Thursday 22 November 2007

Happy Words

In my long association with the English language, I've developed a certain fondness for some letters of the aforementioned language. I've noticed that words with these letters tend to make me happy, much to the eternal amusement of all my friends. So after a rib tickling session of spouting some of these words today morning (in the c(o)urse of an assignment), I decided to put some of them down here so that others may not be so befuddled when i choose to go around spouting nonsense.

Now, without more ado, here goes...

Words with 2 'g's placed consecutively: There's something wonderfully lively and picturesque about words such as "giggle", "waggle", "wiggle" and "wriggle" (not to forget "piggie"). They seem to represent the actions they stand for and they roll so nicely off the tongue and are really quite pleasant to the ears.

Words with 2 'o's placed consecutively: "toodle", "doodle", "coodle", "whoosh", "swoosh"... try saying these words and you'll know what I mean when I call them happy words. Better yet try saying "waggle whoosh" together and the point will really get home.

NOTE: with due apologies to Dipti, I must also include words like "booey", "gooey" and "phooey" here.

The letter 'e': I don't think this one needs any explanation at all!!! eeeeeheeeeeeheeeee

A few more random happy words/phrases from my dictionary: "swish twish", "diddly squat" (this one is actually slang for doing nothing!!!), "pop" as in "pop goes the weasel, "plonk", "oink"!!!

Keep smiling :D

P.S: The title of this blog is another addition to the list of phrases :D

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Shared pasts?

They say a sense of past is what distinguishes the human life from an animal life. Each moment is, for a man, the sum of all past moments lived. Memories...

I found and interesting way of thinking about memories just yesterday. Two people share an experience or a moment but they do not remember or recollect it similarly. So when we think about shared experiences, are they really shared? And this is what probably makes each of us unique. That our memories are unique even if our experiences are the same. That what we choose to remember of each moment is different.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Sounds of Silence

The silence around is palpable. Some one sitting half a world away was able to sense it. But to me it is a beautiful silence. Sunny and warm in the mornings, wonderfully cold in the evenings and nights. The kind of silence in which you hear yourself best; the kind of silence that I found when I came hear initially.

Calm in the racuous laughter, serenity in the music, ease in the vivacity. The silence of a life that is comfortable, easy going, and by now familiar to all those who inhabit this little island out of nowhere.


Walking down the long winding road in a quietness that is so still that you can touch it, I can hear the blood flow in my veins, I can hear my lungs expand as I breathe the fresh, nippy air. At nights the crickets buzz much like the thoughts in my head and I can hear them clearly too.

In comparison, the noise of civilization is almost offensive, the air oh so foul. But my soul yearns for that too. To be back in the world I knew in the March of 2006. Come March 2008, I will walk out of this island, back into the waters I came from. How then will the island look from outside?

For now its serenity is as captivating as it is all demanding.

Nostalgia

Something I read that touched me very deeply... almost like seeing myself in the mirror. And so, for a second time, I will resort to quoting verbatim on this blog:

"Out of the mists of time when Josef was in high school, I see a young girl emerge; she is long limbed, beautiful; she is a virgin; and she is melancholy because she has broken off with a boy. It is her first romantic separation and it hurts her, but her pain is less strong than her amazement at discovering time; she sees it as she never saw it before:

Until then her view of time was the present moving forward and devouring the future; she either feared its swiftness (when she was awaiting something difficult) or rebelled at its slowness (when she was awaiting something fine). Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past. She see a young man disconnecting himself from her life and going away, forevermore out of her reach. Mesmerized all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia.

That feeling, that irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life there are windows now, windows opening to the rear, onto what she has experienced; from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these windows.

One day, with her new boyfriend (platonic, of course), she turns down a path in the forest near the town; it is the same path she had walked a few months earlier with her previous boyfriend (the one who, after their break, caused her to feel nostalgia for the first time), and she is moved by the coincidence. Deliberately she heads for a dilapidated chapel at a crossing of the forest paths because that was where her first boyfriend tried to kiss her. Irresistible temptation draws her to relive a bygone love. She wants the two love stories to come together, to join, to mingle, to mimic each other so that both will grow greater through their fusion.

...

These coincidences amaze her. Never does she feel so thoroughly suffused with beauty as when the nostalgia of her past love blends with the surprises of her new love. The intrusion of the previous boyfriends into the story she is currently living is to her mind not some secret infidelity; it adds further to her fondness for the man walking beside her now."

A wonderful passage from a book called Ignorance by Milan Kundera. The past is indeed powerful, as it claims me from time to time.

Monday 5 November 2007

Rocky Shores

There once stood a rock on a sea shore. The water would lap gently against its bottom, if at all, even on a violent day. Then one day the water did something strange. It hit the rock with a force that the rock had never before imagined. A few stray edges fell into the water. With time, the rock began to enjoy the waves. Especially on a warm, sunny day, the cool spray felt like the perfect counterpoint.

It began to look forward to this daily tryst with the water - it all seemed like a good game and the rock thought, "Why not have some fun while the water is in the mood for it. And after all, I am not even doing anything. It is the water that is coming to me. So why not?"

Then one day, barely a month later, the water went back to its normal self. It barely came and touched the rock. The rock stood there, bewildered, bereft, feeling alone. It had become so used to the water, its presence, its energy and vivacity that it began to miss the water. But the water seemed to have other things to do, other rocks to play with.

The rock stood there and wondered. Wondered if the water had gotten bored of the games, if the water had ever even meant anything, wondered why the water had started the game and not finished it. The rock's last question - would the water it considered a friend come back to it? Would they play together again? Would the rock get a chance to say what it wanted to?
 

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