The Kerr effect

This is the Chinese character for "Love"

Many of us are familiar with the Kerr effect, which is a change in the refractive index of a material in response to an electric field.

I guess..the greatest analogy could be that of Love...
Might sound weird.. but consider this...

Romantic love is a state of perpetual ( hopefully) anaesthesia where you mistake an ordinary man /woman for a Greek God/ Goddess
Your imagination imposes virtues on that person which probably don't even exist.
Every one dreams of a perfect match..and this often leads to unrealistic expectations from the other person , making us quite ignorant about the predicament, he/she might be in...

I guess it's quite redundant to say " I LOVE YOU" 100 times a day, when you are NOT making a genuine effort to save your relation.

Coz at the end , romance survives only when you have a firm ground beneath in your feet..
and if you are not sure you can handle it, or chart out your life where two ends can meet..let it go..
Sometimes...it is all you can do.

Time is the wisest counsellor... wait for it to say something.

And in the meanwhile make an effort to discover yourself..

Once you know yourself, the rest will fall in place...

Now, enough of gyaan -daan..
And before Radio City hires me to be the next the LOVE GURU... I will end here...

An excerpt

"...Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world."



Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting

It rained yesterday.....

About me..

"Day and Night" by Escher

The best way anyone ever described me was probably when he said -
" You are like an Escher's picture...
His paintings are also like Picasso's .
They live in the beholder's mind .... offers many possibilities to the observers ....yet, none is right, none is wrong ! "

365 days of blogging.. how do you count a year?
In drops of tears?
In lengths of smile?
In racks of newspapers?
In cups of coffee?
In moments of breathlessness?
In breaths that were momentless?

365 days since I started this space..when I embarked on a journey to discover myself...
**********************************************************************************

Or maybe even before that
I have been scribbling in bits of paper ever since I can remember.

And once, (in Standard I , I guess, when I had just begin to learn new words and my world suddenly held more meaning..) I had this creative surge in my Dad's official notepad and wrote a poem named KING KONG- which was about a crazy kingdom (didn't know then that a movie by the name existed- or would have had copyright issues ), and Mom decided it's time I had a diary of my own.

I have been maintaining one ever since.

There was a wall in my room totally sacrificed to the cause of my sudden fits of creativity. I called it my graffiti wall..and was probably the most favourite part of my room.
From undiscovered species of flowers to genetically engineered animals and beautiful and not-so-beautiful figures of women....it had everything. Clouds, sky, sun,mountains, trees, birds, butterflies...

But most of all, it had my name written in different fonts.

I had this idea from Robinson Crusoe that I will keep a track of days by marking it on a pillar. So, on a particular date of the year I religiously marked how tall I had grown .

22 years have passed since I have been acknowledged to exist.

The first cry that my Mom heard when I was born, the joy my Dad had when he held me in his arms for the first time ..all my friends and well wishers who have loved for my smile, my love for life, my craziness or absolute stupidity at times.

I want to thank each one of them for helping me evolve to be the person I am today.
Coz had I been given a choice- I wouldn't have wanted to be anyone else ..other than Aparna Kar.

Life's greatest gifts..

I don't like commercializing emotions..and there are very few people in this world for whom I have brought gifts..and only because they have been really special
It's Mothers' Day on 14th ( 2nd Sunday of May)..And I decided to give Mom something other than my usual gift of perfumes (they are her favourites)
I always wanted to give her one of those coffee mugs ....
I know she has plenty of them already..but I wanted to give her one myself with "MOM" written on it..
Nothing much..but something to remind her of me..everyday..

I like personalising gifts , even if they are bought from the nearest Archies/Hallmark outlet...

So, I scribbled crazy messages inside the card.. and put on three different shades of lipsticks and left my marks on a white page ( I always try to find a card which has a white page to write my messages-if I can't make myself one...)

Now let me tell about a few of the best gifts I have got myself...

#1 is of course, the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Dad.

Not only because it has remained my favourite for years now...but the way he presented it..was awesome..

Dad was supposed to go to Mussourie for some days for a conference ..and he asked me what would I want when he's back..I asked for a dry maple leaf if he could get me one...

He couldn't get a maple leaf..but he pasted a beautiful dry leaf on the first page of the book he had bought for me there..and typed a message in a font so similar to the one used inside that I almost thought..it was bought that way...

There is this story"The Gift of the Magi" ( pronounce: Maj-eye) by O.Henry..where a lovely young couple sacrifice their most valuable possesions, to be able to afford Christmas gifts for the other...
The girl sells her beautiful long hair to a wig maker, to buy a platinum chain for a gold watch the boy inherited from his dead father. The boy sells his watch to buy, pure tortoise shell hair combs with jewelled rims to adorn her tresses.


True... real gifts are those which no one can duplicate....

Change

Bro is leaving tonight.
But I don't think I'll go to the airport to see him off.
I don't like saying goodbyes...am bad at them...

Today is the last day I'll be seeing him at home after office
It is feeling strange.
A certain emptiness has crept in.

And a pang of guilt.
In recent months I have been so involved with myself..I don't think I have given the best I could ...


When I wonder what is it that is choking me from inside..what is it that is making me so uncomfortable... other than the evident feeling that the shoulder I could lean on and cry everytime I needed to..and everytime I didn't -will be miles away from me.

I will remember everything about him so fondly...

His inventing lyrics while singing Hindi film songs and if I pointed it out , his reasoning with me.."It's Remix Sis!!"
His literally pulling my legs if I talked to someone for more than 10 mins over the phone...asking me to hang up and talk to him instead.

His guarding me like I were the most precious jewel on earth...

His strange ways of showing that he cared.

Sharing that last ice cream cone in summer...
Watching crappy movies with friends..and laughing for having wasted time and money.

His explaining Quantitative Aptitude fundas..my taking his vocab tests before his GRE

I know these days are never gonna be back..

My greatest asset...

Ok here it is..
It is about a "he"
Biological age 26 years.
Mental age...sometimes 8..sometimes 5...
Goes by the name Anirban Kar...and I call him- Bro

Last Friday, he gave a long pending treat to our friends
When he got his GRE score, he said.."Let me get a good TOEFL score"
Then it was "CMU admit"
Then "Let me clear the Visa interview"
And then"Now I have to leave station to give a lecture on MISM in my college"


LOL....Finally when it was time for him to leave for Pittsburgh..(actually just 3 more days to go...)-one of my friends threatened.."Dada!!! Treat na diley bhalo hobey na kintu!!! (Won't b e good for u if u don't treat us)

It was initially agreed to be a quiet dinner at Geoffrey's
But then we (6 of our closest friends) got in a mood to shake a leg so we decided to go to a near-by pub

Around closing time I dedicated two songs to him and while I was making the announcement about how wonderful a brother he has been through all these years...taking my tantrums.. giving me a shoulder during the worst phase of my life..I could feel a lump in my throat .
I asked him to dance with me with the rest of the crowd in the house cheering for us... just the two of us on the floor

At the end I got one of "those" ideas..and I made him stand on a chair and dance in the middle of the dance floor.
My excuse-" I won't be with you on your birthday next year..so let's celebrate now"

That is Anirban Kar for you..but for me- he's simply the world's greatest bro.

As a child, he had this habit to sing -"Phoolon ka taaron ka sabka kehna hai..ek hazaar mein meri behna hai" and throw flower petals on me.. (sometime hibiscus petals in absence of rose:D )

But I used to retort "Only in ek hazaar:( "
And he would correct himself..ek lakh, arab..kharab..
Both of us didn't know counting more than that..so I was happy and used to giggle for being valued such.

Generation Karma Cola

There is this Allen Solly model lying in front of me
(umm..in a magazine page I mean)
But he doesn’t really titillate my imagination.
Clad in a red Salsa shirt and white trousers , he is also wearing a smile you put on when you know the whole world is watching you and thinking “Wow!! Gorgeous!!”

But that’s that. My attention turns to the contents’ page .The cover story is at page 34, on the pressures and pleasures of young workaholics.

Just two pages away, is an Allen Solly inner wear ad with an interesting tagline. "Solly Inside. Wear one and be yourself" Solly is known for it’s work clothes. I wonder if the guy in his bare necessities is actually posing in his office loo.

Hmm…
I try to navigate to page 34..and see “muscular arches that gives an edge of distinction” Aah!!
We are talking about a Toyota Camry. Beyond beauty there’s bliss.

Now you know, which one of the three I would like to own if given a choice…..

Oh! Btw, time to get back to reading articles.

Ads always distract me..as it does everyone else.
But for a different reason altogether.
Some day I will be penning down my own taglines…

Someday….