This year, I haven't blogged much about all the movies I watched. I'm surprised by the way I perceive these days, watching, reading as a big effort.
On a new year eve, Preetham suggested the movie, Pushpa: The Rise. Pushpa, a bastard gets into smuggling of red sandal wood. With his skill and scheme, he rises to the top in his game. He manages to bring down all his rivals. Cutting all the slow motion scenes and the songs, the movie duration would've been way better. Since there's a sequel to this story, may be all the characters would be reveal to their fullest in the second movie. I'd not prefer to watch it again.
This year, I read less than ten books. I started a lot of books, read till half and couldn't finish them. Even when I could finish them, I consciously left those books at home. Next year, targeting to read more than 30.
Attending Shreya's wedding, I got a chance to meet Kashyap after a long time. Kashyap introduced me to Illoy, the masseur who ended up as professional mountain climber.
How did this sport began? I asked.
To start his sports story, he had to share his stint with drugs. "At small age, I started consuming drugs. In 9th class, I had an overdose. I dropped out of the school and did nothing. I tried my hand at farming for certain time. Later, I went back and finished the school. I have my aunt who works in railway station. She got me a ticket to Hyderabad. I came here and did nothing. One of my friend asked, Why don't you learn what I do(masseuring). He was working in a wellness centre as a masseur."
"I started learning Thai massage. At the same time, learnt Thai chi. A master from Chennai came and taught me. I started investing more time in fitness. By spending time to learn this art, I feel, I have nothing but I feel rich."
Illoy also shared how Kashyap's family was supportive in all his ventures. The reason he could achieve alot things is because of them, he shares the gratitude.
"Here, everyone are so welcoming and helpful. My sister saw and got surprised that I'm treated as family member."
Glad to spend time with you and catch up Illoy. Kashyap family is full of sweet hearts.
An old man walked into an art gallery. Ambika and I visited an art gallery to watch Amit's works. I got to know that the old man is Ramesh Thanve, famous educationist walked into the gallery. Amit introduced me as a person from Azim Premji Foundation. Ambika introduced Ramesh Thanve as an educator who worked a lot for early literacy in 1960s. Talking about 1960s and age, he revealed that he's 76. Stumped and surprised by his age, I wondered how he's very active and got energy to walk into art gallery and catch up with his friend. He mentioned a French Philosopher, Rene Descarte. 'I think therefore I am.'
With the Pandemic, I had a hard time recollecting what I was upto in 2021. Talking with Swathi, I tried recollecting what I was doing in 2020. Here are some events I could recollect.
Jan: Lavu’s Wedding. School Sports Fest.
Feb: Jishan & Jyothi’s Wedding. Career conversation with Dad
March: Holi. COVID. Lockdown. First draft submission.
April: Sketching. Painting. Read Da Vinci
May: The lockdown continued. Continued reading. COVID awareness work.
June: Office space got opened.
July: COVID awareness. Engaging teachers
Aug: Started a Psychology course
Sep: Reading. Writing.
Oct: Visited Home
Nov: Stayed at home
Dec: Returned to Sirohi. Got a new offer.
Rajiv appreciated the series. "Accha hai Empire, he suggested, "Dekhlo." to check it out. Recommended by the history person, I couldn't think much about it. I watched the first episode right away. This series was created based on Alex Rutherford's novel, The Raiders of the North. The graphics was not to the appreciable standards but, the screenplay and the characters are well written.
The history is very different from how they portrayed but, it's nice to see the series of events through characters' point of view. There's betrayal, friendship, love and greed for power. Enjoyed it.
I began 2021 with a high. Because of change in the role, I was looking forward to work in that role. Thinking of months of 2021, these got flashed.
January: Travelled to Gujarat, Kutch.
February: Visited Karnataka
March: Visited Barmer
April: Lockdown. Dyu left.
May: Dad got COVID. Later whole family got affected.
June: Last month at Sirohi
July: Relocated to Jaipur
August: Visited Uttarakhand. Andy Passed away
September: Visited Dhamtari
October: Celebrated Anjali's birthday.
November: Attended PoE. Made a lot of new friends.
December: Visited Uttarkashi, met Vikas, Visited Udupi
My poetry collection, "The Wordless Conversation," is a compilation of poems that I wrote at different instances. Here's the list of the poems and the time/people/inspiration behind it.
Ineffable beautiful soul - Poem for Amrutha
Her-- Inspired by a dream where I saw a girl whom I never saw in real.
Star!- Inspired by a person who is always out of reach yet inspires me to make things in life.
May be. May be not--- Abstract poem I wrote randomly.
Shalom-- It's an acrostic written on one of my friend. (Acrostic is a poem where all the first letters would make a meaning or name)
The wordless conversation - Abstract poem I wrote during late night randomly.
The kohl eyed Connoisseur - Abstract poem again ( No particular inspiration from people for these poems)
Her Presence - Written on one of my senior, Whom I admire a lot.
Beware of Silence - Written during a late night, enjoying the silence
Joy - Acrostic( Guess for whom I wrote :p)
Oh Dear Wave- Inspired by Sea
Four Things - No Particular inspiration
Empty Canvas- Written randomly
Love you Stupid! My Dame. - Acrostic. Written on person who inspired me to write the poem, In between the bridge which turned out to be my first novel title.
There’s no end- Written during a new year night. Couldn't understand the shallow celebrations and penned down this poem.
Deprived of the Sea- Abstract poem inspired by sea and nature.
Strayed Stay -- Cathartic Poem( Just scribbled to put out my feeling at that point of time
In between the bridge….-- Written after having a conversation with my friend. ( Will share the full poem later)
No clue. Out of blue-- Cathartic Poem during my job days.
Hear me O Night!- Cathartic Poem one of those silent nights.
Nighttide-- Cathartic Poem during one of those silent nights.
Chains of Freedom-- Cathartic Poem when I
Needs. Wants. Desires.-- Cathartic Poem when I hated the materialistic cravings around me.
St.Valentine-- Written on Valentine's day hating how people redefine love and the day nicely with their own interpretations.
Know! --Cathartic Poem when I realized the value of learning and the act of having learning mindset towards life.
Terrorism & Faith-- Wrote when I was disturbed by terrorism and violence.
Perfume of the Light-- Wrote on hope, war, and violence.
O Sea! - Inspired by Sea
Aruvi- Inspired by movie, "Aruvi"
Ella pugazhum iraivanukke-- Written for A.R.Rahman
A note of Silence-- Written while I was listening to "Jaage Hain" from Guru
To be on the road-- Cathartic poem during hitchhiking
Angry human’s Tale- Written how being negative turns our life into those four words. If one has negativity in life, their life is just those 4 words.
#Besides_the_ride- Written about hitchhiking reality.
Stories-- Summarised my life in these words.
Anjali recalled my birthday recently and wished me. I'm happy she wished me as soon as she remembered it. If I recall my friends' birthday a few days later after their birthday, I do not bother to wish them as I couldn't wish them on time. I realize that sending out the wishes is more important than wishing them only on their special day.
On Dec 14th When I visited Anjali's place. I waited till she return from school. In the course of waiting, I dozed off. Anjali woke me up soon after she got settled at home. She walked me into her room taking out a blue bag handing me over my gifts. "Try this new medium," she suggested and handed me water colors. Two brushes and a cute green Christmas tree key chain. Along with these, she wrote an acrostic for me. Pausing in between and laughing at times, she read me out what she has written. Thanks Anjali for the gift. It means a lot. I was curious of what she'd write with Y. Damn creative!
I shared everything about my birthday. Soon after a series of storytelling, we walked out to play badminton. In the deserted lanes, we played badminton discussing patriarchy, school, learning and imagining the car drives to Pune. After a quick work on Harry's videos, Anjali and I again got together to play table tennis on the dining table with the writer's digest books acting as net. I was busy slicing the ball while Anjali was playing with a rhythm and grace. Sharing some puns, we played 5 games, out of which Anjali won them all.
After nearly 3 years, I visited Akshara books again. Harry had some meeting. He dropped me mid way and I reached the book shop. Away from the hustle bustle of vehicles and honks, this place is situated inside the Journalist colony road. One can easily spot the glass walled Akshara Books. They've rearranged the shelves and it's easy to explore a lot of books. Looking through the shelves, I found a lot of Telugu poetry books and some of the titles which I'd like to try. Sasi Deshpande's novel and other books.
They were opening the new stock and I had a look, I was tempted to buy a lot of books. Maya Angelou's Why caged bird sings, other biographies and memoirs. But, I stopped myself. I couldn't stop myself buying Brene Brown's new book Atlast of Heart. Once I billed the books, the shop owner offered me books which may be helpful to our foundation. I agreed to take 15 copies of quiz books. Later, they offered me a whole set of Penguin classics for me. "Please select and take the books you like," she offered.
At the end, they offered me 2 boxes of books, while I was busy buying some more poetry books. I'm grateful to receive this many books from Akshara. "We'd feel happy, if these books can find readers," she shared her thoughts, "we feel bad to sell these books to scrap.
It's sad to see that books do not have readers. Hardly people read books and also, many buy through Amazon. I'm glad we've Akshara in the city, an individual book shop which has beautiful collections of books. I suggest everyone to pay a visit if they're in the city.
Only Bala has the skill of sleeping despite having a blaring alarm aside. Planning of a good sleep, I got all his phones beside me to stop the alarm at first ring itself. Thanks to silent option, he couldn’t answer any of his calls till 11 am in the morning. Jaya invited for a lunch at his home. Vikas is leaving to Bangalore to return after a week. Still, we gathered for the lunch. Over a lot of chicken, Keema and Biryani, Jaya, Sunny, Vikas, Bala and I shared our conversations. Talking of the time we spent in college, we could acknowledge how tough is it to gather like the old times. We talked of all the pals, wondering who’s going to get married first and who all can make to the weddings. Woah, we’re already talking about weddings and partners. Signs of adulting!
In the year of 2018, on December 8th, Shreya picked me up from my home at 4am in the morning. We drove to Bowenpally for a photo shoot of The Deccan Project. I picked a book from that cafe, Stephen Rose, Band of Brothers. On the same day, I visited Harry's place, chatted with Anjali and by night, we were at Retro Drive-in for the Bonfire nights. It was hectic & lovely night.
In the year of 2019, On December 7th, I took an early bus from Sirohi town to Ahmedabad to catch a early morning flight. On December 8th, I flew to Hyderabad and directly took a bus to Nirmal, Navya's wedding venue. By late morning, I was in Nirmal along with JBR, Chinmay anna, Pooja & Narra. In a few minutes, we were all ready to walk into the wedding venue. Pre-COVID era, we took our seats watching Navya getting hitched through the big LEDs set up at the venue. We were there but, we weren't there. In the wedding crowd, we were in a corner, enjoying in our conversations. By afternoon, we were done with the wedding. My seniors had another engagement to catch up. I had another wedding to attend. I hitchiked as the bus was tool late to start at Nirmal. With the help of various bikes, cars and a truck, finally, I landed at another wedding venue. Just met the couple before they leave for some wedding ritual. Enjoyed meeting all the juniors, Meghana, Vijay, Vineeth, Ved and all others.
In the year of 2020, even though, it's winter December, it was freaking hot in the villages of Sirohi. On December 8th, I went to a remote school visit along with Mukesh Parashar. 20 km away from the district headquarters lies a school with a single teacher. Every time, we go, we get lost. On sandy roads, asking anyone who comes across, we went along hoping to be on the right route.
Due to COVID situation, no students are attending the school. Community classes are being conducted. As there's only single teacher in the school, she can't close the school and teach children in community class. "Why are we doing this work for the sake of doing this work?" I strongly felt in my mind. I shared with Mukesh as well. We meet teachers, we try to be formal in our conversations, not persuading them to do what we want to do. They try to be formal nodding for everything we say.
We say, we've engaged teachers, teachers feel they've engaged themselves in learning conversations.
Abhishek is a theatre practitioner and I got a chance to catch up with him and talk about theatre and his thoughts on how does theatre evoke emotions and move spectator.
Watching theatre plays, I was surprised on how it evokes a response. Closely watching the characters in near distance, the experience was different from different mediums. On asking, how does this work, Abhishek mentioned, “It’s with the proximity. You’ve two lively beings at same place interacting. You are observer and slowly you take over the place the actor and think accordingly.
What’s with this proximity? There are a lot of virtual mediums creating proximity, however virtual, I thought. When we talk about proximity, we’ll never find this through virtual mediums, I realized.
When we know that proximity brings humans together, why are we running away from each other and still craving for proximity.
In a utilitarian society, Market, politics, culture, society drives the changes the aspects.
For instance, in the urban landscape there’s less proximity
in our lives. We wake up and spend half our life in traveling to workplace and at workplace. Limiting ourselves at the workplace, we've less proximity in the modern ways we work in. Proximity sabotaged by workplace effects our
family landscape. Eventually, we’re running away from the warmth. As a society,
it has a last longing effect.
I traveled to Mussoorie and Landour was the extent I went on. For the first time, I moved beyond Mussoorie and Landodur. Along with J & Miss M, I traveled to Uttarkashi, a small valley in the hills of Uttarkhand.
At night, we took a train to Dehardun from Uddam Singh Nagar and arrived at 4 am in the morning. Uttarkhand in winters can be torturous as well as cozy. I was wearing three layers and yet, I was shivering to Dehradun winters.
I’ve been to a few places in Uttarakhand but did not go beyond Landour. This is the first time, I’m traveling beyond Mussoorie. I was advised to carry warm clothing. As we travelled from Rudrapur at 10 PM, we reached Dehradun by 4 am. Despite being deprived of sleep, we freshened up and indeed played a TT game at our workplace before we began to Uttarkashi. Deprived of deep sleep, I was trying to sleep in the car whenever I get a chance. At beginning, I was heartened to see the Sahastradhara road and the familiar road to Mussoorie. J had begun sharing his memories, Woodstock buildings, the old roads, the playgrounds, I kept watching everywhere he pointed out. We discussed all the funny incidents that happened on these roads. The time when he was assisting a foreigner for research work, they went out on a bike. On a slope, the foreigner was taking a wrong turn, J jumped out of bike, looking at the young J jump out of bike, he held his feet on the ground and let the bike slip out of his hands and let it go. The bike was on free ride on a slope. Thankfully no one got hurt, that was the sight J remembers and laughs even now.
The stories were plenty and we were keen to listen to the experiences.
By the time, we were at height, we were able to soak in the sun. We stopped at a place with a nice view of Himalayas. There, we stood and enjoyed the view looking around. We found a funny point as well. Tingling Point.
Observing the trees and jungle fowls, we reached the district of Uttarkashi.
Sruthi is getting married!
After 2019, Sruthi and I couldn't meet for many reasons. We've taken our ways, staying silent, believing, we'll get back to our conversations. In December 2021, Sruthi called and I was intuitive of the happy news.
"Where are you in December?" Sruthi asked.
"Uttarkhand," I replied.
"Abhinay, I'm in Hyderabad." she mentioned and I knew that there's something happy and important news. Sruthi is getting married!
Knowing Sruthi from 2009, we managed to stay together for all these years. As Sruthi left for U.S, we still managed to meet when she returned to India. Growing together and communicating now and then about our lives is of different fun. Excited to attend Sruthi's wedding.
For some meet up, the organizers asked me, "write a few lines introducing about yourself." How will I introduce myself, I thought. Immediately I wrote these lines. I'm sure I didn't use this write up but, I love this one as I love to introduce myself in these words.
Being on the move all over my life marred many of my views. To learn is to live and to live is to learn. More than everything I identified with sound and word. Eventually, I became ‘word’ person. I’m more of a poet and a dreamer. Idealistic are my thoughts, realistic is how I try to make my life.
2021. My first movie in Jaipur theatres.
I always wanted to know about Diana but procrastinated watching the Netflix series. Thanks to friends' insistence, I watched it. I wish to see Kristen in some happy light movies rather than intense dramas.
