Dance like no one’s watching....

This isn’t only about dance, this is about everything that you held dear- an interest or a passion, but owing to lack of time, or other genuine (and not-so-genuine )constraints, have given up pursuing.

My last stage performance was on Freshers’ Night in my college when I was in 2nd year.
After that, it has only been the usual accolades at dance parties and the much talked about infatuated camera men of TV channels in college fests.
I have enthralled, I have loved and I have lived every moment of when I have danced…

Be it the confines of my hostel room, or a huge gathering.. I have been given credit for making those people dance who never stood their foot on the dance floor.

But,recently, I have been wasting my gift…

Fortunately, I have 66.8 GB space in my local disk, and I intend to utilize at least 10 GB of it to store songs. Assuming 5 MB to be the average length of one song, I can store at least (10 *1000)/ 5 = 2000 songs in my lappy.

All these boring numericals, only to prove how serious I am about shaking my leg,
(and the obvious other things)
I will be doing free -style…but God-damn-it I will do it!!

As a matter of fact, even now , while I post this, my brow is wet with perspiration..coz I have been dancing for the past one hour non-stop.

And I am feeling great. Naaah!!! AWESOME!!!!

So what are you waiting for?
Read the post na?
Now do some justice to yourself.. grab that old tennis racket, or pluck the guitar strings or simply dust your canvas and sit with your pallete
Life isn’t just to exist, it is to live.
GO! LIVE IT!!

And yeah, don’t forget the comments if this made a difference to you. :)

From the torn pages of my diary -I

This is an e-mail I wrote to Dad a long time ago...
I found it today while digging my mailbox (since I am down with fever and have some time to stay back at home from office)

It reminded me of a lot of things.. would love to share it with you...

Hi Dad!
Sangathan(Sports meet) is going on in campus..so not much classes are on .
I could have stayed home a little longer than usual.
But then I wud have missed OASIS at Pilani..and it was FAB!
Worth the 6 hrs bus journey from Inter State Bus Terminus (ISBT),Delhi.
The campus is so beautiful..no, that is not enough..beautifully calm n serene.
Students are not allowed to own bikes or cars..they can either rent or buy bicycles...this keeps the campus pollution free.

It is located in a remote area.. free of all sort of distractions. The attire n lifestyle of the students is so simple. I was sharing room with Samayitadi in Meera bhavan (with other 1200 inmates). And U wudn't believe..each building (9 blocks in meera bhavan) has only one mirror in the entrance!!
That is strange for me -for any AMITIAN or Delhiite as a matter of fact!
I had trouble with the food. And a dish of stuffed tomatoes made me doubt my own wit or the cook's..I concluded both were fools..me having expected stuffed tomatoes in the real sense of the way..the cook for having cooked it the BITSian way .

One thing that really made a dish for my eyes were the slogans on the T-shirts- these guys are really proud to be BITSians, no doubt about it. A specially popular one was- "Don't ask me who I am ..." written in the front n at the back the declaration-"...when the whole world knows I am a BITSian".

The first day on my journey to Pilani, I made friends with a guy from Hans Raj college, North campus, two girls from IP University n two guys from Arts college..till Bhiwani we were sitting seperately..then we gravitated towards each other, and soon the six of us were sitting together. We became very chirpy and were singing aloud. Specially the guy from Hans Raj had a good voice..but the conservative Hariyanwis had great trouble accepting the easy intermingling of two genders. Soon some elders complained to the conductor of our exuberance and that was an end to our having fun. If the noise was the only reason..I cud have digested it but!!! FREE MIXING!!! Ridiculous -Which century do we live in?

I got irritated when a guy of the voice of an ox (with due respect to the concerned ox) was singing a Hindi Filmi song-I think he was one of the younger chaps who had trouble with us...Thank God I was born in another part of the world-And I have parents who are far more liberal than average Indian parents .
That was the only unpleasant memory from the whole trip.
I wouldn't have believed..even after that tiresome trip..I managed to watch the whole of the dance competition.

We were a group of 8 : 4 guys n 4 gals..Ashish was a floating member. Quite a few interesting characters I got to meet. A funny chap who insisted "BHAIYA MAT KAHO NA!!"
We chatted in the lawn of Block S n the Nescafe cash counter was ringing happy.
It was not before 6 o'clock in the morning that I retired to bed.
The following day I watched FAS P(Fashion Parade). Unfotunately the costumes for Aryan College of Engineering and Khalsa college were stolen.
I couldn't help wondering if it was not a strategy of a rival team to eliminate competition.
Hans Raj really put up a good show-their theme was ZODIACS.
Then we had a JAM session.
And soon we were dancing like crazy. After a long time I enjoyed dancing in such a huge crowd.
Even discos have a very limited floorspace -dancing on grounds with a huge crowed is really crazy..especially the step that involves making human chain n synchronising.

3 other gals also joined in n another guy .. so 8+3+1=12..not a bad dozen either..
I surely got lot of compliments..but I enjoy more of trance..Punjabi numbers are not my type of leg-shaking.
The dust was getting irritating and I was the first one to bid everybody goodbye.
What a pity I cudn't stay back to play my favourite game"TRUTH OR DARE"-where u have to dare to bare everything..well in a way- good.
Coz Sam (that is whatI call Samayitadi) has strictly forbidden me to play it..seeing the things I used to do in 1st year being over spirited by the game!!!

I remembered that once when we were playing it in our campus canteen, I had passed a message to a seemingly harmless creature in a paper napkin-"Meet me at amphitheatre at 4 o'clock today -IT's URGENT" and inspite of the fact that we were playing it for quite a long time n by then everybody in the college canteen had understood we were upto no good..that guy actually came up to me and asked if it was really serious..coz he had a class to attend..
My friends laughed at him.
I felt sorry for having made him a subject of ridicule and swore not to play it again at somebody else's cost .
I opened the fold of the paper n showed him what was written inside-"SORRY-It is just a game of Truth or Dare" I really felt bad that day-and I haven't played ever since....



This..and a lot more...
Wait for the next episode of "From the torn pages of my diary"

Till Then...
Be Happy
Stay Beautiful....

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....