There is so much to tell. That is the easy part. Knowing where to begin is difficult. People tell me I have changed. Primarily, according to them I have become arrogant. A snob to put it mildly. There is no longer a warmth in the way I approach people. It's as business-like as politenes would allow.

As for telling the story I will wait for inspiration to strike. For the past holds the keys to unlocking the future but you have got to get the combinations right. Even as I write this I can almost hear myself shouting, "This is a load of crap!"

Live it. If u can't do that, dream it.

Dolly said that when she was a girl she'd liked to wake up winter mornings and hear her father singing as he went about the house building fires; after he was old, after he'd died, she sometimes heard his songs in the field of Indian grass. Wind, Catherine said; and Dolly told her: But the wind is us--it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields--I've heard Papa clear as day.

- Truman Capote in the green harp

It's part of growing up, I suppose... You always have to leave something behind you.

"Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all."

-- Neil Gaiman

Darkness often reveals what light hides.

Mumbai experienced a huge power failure on May 18. For three hours the city was drowned in darkness. The shape of things to come in the near future?

In 1976 - 10 years after its opening - the Iraq Museum published a catalogue with a mission statement. It read: "The relics of the past serve as reminders of what has been before, and as links in the chain of communication between past, present and future. The society which possesses many and fine museums has a correspondingly stronger historical memory than the society without them."

I wonder how much of that museum stil survives... and I also wonder who is to blame for all the destruction...

"You've gone a million miles
How far'd you get
To that place where you can't remember
And you can't forget"

- Secret Garden, Bruce Springsteen

"Yes, there is a lust for pain, as there is a lust for adoration, and even a lust for humility."

Don't we all lust for something?

read this in The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

In recent times, his voice was an unknown commodity to those around him. Only when the need was absolute did he voice his opinion. He was an island unto himself. Few men would choose the option of being stranded on an island -- away from humanity; away from life and its many pleasures -- but he would do it willingly.

Yes, there were times when he yearned for the human touch but they were few and far inbetween. He had changed. There were things that had caused him to change thus but he preferred not to think about them.

Now, he wondered where he would eventually end up. Would life greet him once again at the end of the tunnel?

Fear of the unknown is a potent force. But often it drives man to the extremes of his ability to do things. The fear of a deadline can drive one to perform to the best of his ability and it some cases it can break him.

He wished to discover; to explore; to step out into the unknown. He wondered whether he would have the courage to do so; to step out of his comfort circle and take on life once again.

I'm so completely absorbed in my own problems that every time I see someone else suffering I come back to earth and startling reality.

The depth, if one may call it that, of my sleep is legendary.

I have been known to sleep through earthquakes, alarms, examinations and virtually anything the world could throw at me.

On September 30, 1993, an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 on Richter Scale rocked the districts of Latur and Osmanabad in the state of Maharashtra. The tremors were felt as far as Mumbai.

My family and everyone in the building were up in a jiffy and screaming for their lives. My brother shook me in a bid to wake me up. I looked up in a dazed manner, made sure that the TV did not fall down and promptly went back to sleep.

Then there was a time when my family was locked outside the house. No amount of ringing the bell and knocking the door managed to rouse me. They finally had to send in someone through the balcony to open the door from the inside.

The first question when I woke up was a simple, "How did you get in?"

We played king of the mountain out on the end
The world come chargin’ up the hill, and we were women and men
Now there’s so much that time, time and memory fade away
We got our own roads to ride and chances we gotta take
We stood side by side each one fightin’ for the other
We said until we died we’d always be blood brothers

Bruce Springsteen - Blood Brothers

Last night, I strayed back to the place I once knew as home. And it felt good.

On a dusty footpath, a child sat building castles of cigarette boxes...