Sunday, February 8, 2009

In Praise Of Routine And In Glory Of Life

The skin is getting its colour back. The blood is pure red now; gallons of alcohol have drained off. Sometimes though, the eyes yearn for the watery horizon. The waves bring a million messages from the end of the world. The meanings and interpretations they represent are overwhelming. I can't wait to write about my conversations with them. But not now.

Now is the time to get out of the Goa hangover and get on with daily life, the reality, the one that sustains, the one that allows for such dreamy patches and so resolutely absorbs randomness. If it wasn't for the half an hour of Yoga and other health practices that each day of my routine life follows, I wouldn't have been able to ride the mighty horses eight days in a row with less than four hours of sleep and more than the same number of beers.

The efficiency and strengths of a disciplined life are enormous. I almost surprised myself last Monday by reporting to office half an hour earlier than usual, full of verve and all prim and proper in my formals ,very much unlike the half naked drunken wanderer in Goa just a day ago. I dig formals to death at workplace .On Fridays, it's easy to spot me in the office even if you don't know me; I would be the only man in the entire office with polished black shoes. I pay my bills at least two weeks in advance, the reason I was able to stay unexpectedly longer towards the end of the month without worrying about defaults. My car never runs out of fuel, there is always some money in my wallet, I always carry a spare pair of spects and almost always have a backup plan for even the silliest things I intend to do e.g. getting a haircut.

I shall not bore you further with all the optimizations done for making daily life easier and hence thoughts richer; some of them are heart wrenching. Let me just give an example and move on : while booking the air-tickets I always select the window seat numbered F rather than A, so that I could lean on my right hand for sleeping. Someone told me that my face looks less uglier from left side; so this helps too.

However, point is that an organised day-to-day life allows one to enjoy vacations and other deviations in better ways; but due to thinking and talking about Goa the entire last week, I am not able to get back into that rhythm of the routine. My body, mind and soul thrive on those patterns. That is the reason why I have decided to give a very short break to talking and blogging about the Goa trip and it's experiences and concentrate on other aspects for a while.

Still, I miss the lonely walks late in the nights. One can't go for a walk at two past midnight in Bangalore. I used to do that some times during my undergrad days at IIT Kharagpur. Yesterday I came across the video at this link, which left me with wonderful memories of those days. Yes, I agree that it doesn't do justice to the video of "Where the hell is Matt", but that's not the purpose anyway; just watch it for nostalgia.

The song played during the video is “Praan” by Gary Schyman, and the lyrics are from the poem "The Stream of Life" by Rabindranath Tagore. Below is the translation. One can so relate to the feelings when one stands watching the endless sea under the dark starry sky, and then the waves come, one after the other, and then the most youthful of them reaches out and slowly envelops the feet, bringing one out of numbness; heavenly is the touch of life, coming straight from the source and the infinity . Here goes the poem :

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

14 comments:

TinTin said...

yoga.. 6 packs.. discipline..optimization.. office etiquettes.. waah bhai !
saksaat kamdev ne avataar liya hai zammen par.. bas Rati ki kami hai :)

goa ke aur kisso ka intezaar rahega..

BrownPhantom said...

@Tintin,
Bhaai, thodaa jyada ho gaya :).

Unknown said...

Tito's is overrated for sure....but the female dancer when i last visited was just amazing...i would pay to see the performance again...

Anonymous said...

ha ha disciplined chap :)..the song as well as the video is simply awesome ! I always wait for your post and it leaves me with a smile :) ...keep posting .

Anonymous said...

Seems u r still caught between goa n bangalore :) The duality in personality is much better than being monotonous.. The left view theory by the way is not correct all, remember the hours of discussion on symmetry of ur face ! :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Prashant.... guess you will be there for the Heavy Metal bloggers meet... great. This is a reminder and it will be great if you can confirm again by putting a comment on http://www.indiblogger.in/bloggermeet.php?id=24 or mail me at anwin at indiblogger dot in or give me a call at 9880518019. Thanks

Arnab Majumdar said...

While I was reading this blog entry, I was amazed at how indisciplined my life was. Just for an example, I stayed up last night till 4 doing nothing, hence woke up at 12 completing my 8 hours of sleep... I missed college just 'coz I didn't feel like it, and now I'm sitting online reading other people's blogs...

I should learn a lot from all this!

Awesome post in all... blogrolling you.

Manmeet Singh said...

hey hi.
This is Manmeet, the author of the blog : "Life and Times Of MS"

I just want to thank you for adding me in your reading list at indiblogger.

Thanks man.Means a lot to me as a budding blogger.

BrownPhantom said...

Thanks guys for dropping by.

Anonymous said...

Hey thanks man....and pleasure is mine as well...catch u on 28th

said...

i read your blog.

Sheer melody said...

I thought 'Where the hell in KGP' was very well conceptualized - especially the SN Hall part - don't know if people noted the sarcasm.

BrownPhantom said...

@Sandy,
Yes, it was noted. And there were some other subtle points too; however, for non-kgpians, which is more than 99.999999 % of the world, those are just brainless copying of the original video.

Anonymous said...

u must be a diabetic by now!