It was a wet afternoon. The rain gods were pleased and indiscriminately blessing. I had no raincoat, nor umbrella. My school bag had no zip, and was not waterproof. I knew when I got home, that the colours of the red and blue lines on my english notebook would have run into each other on the edges. That the squares on my math notebook would be smudged. My brand new rain-shoes, worn without socks, were biting into my foot on atleast four different places that I could feel. I knew I would discover more of them, once I was warm and the numbness from the cold water receded. I stood outside the school gates, scanning the horizons rendered hazy by water droplets everywhere. The trees were lush green, greener than I remembered them from the previous afternoon. There was a muddy puddle around me, I stood on a flat stone as though it were a pedestal.
The wind became fiercer, the rain, heavier. I sought refuge inside a building, cold, for some unknown reason, nervous, and alone. It was dingy but warmer. The breeze from outside still made me freeze, but I was safer from the tirade here. At least I felt safer. Notes of a song drifted out of a window on the ground floor. I don't recall the song. I do know it was something soft, very Buddha-Bar-esque. The notes were light, warm, dry. I can't explain how, but they were.I wasn't alone anymore.
The song made me think of sandy deserts and the starry night sky. It reminded me of a lone, tired traveler in search of an unknown destination, seeking directions from nature. There were no words, just endless instrumental music, the kind that transports you elsewhere.
I heard an auto honking nearby. Ventured out and saw it was mine. Elated though I was, I felt like I was leaving a friend behind. A friend who did not yet have a name, whose name I might never discover. Looking back once towards that elusive window and its musical enchantments,I made the saner, more rational decision. I got into the warmth of the auto.
Nineteen years later, I still wish I had knocked on that window and found out what song that was...

It's that time of the year again...or rather it's past that time of the year. When you review the 365 odd days gone by, become nostalgic, and say, "Those really were the days!!!Ah, 2008..." (Or perhaps not). The season for top ten, bottom ten, middle ten and nondescript ten listings. The moment for new resolutions, which might have never been required had the older ones been adhered to. The time for parties, crackers, unmitigated rowdy-ism (no, am not a cynic through and through, just a realist. Any decent psychotherapist will give you the difference :)). Not that there is anything wrong with any of the above...people have their own way of coping with the passage of time.
One thing that changed in the past year, perhaps (it's difficult to say) is that people have begun to take public security (I hope), a bit more seriously. One thing that stubbornly remains unchanged, though, is blogger still doesn't allow me to type titles in English (reward's still open). My faith in technology takes a deeper and deeper blow with each passing day. Ah, well...
On an entirely different, unrelated and irrelevant note, here's an excerpt from one of my lectures a year or two back:
" Psychologists began to outgrow behaviourism when they discovered that there is more to the psychological framework than the simple 'stimulus-response' patterns. Behaviourism treated an individual like a vending machine- you put a quarter, you get a candy. But there are unknown variables, the 'x's, that influence human behaviour and make it much, much more complex than that. Sometime, you insert the quarter, and there is no candy...sometimes there is no quarter....and..well...you get the drift..."

What can I say...Thank God this is not my profession!
HAppy New Year!