Bas Ek Haan Ki Guzarish….

waiting for love by Lucem Bas Ek Haan Ki Guzarish....What is it about love that makes us so stupid? So stupid that we are ready to bear the agonizing pain of being in love…

At the end of the day when the dust settled, i saw her. The profile was like unmistakably hers. Felt a  familiar pain in me, that i thought would never come back to me ever again, yet there i was feeling vulnerable and my feet sinking.

I was waiting for her at Transit food court of Forum Mall, the place busting with people. She walked towards me with a smile…

6th Feb 2009, after contemplating a lot, from morning till evening, through the daily work, i mustered the courage to pick up the phone and talk to her. She greeted me with a hello, that felt so warm and fresh, that it cooled my senses and took out the nervousness in me.We exchanged the usual, ‘How are you?”,”I’m fine” talk, then i knew it was time for me to make the purpose of my call,

I murmured, “Hi, What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing much, why?”

“Hey, if you are not too busy, would you mind meeting for lunch? Have to tell you something…”

“I’m sorry, i cant, promised that i will join my friend for shopping. But i will be done by 3, can we meet in the evening?”

“Oh that will be great. You pick the place, i’m fine with anyplace”

“No, i fixed the time, you pick the place…”, she argued..

“Ok how about Transit at Forum, 3:30 sharp”

“Ok”, she agreed.

And the call ended with the “Buh Byee’s”, from her… Wow i was so elated that, my team mates asked me why i was smiling without a reason. I didn’t had an answer for them.

She was special. The past experience, had left a deep gash in my heart and the way i looked at life. I felt it healing and no longer felt dead at heart. I felt revived and relived. Rest of the day, went by without even me realizing it. She was there in my thoughts, i didn’t know what else to do. I counted the seconds that went by, but didn’t realize them turning into minutes and minutes into hours. I was lost in her thoughts, thinking how i would ever be able to confess to her what i felt.

Before even i realized it was Saturday, 7th Feb 2009, dragged myself out of the bed, to take a peek at the time, 12:30PM. Good, i have slept well past the morning, that means that in another 3 hrs i will meet her. I had effectively reduced the heart-ache by sleeping. Had a quick snack, and made me believe that that’s gonna be my breakfast and lunch. I left home at 2:45, to be sure that i’m well ahead of time and she doesn’t have to wait for me. I was there 10 min before our fixed rendezvous time, got a nice cozy place to sit and started counting the time, with occasional glances to the entrance and the mobile awaiting her call.

I spotted her, entering the place, stood up and waved at her and caught her attention. She walked towards me with a smile and sat across the table. I had ordered my favorite Torpedo Prawns from the SeaFoods Bay outlet, (they serve real good fish ‘n chips and prawns), i slid the plate towards her. She took a bite and smiled. She was telling me some thing about the shopping that she did with her friend, smiling occasionally.

I was lost, the earring dancing to every movement of her head, the pearl pendant that went up and down with every breath of hers, constantly tucking the strand of hair that fell on her face… At the corner of her lips i found solace…

“Hello… Are you listening to what i’m telling you…” snap!!!

“Oh sorry! i didnt expect you to turn up in the first place and more over speak so much. We had hardly met more than a couple of times and …”

“Oh c’mon, you have been a cheerful person, so that gave me the comfort factor, so i’m here… Now tell me why you wanted to meet…”

To be precise, i have no idea what i was telling her. But i did speak for 20 min. The conversation was about telling her that, i’m here for a friend of mine, who was interested in her. Finally when i had beaten around the bush, so much that no more bush was left neither here nor in America, i had to tell her the truth.

“The fact is, its me. I really like you…”

I expected her to say a no, and tell me why it cant work out between me and her. But she smiled. She blushed. It felt warm there. She was silent for a minute or two, making eye contact with me occasionally. Those moments was truly unbelievable, it sank the whole hustle around us, everything was quite for those few moments, we looked at each other and smiled…

There was a bottle of water on the table, in those few minutes, she drank half of that and told me, “No one has ever made me drink so much water in so little time, i’ll give you that credit…”, i didn’t really had anything to tell her, just smiled and stared into those eyes.

I had to ask her eventually, “So what do you think…”

“I knew something of this sort was there, but was hoping that you wont say it….”, she smiled after saying this.

“I’m not asking you to take a decision now, think over it, take you time, let me know. The fact is i like you…”

“I know, but you’re JERRY…”

“What do u mean by that?”

“Nothing, you are JERRY!!! I dont know, i’m confused…”

“Look dear, you dont have to give me an answer soon, take you time and i’ll wait. Don’t worry i can take a NO for an answer. So just think and let me know …”

There was a certain relief on her face. She was still smiling. I wanted to shout, ‘Kudi hasi tho phasi…’, but it just died within me. We continued talking and enjoyed the rest of evening in each other’s company, till she parted to get back home.

Now i’m waiting… for her reply

haan, bas ek haan ki guzarish hai ….”

(pic courtesy of – Lucem @ DevianArt)

The New Look and Year 2009

Phew!!! .. Yes Phew. Its the first word that i chose to start the first post of the new year. Well technically new year was almost a month ago, still from the ‘first post of the year’ point of view, its still new year. Oh crap, that line was awfully jumbled up. Hey but i dont mind that line being like that, i dont want to read through that line again and then rephrase it and make it more vivid. No i dont want to do that.

So what happened? I took my blog to the drawing board. 25th Dec ’08 christmas eve, i decide to redesign this blog. Though the previous design was very simple and required less than 3-4 hrs to come up with, this one took nearly 4 weeks. Shit! that was like a month.

Made a sketch of it on paper, then to photoshop, then back to the layout on paper, back to photoshop. I designed one layout and when i looked at the finished one, i almost puked. Then redesigned the whole thing and here it is the new look.

On paper this is how the design looked like

18012009001 300x225 The New Look and Year 2009

Then i decided to have the sidebar to the right. The first version on Photoshop looked like this and i hated it

v 1 246x300 The New Look and Year 2009

Then i struck the right note with this one.

v 2 300x292 The New Look and Year 2009

Then it was the wrestle with stylesheets and upgrading the then current SIM3.0 to this one,which i call SIM4.0. Lets talk about the changes,

1. Latest Twitter updates on the header – i basically took the HTML badge given by twitter and put the code there.

2. Sidebar will now sport the pages with a logo for each. I disabled the widget functionality of the sidebar.

3. The Footer -This is where most of the work went into. I mutated the footer to have 3 columns. Into these columns i can add the widgets. It was quite simple infact once i figured that out.

The main footer file is – footer.php. Each of the 3 columns are again separate php file. The main footer.php calls these files like this -

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/1-footer.php'); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/2-footer.php'); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/3-footer.php'); ?>

to make each of these accept widgets, this line was added -

<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar(3) ) : else : ?>

The ‘dynamic_sidebar(3)’ made it sidebar-3 in the add widgets page. It was joy when i figured this out. I know i could have referred the WordPress manuals. But then i wont get the joy of discovering things.

4. My CSS is split into two. Why? One for all the browsers and one for IE. I officially label IE as a pain. This is what i observed. An image was to the left in Firefox, but to the right in IE. “margin-left:100px” put something in the middle for Firefox and at the page boundary in Internet Explorer

Any way after all that pain, now i have the site up with the new look and it feels GREAT!!!

Happy New Year Guys…

- xxx Jerry -

Writer’s Block : WTF !!!! Fuck it, I’m back

 Writers Block : WTF !!!! Fuck it, Im backI was there. It didn’t feel great.

I was scared, i was lost, i was wandering in the dark.

I hit the Writer’s Block.

Trust me its a damn scary place. Felt good when i reached there, mainly due to the fact that i was busy at work and i was in no way even getting time to pee. Forced into the dark the force grew weaker in me. Two days back i faced the bitter reality that i had hit the block, i shouldn’t have taken the left turn at the T-junction at the dead-end, for what joy?, i have no idea.

Goddess Wikipedia (a.k.a. Goddess Saraswathi in Hindu Mythology), describes Writer’s Block as :

Writer’s block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity.

Naah!!! Nothing of these caused my condition. I had inspiration(lots of it) and i had lots to write but i didn’t. Why? I needed a reason and today i have a reason to write. Breaking the door, like Rajani, i’m out with the reason i needed (I wish it was more like a girl that i walked out with).

20th Sept, 15th Oct and this one on the 30th of Oct, that was the frequency of my posts in the last 2 months.

Looking back i ponder what made me stop, was it the work or was it something more noir. Yes, work was one of the reasons, undeniably. 20+ hrs of working on a single day, my friends began referring me as IBM‘s bitch. Getting adjusted to the new life was one definite factor. But when i search deep it was something more than that. One that pains me still, tried shrugging it off, but couldn’t, it still lingers in the darkest thoughts. It can be described as one that is scariest for a writer. I was never credited for something that i wrote. Even my closest friends didnt acknowledge the fact that it was me. Bang! i got a “500 Internal Server Error” when i was expecting a “200 OK” with “Connection: Keep-Alive”.

Any way its all behind me, and i at least think that i’m back.

BTW my lingo has now been reduced into the results of an aftermath of heavy AS2/AS3 testing, with heavy dosage of XML and Development team that doesnt consent to bugs.

Taken this opportunity, if u would like anyone who is coming across this post to share, what made them hit writer’s block and how they did eventually overcome it….

icon smile Writers Block : WTF !!!! Fuck it, Im back