Honest lamentations of a lonesome boy

When I came into this world, I made a few people happy and made life difficult for many. 22 years down the line nothing's changed, only difference being I'm doing it from 9K miles away. I don't know where I belong, living a completely different life in the US compared to what I used to in India for the past 22 years. Not that this life is less exciting. In fact, I love the independence and free will that I get here. My career is taking a new direction and I am well on my way to realizing my dream of becoming a researcher. So what kinda life am I supposed to live?

I left some caring hearts and weeping souls behind when I came here, ones that I might never find here. I never thought I had the emotional stability to live a life away from my family knowing I once cried, not long before coming here, thinking about how my life would be after the clocks run out on my parents. Just one spark of that thought used to make me feel so insecure like a new born. I have to say I was born again after coming to US, a new, mature being. But am I mature afterall? I cannot balance my life between my career, family and hobbies, sometimes failing to even call my parents up in a fortnight. Am letting my family suffer blaming my inconsistencies on a naive, learning mind. Is it time to take things more seriously and atleast call my parents up regularly from now? One good thing is I have one of my best friends as my roommate here in Salt Lake City to support me, not to mention tens of other very good friends that I made during my college life who are now scattered all across the US. I have always put friends on par with if not above my family. I owe every bit of success, if any, in my academic and professional life to them for all the inspirations they provided knowingly or unknowingly. On the other hand I owe a great deal to my parents and brother for making my life joyous for 22 years and hopefully in all the years to come. I atleast get to talk to my mother quite often but I rarely speak to my dad. Much of our relationship is tacit. We don't speak a lot but we tend to understand each other very well.

A father son relationship is such an enigmatic one. I am glad I was raised by him. He taught me how to relish life in all it's beauty and wilderness. He taught safe but exciting ways to live. It is such a shame we don't get to talk to each other so often.

First song that comes to my mind thinking of father-son relationship is "Cats in the cradle" by harry chapin.

It goes like this

My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it, and as he grew
He'd say "I'm gonna be like you dad
You know I'm gonna be like you"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today
I got a lot to do", he said, "That's ok"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"

Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later, can I have them please?"

I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you"

The following stanza just sends shivers through my spine.

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

But unlike the dad in the song, my dad never put his career before his family. He cared so much for us that he had to make a lot of sacrifices in his professional life. I am happy to see he has no regrets. I am proud of him and I admire him. I know that professionally I might go on to be more successful than him with his full support but I am very skeptical if my personal life will be as successful as his. Watching my father I am not sure if I even deserve to be a father ever. I am deeply indebted to him for all my life and I cannot wish for a better guardian. He will remain my role model and continue to inspire me. He deserves a much better son and I will try to be one. love you dad.

More songs for guitaring

I am coming to realize that I have so many songs to play on the guitar, so many songs i love, that I don't find time to sit and properly play one song. It doesn't matter really, does it? I do what i love to do. But I didn't realize playing one song properly on the guitar, singing along with headphones on.. aah!!.. could bring so much joy. I have chosen Green day's "time of your life" song for this. I can see that brings smile to your face too :). what a lovely song?? Billy joe looking back at his life, the lyrics also do justice to the song. The lyrics are simple and make sense to everyone. All my happy days come rushing to my mind, strumming the guitar, singing along... 2 mins of bliss seems eternal to me during that time...

if you haven't listened to Kenny Roger's Gambler song, go do it now.. his bass voice with guitar in the background.. wow.. i can hear his song in my mind's ears now.. again the lyrics are nice. The lyrics has this vagueness but still good. A philosophical song. Lukka chuppi by A.R. Rahman (the maestro of rhythms) is one more song i love. I guess i am a keen observer of lyrics coz yet again I love the lyrics. Initially I didn't really realize ARR had this magic in his voice. I have thought he is not gifted with one of the greatest of voices but boy does he bring magic into his songs. I am not sure if his voice adds the sublime touch to his music or his music adds that divinity to his voice. The easy and common answer for this type of questions would be "both". Roobaroo is one awesome song again in the same movie.. This one is a 2 chord magic, jus A and D major chords.. maestro of rhythms proving to us time and again that he has this uncanny sense of rhythm. The strumming pattern in this is a lil tricky.. I found a link today that may be of some help. I haven't tried this yet. I am stuck in my lab now and I am so eager to go home to play this. But here you go guys.. http://manjlanata.livejournal.com/32623.html . you can try and tell me if that works well., coz i am jus a beginner. I will surely take some time to figure this out. Thats it for now folks. I can hear my soul asking for more music, AAR songs in particular, in his own voice..... from dil se :P.. there u go.. you know what song I will be listening to for coupla more hrs. See ya arnd.. happy times..

ads more sensible in India than US?

This had to be a blog in my corner... I thought commercialism originated in the west especially the US. If yes, why are the ads so stupid here? Every ad has someone talking about his/her experience with a product; a sad face before using the product and a happy face after using it.. where is creativity people? many of my favorite ads are for mentos or Mseal. Now how do they compare to an ad for stronger bones for middle aged women where the women stays put in a place and makes her dog do all the work.. she keeps smiling and the ad gets over when I was still expecting something interesting to come up. I do appreciate teh fact that it is an ad for medication and it is not intended to be funny but it can still be creative don't u agree?

Recent ad by camlin involving Rudali's too good. Saint gobain ads are good too.. I recently saw an ad on youtube for antiboredom campaign.. watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Igd-85PDg

watching some indian ads on youtube just reminded me about India. need to make some calls home. seeya

Guitaring

I was first confused to see this instrument with so many strings. Where is E? where is A? I hope this is G.. Transition from keyboard was very difficult in the beginning. Not that I knew to play keyboard well. Whatever I have learnt till date on keyboard are from only 3 sources, my pal Vishy, wikipedia and "piano for dummies". Chords made so much more sense in keyboard compared to guitar. Nonetheless guitar is such a wonderful instrument that I fell in love with it soon after. I thought I will just forget about the notes and blindly follow the tabs given online. That worked !!!! first song i am learning on the guitar is " road trippin' " by RHCP. It is such a lovely song.. I just love it.. i must have heard it atleast 100 times now.. i still love it.. now i am going on to "nothing else matter".. ofcoz.. who can miss out on this song... metallica rocked in the S&M album.

The good thing about guitar tabulature is that there are so variations available online for the same song, that too for free. You don't have to play the right tabs... play whatever suits u,.. whatever u feel is right.... whatever makes u happy.. get enslaved by this lovely instrument .. experience the thrill of figuring out the tabs yourself.. may the guitaring god bless u..

Right or Wrong??

Right or Wrong. We constantly keep assessing situations and make the right decision. What do we mean by right? the choice convenient to the majority? choice that is more consistent with existing ideas and morals? choice that is easiest to follow? different people have different ways of looking at the same thing. Something right for me may not and need not be right for you. Then why do we care if something is right or wrong. when we live in a community, it is better to lay a set of rules that will make our lives easier. Just imagine a world of chaos with completely different ideas and philosophies. When our minds can be trained to think alike y not do it to make life a little easier.

We humans try to make things simple. right or wrong. happy or sad. Have you ever imagined y humans always have emotions and thoughts that exist in pairs? So were we programmed to think this way? quite possible. Perspectives can define right and wrong. For example, your friend is in need of help. You may think he/she needs help and extend your hand. That is the right choice for you. Or you may respect the self dignity of your friend and let him get up on his own. The other person can have any of the above 2 perspectives. So the other person's perspective is important becoz that is what is gonna decide how he will receive your message. Will he feel happy or sad for not helping him? At most times, it is the mood of the person that makes these crucial decisions in life and later he/she has no chance to even realize this coz humans try to justify what we do and think we have always done the right thing. Ofcoz the situation also plays a role in increasing the likelihood of one over the other. haha.. does this mean we react in a preprogrammed fashion and given another system and environment, we would be completely different. We are not who we are? that is a topic for another blog.. lol.. Even though this "right vs wrong" system helps us a lot, we fail to realize greater things in life. We try to close arguments by calling right or wrong. Calling right or wrong makes us judge each other and fail to realize the concept of perspective. No one is ready to accept he/she is wrong and we all have the right ot feel so coz everything is right and everything is wrong in an abstract sense. Even terrorists don't feel they are fundamentally bad. They are good people who resort to violence coz they have no other choice is what they think of themselves. From my perspective it is wrong to hurt others for any reason. Does that mean what the terrorists do is wrong? I may be lucky coz the majority of the population sail with me :). So at the end of this blog i define right as "ruthless imposition of the ideas of the majority on the minority". try convincing me this is wrong :)