Timepass....

एक प्रवास............
एक प्रवास मैत्रीचा
जश्या हळुवार पावसाच्या सरींचा
ती पावसाची सर अलगद येवुन जावी
अन एक् सुंदरशी संध्याकाळ हळुच खुलुन यावी..

एक प्रवास सहवासाचा
जणु अलगद पडणार-या गारांचा
न बोलताही बरच काही सांगणारा
अन स्पर्श न करताही मनाला भिडणारा..

एक प्रवास शुन्याचा
जणु हीमालयाशी भिडण्याचा
शुन्यातुन नवे जग साकारणारा
अन नव्या निर्मितीची चाहुल देणारा..

एक प्रवास जगण्याचा
क्शणा क्शणाला माणुस घडवण्याचा
हसता हसता रडवणारा
अन रडवुन हळुच हसवणारा..

एक प्रवास प्रेमाचा
भुरभुरणार-या दोन जिवांचा
जिंकलो तर संसार मांडायचा
अन हरलो तर नवीन वाटा शोधायच्या..

एक प्रवास प्रयत-नांचा
सुख़ दुख़ातील नाजुक क्शणांचा
अखंड घडवणार-या माणुसकीचा
अन नवी उमेद देणार-या घडींचा..

एक प्रवास..
तुमच्या आमच्या आवडीचा
साठवु म्हंटले तर साठवणींचा
आठवु म्हंटले तर आठवणींचा
इथे हळुच येवुन विसावलाय..एक प्रवास

Interesting...

Something interesting i found while doing lukkhagiri on orkut...

BOYS are like apples on trees.

The best ones are at the top of the tree.

The girls don't want to reach for the good ones because the're afraid of falling and getting hurt.

Instead they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground, that aren't as good, but easy to get.

So the apples at the top think that there is something wrong with them, when in reality, they are amazing.

That is why we just have to be a little patient find the right girl.

The one who takes a chance to find the good, right apple, will come someday..


hmmm...the guy who posted this must be really patient,eh?

Disappointment -part 2

Didn't think it fair to club this along wth the previous post..Although the post still is sports related,
I think Hockey deserved its own rant..After all,Hockey has always been my first love..
Football came much later..In fact there was a time when I wondered why ppl cheered for local British clubs like ManU when instead thy shud be rooting for local INDIAN clubs,hehe
Then I saw a match between our local teams..i think it was Dempo and Salgaonkar..then some more..and i was totally put off..It wasn't until much later by the coaxing and cajoling by my Engg friends tht I started watching the Premeirship..

I will always be thankful to them for opening my eyes to this beauty..(ah!I luv being dramatic,sumtimes!)

No,seriously,I soon got totally hooked onto the action..Tht was the time when Arsenal were champs..Mourinho was yet to make an appearance at Stamford Bridge,ManU were wondering wht was going wrong wth them and Liverpool were languishing in the fourth place fight with mediocre teams..

Owen,the England star, was still rubbing shoulders with Gerrard at Anfield..It was this duo which had me spellbound in one of the matches (I dont remember the opposition but it was a premeirship match)..The precision passing by Gerrard and the anticipation by Owen which had him at the right place to hit the ball home simply had me glued to the TV set..
There was a Liverpool fan in the making i guess..Chelsea were boring even back then and Arsenal though classy were thoroughly arrogant,ManU was well ManU, i tolerate them only coz' of the English players in there.

Things change in football quite often..Owen no longer is at L'pool..nor at Real Madrid where he was wasted on the bench for a year..back in England for a stint at Newcastle..tsk tsk tsk

Gerrard on the other hand after much much speculation,has stayed at Anfield..sometimes money is not all that counts..Someone needs to tell Mr.Mourinho that...We have seen in the recent WC how Lampard and Gerrard instead of complimenting each other wud rather compete for the same position..Moaninho just wanted to have a back up player in Gerrard while Lampard got to play in the crunch matches...What an insult!!Outrageous!!Disgusts me the arrogance Chelsea display on the basis of Abrahimovich's money..Now they have gone and bought Ballack and Shevchenko..No point in going into this,enuf has been said and commented abt the money Chelsea get to throw around like litter all over the world!!

Gerrard is the pillar around which Benitez has built the current team..I cant imagine L'pool without Gerrard..tht wud be heart-breaking..
The way he fired up the team with his brave performance and gusto during their successful CL journey in 2005 was amazing!!

Yet,he is human too..and it shows..The recent bad patch for Pool will go away soon i hope..but yesterday's match was not an out and out disaster anyways..Chelsea had the home advantage and Liverpool were denied many times by the brilliant Cech..I expected them to come back wth a point atleast ..*sigh*
This season the team Rafa has put forth is quite good and has depth unlike the pevious season..but i wud be too optimistic rt now to expect the Premeirship trophy this season..

Well,atleast it was not anything like the humiliation we suffered at the hands of bitter rivals and neighbours N-everton in the derby match..
3-0!!WTF?? I lost my apetite tht day,man! Tond dakhvayla jaaga naahi rahili kunalach...

So,here we go again waiting for the next match ,hoping the Scousers will pull up their socks and bring back smile to our face.

P.S: India was rather lucky the rains saved them in the DLF tourney against Australia the other day..35/5??hahahahaa..wht a shame!!!

Disappointment all over again...

Right now I am one pissed off guy..and by pissed off..i mean REALLY pissed off!!
How much can one take yaar?
For all those of you who dont believe in letting the bad performances of the team u support take u down...GO AWAY..U wont be able to understand wht I am trying to say here..
Wait a min..when did I start bothering abt whoever reads this stupid blog of mine or not???
hahaha..

Some ppl feel humans r stupid to let a simple game which they themselves dont play bother them..
Some stupid ppl even say this out loud to the despondent fans rt after their team has lost..ending up being hit nasty by the said fans..

These ppl are missing out on a big part of human life..The part of us which feels like belonging to something exciting..And wht better & exciting way than the world of sports??
Be it the most famous and beautiful game in the world - Soccer or for the billions of crazy fans in the sub-continent,Cricket?

I dont want to dissect the psychological reasons here for which humans support a particular team in a particular sport,where they celebrate raucously ,party hard and have a blast after their team wins or they feel depressed and down,behave like there's nothing right in this world after it loses..but its true!!Even though we dont get paid for watching the game..(in fact its the other way round..fans are the base for any sport,innit?)..we involve ourselves on a personal level in the outcomes of these matches,letting it affect our next day in the real world of work and family life!

Well after that short(?) rant on the logic of fan behaviour,let me tell u what has got me so upset...
Let me start off with this month's major event..actually most ppl dont give a damn..so dunno how major this is in India,but the 2006 Hockey World Cup was a pretty successful event back in Germany which hosted it.

Q : hey,didnt Germany host the Football WC dude??
A : Yes man!And thy hosted the Hockey WC too..which they even won it this time..

In fact just read in a news article,the Germans even made a handsome profit of 135 million Euros in the process!!Pretty neat amount in hockey..
So,wht abt India?? Thy came 11th after beating South africa 1-0..
Hello!!There were only 12 teams in this WC..not 36!!And we are at the rock bottom..I was pretty confident in our abilities to gift chances to our opponents at the most inopportune moment,tht i wont have been surprised to see us finish last..

Not that I had any high hopes from our team...But their good performance in the recent Azlan Shah tourney had raised a teenee weenee bit of hope in my foolish mind of a decent standing in the WC..
U know,if we had lost playing good hockey..i wudnt feel all that bad..But the way Indian team played most of their games..where's the grace and natural attack which we cud see even 5 yrs back??Almost in all the matches,we conceded enuf goals in the last 10 mins to let the other team win!It was too frustating to watch..I cudnt even convince myself to continue seeing the rout..let alone expect my roomies to!Either way,a top half finish wudnt have beeen so bad..

England were the surprise package this time..well thy surely surprised me..LOL
I have a soft corner for them..dunno why..but its there..hmm..maybe coz' i root for their national team in Football?hehe
Holland surprised everyone too i guess..not in a good way,mind u..when u have geniouses like Teun de Nooijer and Taeke Taekema in ur team and u dominate world hockey,7th place is not for you..
Germany won a rather thrilling encounter with the Kangaroos(hockeyroos if u must)..thy were 3-1 down and came back to win it 4-3..Rather sad I missed the live action*sigh*

Wht can one really expect anyways from our team..
The lack of basic infrastructure,money,special attention to players,modern facilities,(24 astro turfs??Thts all??),politics,regionalism,nepotism ..u cant really blame them..
I have stopped counting the number of times the coach has been changed in the last few years..
The hap-hazard and autocratic way in which the IHF runs the game,its no wonder we are so pathetic..not in terms of class mind!!I still feel we have one of the best defenders in the world in Dilip Tirkey(thts the captain..ye ignorants)..but its the final results that count ,dont they??

I keep hoping for an end to India's misery everytime,not that it matters..
One can still hope,cant he?

Divination Ramblings...

No,I haven't turned a religious fellow all of a sudden...I just wanted to have a catchy Title for this post,but cudn't come up with anything else.Well,whoever said I was a creative genious,eh?hehe..

Theology is not a subject I dwell upon too much,not seriously on a personal level anyways.
I have declared myself to be an Agnostic on the Orkut profile,but that's because it was the closest which cud describe my thots abt religion and stuff,since I am not an out and out Atheist!

6th september was my birthday,tht was 5 days back.Incidentally,it was also the Ganesh Visarjan day.Talk abt an auspicious day,eh?Well,tht being the case,my mum tried to push me to go to the temple and offer my prayers since according to her such chances shudn't be spurned.
She knows my feelings abt this whole GOD thingie,but then i don't really blame her for trying.

I dont remember going to a temple and actually praying ever since I left school..One or two instances when I had to go to a friend's place 'coz he had Ganpati at his place..thts all.
Even then,I didnt really pray as such..Just imposing my presence for the sake of Conformity.
Ah, hypocrisy..more like cowardice,huh?But that was then,now my friends know how I feel,and I hope thy will spare me the ordeal!

My parents are your average religious ppl,we used to go to a temple every week on Fridays.For me and my siblings,tht was more like a family outing..I remember saying the 'Shubham Karoti' every day in the evening until I was in 7th Std.Not tht I was a religious person back then..It was more of a going thru the motions thing,ha!

Right since I was a kid,I had a very healthy apetite for reading..I could and used to read anything and everything I could lay my hands on in those days!Seeing this,my father had bought me some of those Ramayana,Mahabharata,Krishna,and other such story books for kids.
Boy,was I impressed..After that I can boast of even reading Shivlilamrut and other such puranas..I had started Dnyaneshwari too(Gosh!) but it was too boring to go on...

All these books and religious scriptures were ironically instrumental in moulding my present day philosophy.Then,it was interesting as a story,nothing GODly abt it..come on wat else do u expect from a 10 yr old kid?Later,when u start forming ur own opinions,when u start questioning things and stop believing in things blindly jsut 'coz someone says so in the name of god,I didnt find any satisfying answers..I had read a lot of material by then and not just these religious books.And I found myself laughing at the idea of believing in the existence of these deities and gods and goddesses...

Sure,there must be some supernatural existence which is the reason for the order and beauty around us..But attributing it to a whole array of 33 crore deities..I found it a bit preposterous .

The original Vedas prove that the Aryans were nature worshippers!Their chief deity was Indra,thts the rain god for ye ignorant ones!
Over the course of history,as their occupation changed and they became an agrarian economy,their deities changed too.Then came the rut in the society due to the caste system gaining ground..Here after we see the adevnt of Buddhism and Jainism.
Gautam Buddha and Mahavir were not gods..nor did they proclaim themselves to be the ONE or his Child as we see in Islam and Christianity..
But their followers made them out to be such..again the effect of passage of a lot of time.

Rituals began to be followed even in Buddhism and ppl were disillusioned.
The Aryan religion was revived by the upper caste Brahmins and that was the advent of Hinduism as we know it today..A rather clever ploy by the then caste Brahmins was the penning of these scriptures,puranas and Godification of some historic figures and battles(Ram,Krishna..its obvious guys!)..ppl began to take interest in this religion again.
This was the time of the codification of Manusmriti,too.

I dont want to comment on the rights and wrongs in this matter,after all it might have been a necessity a 1000 years back,we will never know.
What I know is that today you dont want to be bogged down by these rituals,traditions,stories and beliefs.

Some call it faith,well as long as u keep ur faith to urself,its no big deal!
I have been fortunate enuf to be born in a family,where they have never forced me to believe in something..The environment where i grew up was like any other typical middle class family in a city like Mumbai.
My dad had asked me just one question when I refused to go to a temple wth the family one day...
Did I believe in God??At tht time,I did..and to a some extent, i do even today.
But i was pretty sure even then,i dont believe in a particular god/deity and I told him so..Why shud I offer flowers,light a lamp and pray to a statue of stone or metal,when I dont think of it as God???I dont believe in Idol-worship...
He told me it was a way for people who don't bother abt such details, to base their faith on something or someone.As long as I was not an Atheist,he was fine wth it..
Well,I for one, was glad my dad understood me so well!!Can't say the same abt my mum,hehe..

Today,I am clear abt one thing.There's no need to name ur god as Rama,Krishna,Shiva,Allah or Jesus.If u want to pray,pray!But do it from ur heart.Just because u go to a temple regularly and recite some aarti or bhajan doesnt mean you have the right to tell others how they shud pray or wat they shud or shud not bliv in..
Intolerance which we see gaining so much acceptance in today's society is a direct result of these obsolete thought-processes, beliefs and rituals we follow blindly.There comes a feeling of smug superiority in oneself,leading to a thinking that all the rest are inferior to me while my way is the right way..
Some bastards even go all the way saying "My way or No way".Case in point..the Jehadis!

Frankly speaking tht is the only time when I pause to think abt god and such.Whenever there is a terror attack,one can't help but think of the fallacy in the basic principles,the basic values these ppl are brought up with.

To each his own,thts my funda..now if only, everyone starts following it too...*wink*

Pune roads...the bane of two-wheelers!

Welcome to the world of pot-holes..welcome to Pune..My dear friends or whoever is reading this post..I would sincerely advise you all and sundry to take note of this warning.
If you are planning to come to Pune in the near future,think again!
The sorry state of this city's public trasnport needs no introduction..The PMT is a joke which runs to compound the misery of the hapless Punekars!!The buses which ply are disgustingly filthy,one wonders if they ever heard of the word : Maintenance??
No wonder,people are forced to look out for other means of transport..
Bikes being readily available along wth the comfort thy bring..most people prefer them over other vehicles.
One report i read said that of the 14 lakh vehicles in Pune,abt 11 lakhs are 2-wheelers!!Beat that!!
And what has the PMC done to alleviate the problem??
Nada!Zilch..Zot..nuthing!!
Well,they have surely added to it!The first thing u will notice when u step into Pune is the bad roads here..Just like the first thing u notice when stepping in Mumbai is the slums..
Doesn't the local authority know anyhting abt First Impressions??
The station roads are so narrow and congested..while the Airport road is another pot-hole riddled story!
And every time the Monsoon arrives, the pot holes reappear wth them as though following a holy ritual..
One can literally experience the joys (?) of sitting in a boat right on Pune roads,when one travels in an auto..

Wht is most dangerous in Pune rt now?The cavalier traffic sense of the people or the bad roads?
Frankly speaking,the combination is deadly..The bike riders i have seen in Pune have their own sense of traffic rules..No one bothers to give a signal and suddenly cut lane thru in front of u to take a wrong left or right.
I will be the first person to admit Every time i get out to ride my bike,my heart beat rate goes up dramatically!As thy say in Marathi---'jeev muthit gheoon bike chalavto me'

Over the past few days,I have seen so many reports of 2-wheeler accidents here..I had half the mind to start a count of deaths..And most of these accidents take place due to negligent attitude,either of the PMC or the drivers themselves!The PMC blames the heavy rains for the pitiable condition of the roads,everyone knows they are only shielding the contractors and in turn themselves..Just the other day,i saw an article in the papers abt the excellent condition of the Paud-Mulshi road.here,read it for urself :

Smooth Paud-Mulshi road speaks against PMC

Once again we see how corruption by the civic authorities brings us one step closer to death!

Its so depressing..the age group of most of these casualties is 18-28 yrs...
One moment u have ur entire life in front of u, next u know u r lying in a hospital battling for ur life.That is,if u r lucky to survive long enuf to reach a hospital and not snuff it on the spot!

Normally, I am not too affected by death--even if its closer to home,but for some reason i don't know,these have left me a bit unnerved..Probably 'coz its the fact tht it could have been me??
Or maybe its because they were so young..I have never enjoyed watching those gory suspense and thriller flicks where a psycho goes abt killing the college youths in a party,precisely for the same reason..It made me sick!!

How long is it gonna take for the PMC to stop this horror story scripting on the Pune roads??