Sounds of Silence

"Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence"

- Simon and Garfunkel

I tried
to explain this
to a friend once.
Failed.
I wish
I had remined
Silent

----------------------------------

Fifteen more days before I finish B.Tech and leave for home.
End of four memorable years ...
Memories of adventires,
Of friendship, of love ..
Of dreams
Fulfilled and unfulfilled
Of lectures
Of ups and downs
Cold nights on the hill, And sunrise on the lake
Chirping birds on trees
And cycling roads
Food, canteen, laughter
Smiles, rhymes, spams.
End of an era.
The moments have been lived
The lessons have been learnt
The past shall remain
The future will be faced.
Good bye !

The greatest thing you'll ever learn ...

There was a boy
A very strange
Enchanted boy
They say he wandered
Very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
One magic day
He passed my way
While we spoke
Of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love and
Be loved in return"

-- Moulin Rouge

Cost of four mangoes ?

All of us at some point in our schooling life must have solved simple questions on ratio and proportion ....But how often have any of us probed into like Swami does .... An excerpt from R.K.Naryan's 'Swami and Friends'

----

Half an hour later Swaminathan sat in his father's room in a chair,
with a slate in his hand and pencil ready. Father held the arithmetic book
open and dictated: ' "Rama has ten mangoes with which he wants to earn
fifteen annas. Krishna wants only four mangoes. How much will Krishna
have to pay?"'
Swaminathan gazed and gazed at this sum, and every time he read it,
it seemed to acquire a new meaning. He had the feeling of having stepped
into a fearful maze. . . . His mouth began to water at the thought of mangoes.
He wondered what made Rama fix fifteen annas for ten mangoes. What kind
of a man was Rama? Probably he was like Sankar. Somehow one couldn't
help feeling that he must have been like Sankar, with his ten mangoes and
his iron determination to get fifteen annas. If Rama was like Sankar,
Krishna must have been like the Pea. Here Swaminathan felt an
unaccountable sympathy for Krishna.
'Have you done the sum?' father asked, looking over the newspaper he
was reading.
'Father, will you tell me if the mangoes were ripe?'
Father regarded him for a while and smothering a smile remarked: 'Do
the sum first. I will tell you whether the fruits were ripe or not, afterwards.'
Swaminathan felt utterly helpless. If only father would tell him
whether Rama was trying to sell ripe fruits or unripe ones! Of what avail
would it be to tell him afterwards? He felt strongly that the answer to this
question contained the key to the whole problem. It would be scandalous to
expect fifteen annas for ten unripe mangoes. But even if he did; it wouldn't
be unlike Rama, whom Swaminathan was steadily beginning to hate and
invest with the darkest qualities.
'Father, I cannot do the sum,' Swaminathan said, pushing away the
slate.
'What is the matter with you? You can't solve a simple problem in
Simple Proportion?'
‘We are not taught this kind of thing in our school.'
'Get the slate here. I will make you give the answer now.'
Swaminathan waited with interest for the miracle to happen. Father
studied the sum for a second and asked: 'What is the price of ten mangoes?'
Swaminathan looked over the sum to find out which part of the sum
contained an answer to this question. 'I don't know.'
'You seem to be an extraordinary idiot. Now read the sum. Come on.
How much does Rama expect for ten mangoes?'
'Fifteen annas of course,' Swaminathan thought, but how could that be
its price, just price? It was very well for Rama to expect it in his avarice. But
was it the right price? And then there was the obscure point whether the
mangoes were ripe or not. If they were ripe, fifteen annas might not be an
improbable price. If only he could get more light on this point!
‘How much does Rama want for his mangoes?'
'Fifteen annas,' replied Swaminathan without conviction.
Very good. How many mangoes does Krishna want?'
'Four.'
'What is the price of four?'
Father seemed to delight in torturing him. How could he know? How
could he know what that fool Krishna would pay?
'Look here, boy. I have half a mind to thrash you. What have you in
your head? Ten mangoes cost fifteen annas. What is the price of one? Come
on. If you don't say it—' His hand took Swaminathan's ear and gently
twisted it. Swaminathan could not open his mouth because he could not
decide whether the solution lay in the realm of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, or division. The longer he hesitated, the more violent the
twist was becoming. In the end when father was waiting with a scowl for an
answer, he received only a squeal from his son. 'I am not going to leave you
till you tell me how much a single mango costs at fifteen annas for ten.'
What was the matter with father? Swaminathan kept blinking. Where was
the urgency to know its price? Anyway, if father wanted so badly to know,
instead of harassing him, let him go to the market and find it out.
The whole brood of Ramas and Krishnas, with their endless
transactions with odd quantities of mangoes and fractions of money, were
getting disgusting.
Father admitted defeat by declaring: 'One mango costs fifteen over ten
annas. Simplify it.'
Here he was being led to the most hideous regions of arithmetic,
Fractions. 'Give me the slate, father. I will find it out.' He worked and found
at the end of fifteen minutes:
'The price of one mango is three over two annas.' He expected to be
contradicted any moment. But father said: 'Very good, simplify it further.' It
was plain sailing after that. Swaminathan announced at the end of half an
hour's agony:
'Krishna must pay six annas,' and burst into tears.

Silence of hope.

Silence of hope

But silence speaks through unheard voice
And gently plucks at my heart's chord
And strikes a note that leads me on
when the light that led so far be gone

For listen !

The rhythm of waves speak life's ups and downs
And the monsoon wind promises showers
And the dying flower gets buried in sand
To die and nurture, yet another flowering plant

And so rejuvenates the silence in me
Having spoken to the silence in thee

Silence of darkness

Silence of darkness

As I speak, there's a silence within
Like the silence hidden in the heart of the sea
In the mammoth waves, that crashes onto the rocks
Crashes on the rock and recedes back
With the silence held back within.

Like the wind that roars, eerie, by
But there 's a silence, I know not why
Like a flower that blooms and dies
And speaks not of its life

So I shall share the silence in me
With the silence that lives in thee

Yet Another attempt at blogging.

Yet another attempt at blogging.
The third one ...
The first one was at livejournal and then at yahoo ... or was it vice versa ? , I don't remember ...

Often when I am lost in my thoughts and that happens most often when I am travelling, my thoughts wanderr ...often here and often there .... on life, on nature, on poetry, on people, on culture, on love, on religion, on myself, on friends, on food. And I cherish these thoughts. They lift me up when I am depressed. They bring a new hope. A new counsel. And I feel the need of collecting the thoughts and storing them, to visit them later again ... Reminds me of Dumbledore in Harry Potter.

And then I say to myself 'Yes ! I will go back and write about this ...' , but alas it never happens ...

Lessee ! what happens this time round ....