share of profit and fortune for the company.

At what stage should you approach the companies for being trained? Now that’s more like asking, “When can I sign up for my life screwing up program?” Well, technically, I am incorrect. After all, the end goal of every aspirant student is only to succumb to some fancy job offers and secure the future!(Or so presumed!) Out of the box thinking and innovations are all welcome, at every other phase of your life, but in your career choices! No matter what you learn, what you are exceptional at, by the end of the course, grab the offer letter and gloat about it. Or else, you are making a terrible mistake in your life. How are you gonna answer, ‘Ningade collegil placementin aarum vannille?’ (Nobody came to you college for placements?), ‘Ella paperum kittkyilla alle?’ (Didn’t clear your back papers yet eh!) The concerns and queries are never ending. Forget the annoyance they may cause, but the discouragement is irredeemable. If you aren’t placed by the end of your course, you are by default, deemed something well below an average potential person. Your lack of interest totally doesn’t count, as long as the fact remains that you weren’t offered big ‘corporate jobs’!
Brush up your skills and groom yourself, and there you are, right opposite your HR interviewer, the offer letter filling the space between you two! All IT giants have climbed all the way down the ladder to help groom and uplift each one of us, to escalate the overall ‘productivity’ in us!
My college had a session scheduled. Conducted by an IT giant, venturing into New Age domains of business. And the people who came down, aka the trainers, interacted with a group of 150 IT career aspirants, or so assumed. The session was an unbearable branding of the company, its achievements, pointing out why might we prefer this company over some other company and on and on. The people who came down, gloated about their unusual activity patterns and achievement scales. At the end of the session, we were asked to fill in a feedback form. Rating the experience with the trainers, the whole impression about the session etc. That was one glad moment for me, where I could break the shell, and express my detest. I spoke my mind into the paper, ticked the most negative responses for half the questions and then casually looked around. Alas! Am I the only one again? The person next to me had polar opposite answers. It so seemed that the sheerfutilityrendered by those few hours of life wererecognizableonly to me.
What I found totally unacceptable and pointless is the way they sell the company. The promotion techniques, the strategic planning etc. are all well plotted and custom designed. Their progress has been entertained and enjoyed by us, but that just wouldn’t stop them, not even for a moment of pause. The struggle continues. To be trained under the best. To be training the best. Placing the best, and finally, being the best of all. There were never any compromises. And there’s never enough room to think beyond! And may be, that could be why there exists polar opposite attitude and perceptions amongst us!

Talking to my mom casually, I mentioned how nice it’d be to have my/our own idea of a company brewing up! And guess what she has offered to say! Well, its the same that all mothers ever would have said! Go secure my career with some company, and then ‘consider’ innovations! As if!

Over|Protected!

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Yet another train journey. Yet another set of co-passengers. Yet another episode of effortless conversation. This time with a kid, much younger than my little sis! Meaning, I have no experience talking to such small kids. So as anyone could dare, I started off the conversation with a casual smile which she returned, and we held on it. She was an easy person to talk to, despite her age. Forgot her name already, rather, I quite didn’t understand the name when she told me. A less heard unique name. But her life, in the quite two hours of acquaintance, seemed usual to me. Typical parents, asking her to do that, not do this, take this, not take that, look here, not there, sit straight, not clumsy, oh my, the list goes on! The kid was being instructed about how to place the water bottle on the holder, as upto how to adjust her legs for the co-passenger (which was me!)!! I grew embarrassed looking at the child. At her untold apprehension. And inexpressive mannerisms. She was asked to wash, she did. Eat, she did. Wash again, she did. Take hands of the window sill, she did. Fold her legs to keep it neat, she did. Holy crap! Did they just stop by giving birth to the kid or did they go upto even teaching her to breath, giving lectures on pranayama!?!

I don’t share a similar childhood. I have had a much free and liberal days of growing up, when I got to mould myself into what I genuinely cherished and totally desired! My life is my decisions. And that’s the best thing that anyone can look at onself and say, at all odds and evens! And may be, this realisation is why I so much pitied the child. The parents seemed too unaware about how protection of their has outgrown the requisites and grown into unfathomable levels of obssession and over protection! All I could was to smile at her, making her feel done-it-all-seen-it-all aura, that I earnestly cooked up!

Show off!

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“Oh yeah you’re overdoing it. Yes ofcourse that much of it was not necessary. Show off! It was so uncalled for. You really needn’t be that sincere to it. Ah come on, don’t be so nice lest they use next time too.”

A bunch of euphemistic ways of putting it right on your face, that you are showing it off a bit too much and its high time you shut it! Sometimes, people don’t understand when should they be stopping to try and stop the fruitless efforts. And also, at times, people just don’t understand when to stop the pointless comments on others’ sincere efforts. All of us, take our own turns, at both sides of the desk. You go perform, just too much, that judgement itself turns indefinite. Or you always sit back, never performing, never realising the worth of performing, discouraging every source of usefulness!

However at this particular moment of my life, I’d rather choose to believe I belong to the second class now. Iget criticised, often penalised, and overly commented upon, for things that I do out of my willful sense of virtue and morality. “Ninte karyam aalochikkumbo chiri varunnu. Nee enthina ithra involved aavunne?”!! [Its funny thinking about you. Why are you even getting so involved?] That was a senior’s comment on my over – anxiety about certain stuff from college. More and more of it is what I keep getting, from teachers, classmates, friends, loved ones! Why am I being so overly commented upon, if all that I do is over-react and over-do things!

I think here’s my point. The subtlity of mind is what we often lack, when thinking on a broader perspective of things! But the expression of the mind and its inifinite complexity demands to walk over every other hurdle.

P.S. Anyone inspired may stop the accusation episodes of ‘Enthoru showedei!’ [Show off!’]

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

I miss FRIENDS! That’s what we had named our group chat in fb. A bunch of us, who shared similar and differing thoughts, and yet who cared enough to share it with eachother. I initiated the chat, as a 3 people convo. Almost a month ago,I guess. And by now, it has grown big enough, including all 12 or so of us, the like-minded! And today,I just kicked myself out of the conversation. I miss it there! I so much want to get back to the conversation but the reason I got out for, still stays. So now, I just miss my FRIENDS and I sit so blank! Not wanting to go back, but not able to sit alone. What should I let go of now!

This is a piece of writing that someone would expect to go into their Dear Diary times. Not on a public blog, where heated discussions on global socio-economic crises or emotional crests like euphoria or hysteria or some -ria is expected! But I suppose, blogging is more about opening upto the world, rather than cooking up stuff! Writing what you feel.about what happens in your life is more important than evaluating global stands on the world’s existence.

I hate those people, who write so much, who talk so much. About human belief systems, mental struggles of the people of the world, the survival and its cost! Duh! As if, you have been through the struggle, or have ever had any belief system or even have known any question on survivlal. Writing should be genuine, about things that you know, things that you feel and experience! Be an expressive writer than just a columnist!