Say Chocolate

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Today was an expectedly unusual day for me. I woke up several times in the morning before finally getting out of the bed and each time woke up I tried to think of one good reason why I need to be wake. Putting myself to sleep seemed to be the best option. I went out of the house just a couple of times, finished reading a rook which had 43 pages left and started reading another book I had bought last month. Also not to forget the 40 minutes of 'A Beautiful Mind' I watched. I received no calls except the one from my mother, made no calls and read two messages including the one which was from my father intended to mock at my late mornings. These kind of expectedly unusual days is what I expect in the weeks to come. They sound not even remotely exciting.

It was fun watching all my elders playing and laughing the last Saturday when we were some good number of miles away from the city dining under the dark sky. They were playing some game for which I too was asked to participate. I refused giving no reason but smiles. It was my father who eventually won and my uncle seemed to be the happiest person for that. I was with my cousins looking at elders and their adulthood. It was peaceful and satisfying. I am the generation next to their's. The drive to that place and back home was my first experience with the car on highway streets with no lighting. It was nice but I found it a bit difficult in controlling my instincts to keep the vehicle's speed inside the limits.

Nothing makes us tired the way doing nothing makes. Nothing is more heavy than having nothing to carry. It is not easy to do things for the sake of doing them just because nothing else interests. I could have as well opened the books for the examinations that are due to start from the coming Monday but that didn't excited me. It found that very idea as dull. I knew what I wanted to do with a disbelief that there is not a way to do it. It doesn't seem to be a possibility even tomorrow or even the day after. I wonder with what motivation I am going to hit the bed today and with what reason I will pull out of it. Allah knows best.

Pretty Chocolate

Love me and the world is mine.
-David Reed

After the last Saturday's dinner with all my relatives, I have been thinking how much at times it can cost to be with the people we want to be and those we love. And as long as it only costs money it is still attainable. Though money can keep us busy and maybe even make us forget who we are, someday we all have to miss somebody and there is nothing we can do about it. Crying is not doing something; it is only crying even if it helps. Time wipes away the tears but these lunches and dinners remain forever.

When I told my father today that I tasted crab he made a face showing disgusted reactions. He even asked if I tried frog. I wanted to tell him that they don't serve frogs at Barbecue Nation but before I could tell him that my mind was busy recollecting the time I had spent today with my friends in that restaurant. We ate as much as we could and we laughed. Only that now I wish I never had to have bitter things within me for the person sitting on the left side of me when I was there. I don't regret but he continues to hurt me.

Things have now come down to what Allah wants me to get when I go to the US consulate. Of course that day doesn't decide my life, but it surely will make a lot of difference. It can bring a major set-back to my living or just simply put me into the next gear of life. Allah knows best what's good for me. He decided that I should get admissions to University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and I received admission letters from both these university within days after my application. InshAllah I will receive my I 20 in the next few days.

UTD is one of the very good universities in the United States. Though it is not a part of the Ivy League, it is respected a lot for the research work that is carried out there and the industry interface it has to offer. It is probably better than all the IITs of India. UTA is good too but not as good as UTD. Alhamdulillah things have been going very easy for me. InshAllah they will continue to be so and even better. I pray to Allah that I don't do anything which He has dislikes for.

I spent a lot of time at a book store today with my friends. Whenever I am at such places I get an urge to buy all the books there and take them home. It remains a different thing how much I read or how little I read, but I have always had this love for books and a wish to have read them all. There are apparently some good books I have read, but they don't constitute even a fraction of all the good that are there. There was a book in the shop about chocolates and love. I don't know why but I can't stop thinking about it and what that book might have to tell. But I don't wish to read it. There are better books and people around!

Chocolate Smiles

Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages.
-Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain, 1922

If maturity is what that can put us on the right path, then I wonder why so many men and women spend their whole lives in foolishness and why they never achieve maturity even when they reach old age. If maturity is such an important thing - so necessary that a person has to wait for it tell he is on his own, till he can be called an adult or till he can get married and have a family of his own - why is only age a requirement to be declared as an adult?

I see human beings killing each other, cheating each other, committing sins as if it's their duty, waging wars and killing innocent children, having pride even when they walk on a land created by Allah and wear clothes given to them by Allah; I see men hating men. Are these people mature? Even if they are millionaires, have families of their own, running big businesses or designing war-strategies? Maturity at times seems a myth. It's in the best of our interests to do what Allah asks us and the way He wants us to do it. Allah's book defines everything for us. We don't need maturity to go to heaven.

Some times I get worried about how blessed I am and how easy and perfect things have been made for me. I can never thank Allah enough. I am worried that I will get all the bounties in this world and burn in the rest of eternity. I have always asked Him for peace in both the worlds. All the good I see here is the acceptance of my prayers. Allah Himself will decide where I be once I am dead.

Death By Chocolate

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916

Imagine a box for chocolates with hardly any chocolates in it - filled with wafers, hard walnuts, black salt, some pieces of chocolate, some live pieces of coal, a few grams of black tar, a bit of confusion, a dash of disregard, a twist of excitement and the rest of the space as anger. That is what a part of my heart is right now. But I glad that I would only do what I find correct. I don't see that I have a right to be wrong but I see others who have a contention over that right. The rest of the part of course is chocolate.

I had a long and lovely time with two of my friends in the college today. We spoke, spoke and spoke. Then in the evening we went to Ohri's. It's kind of a meeting place for us - though we have many such places including college. I went to college today because I found it much better than staying home and sitting in front of some screens downloaded from the Internet. It's nice to have people around who are going to listen to us and to whom we find peace in listening.

It's many days now since I slept in the evenings. Once I spend some time on the computer, think about for a while, have some snacks and food in the evening I get fresh enough to keep myself going well till early morning. Yesterday I spelt after 3 am and while on the bed I was still wondering how much time it's going to take before the sun rises. It's ironic that I felt that because by the time I finally woke up it was 11 am. But there are bigger ironies - like the one I mentioned yesterday.

My Chocolate

It's all a game to you isn't it? You roam from town to town, bedding merchants' wives and temple maids and you think you know something about love? What about your father's love? You spat on him when you brought her onto this ship! What about the love for your country!? You'd let Troy burn for this woman!? I won't let you start a war for her.
- Hector, Troy

The evening of Sunday was all spent with friends. A blurred plan to study was made almost a week back when a friend called me. I confirmed it and asked other friends too if they could come over. We studied for a while executing some programs and left for a ride when it was all dark outside. We went past many places before having biryaani and fruit juice and returned home to finish only one more program. I could see a change in one of my friends who was beating me with silly ignorable reasons all the while. I too tried keeping it silly by letting my actions remain devoid of annoyance.

I somehow felt that I knew why he was behaving that way imagining a simulation of how I would be if I were in his place - if I were him completely, growing up the way he grew, having the kind of people he has around him, and keeping a psychology he keeps. I hoped that I was being prejudiced and I was myself - I am so happy about this always, I don't have to keep any masks and neither do I have to call anybody as a liar. Just sometime back I pondering on how a habituated liar would always think of others as liars!

Yesterday evening I was trying to run some programs when my father said that my brother, mother and he were going out for a walk. I asked him if I could join them. He was fine with it but also pointed that I had to study. I didn't like him telling that but I knew he was right and I asked him to go without me. Sometime later after I finished some time with the programs I called up my father and the first thing he asked me was to come over to Softy Den for having ice creams. He had just reached that place walking and I joined them within minutes. I had chaat and chocolate ice creams till my stomach could let in no more. We had a walk back home taking a longer route. I had my dinner after 1 am.

And that was for the first time in the four years of my undergraduate studies that I practiced programs at home. With a friend's help some days back, I had installed the .NET environment of Visual Studio 2005. Sunday the same friend had taught me a few programs. Yesterday I ran them myself and tried to perfect them. For the first time I was all happy to the reach the college with seven out of ten programs finding me comfortable. The test today went like an almost cakewalk with viva being the fastest section.

Once again when I was with all my friends, I had this particular friend irritating me. He was throwing water on me with no reason I could judge - not even prejudice caught me and gave any help - and I was just taking him as a friend who was probably trying to have some fun. Later in the evening when he came to my home with others, he continued his weirdness. And it was when he said that he seriously wanted to talk to me that I understood what he had in his mind. In fact it was the same thing I thought I had speculated on Sunday. He was aggressive and said that he wanted to talk to my mother.

He said that I will have to prove my seriousness before he does. I simply couldn't help myself from thinking how he was still not 21 years in age - I found no reason to stop laughing the way he was talking but I was clear with what was happening. Then he said that he wanted to ask my father if I had really spoken to him about something serious a few days back. I immediately started dialing my father's number but stopped it. If I had called my father, if I had let my friend talk to my father, I wouldn't have been writing all this here. Instead it could have been a story of how I made a friend and how I lost him.

I could easily recollect a day almost a year-and-a-half ago when he came to my house in the evening, all red, angry, heated up and ready to fight me. I am sure that day his heart-beat was a lot above normal and there was an uncontrollable burst of anger within him for me. He had come to ask me something direct and scold me, or perhaps even beat me up, but after some initial conversations he had calmed down. That day he had come to a friend's house to fight him for being a good friend of another person.

Today he wanted to beat me, and he did it several times, he was angry with me, frustrated, he had no belief in what I was saying and he wanted proofs for what I had done and what I feel. Later when I thought about his behavior I wondered what on earth made him think that I would be lying about my talk with my father. I couldn't believe he wanted to talk to my mother and ask her to take care of her son. I have nothing much to talk to others about why he was like that, I am feeling pathetic that he - this very friend - was saying all this. I know tomorrow will be a new day for him and he will be fresh again. For me the next day starts in 20 minutes from now when the clock shows 12 and it hardly makes any difference to me.

I have always believed that when I have to fight a person, I need to fight what he has done and not what he is. It is easy to dig out all about people, bring their lives in front of them and even make them belief what they never were, it is easy to show others what people are just by using truth in its most humble form. I can do that with myself. All I need to do is paste some already written text here and my self-defamation would be done. But that won't help anybody. It would help me instead for I know how self-vilification works the opposite. But it is always bad to criticise a person for what he is; it is better that we go for what that person does.

But what if that person is a friend? What if I know that that person has been trying to fool me all these days? What if I know that he is somehow the only one of all my friends who cannot be trusted? I am not writing all this to tackle him. I love him, he is my friend. I am just in awe of these kinds of complex human behaviors - not just of my friend but of myself too. It's interesting how we respond to changes around us, to the people around us and most importantly, the change within us. I just need to learn to carry all this with me without letting it effect my objective.

I find myself so happy always that I am clear with my objectives and I do things that are compatible and in coherence with them. There is nothing I am into right now that would effect the course I plan to take to pursue and to get to my objective and forward it. There are my ideas and my logics and I appreciate all those who have their own. I respect all those who know what they want; and even those who don't know because that is simple human behaviour. I believe that not everything can be learnt from experiencing - we can't experience everything, or by the time we get to learn from them, it is already too late. I am my best teacher and my teaching tools are the people around me and the books written by wonderful men and women and the great book given to us by Allah. I really don't have to worry about what others ask me to prove.

Drunk On Chocolate

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1945

I had this rather nostalgic feeling when I woke up at 8:30 pm today. I was perfectly fine with my happiness giving no respects to any swinging moods. I blankly turned on the computer hoping to find some friends online. I checked mail, tried to understand why MSN messenger wasn't working, removed some applications I wasn't using since long and went through the dictionary of phrasal verbs to find the right word to put between 'Drunk' and 'Chocolate' for the title of this post. I came up with 'on' though found no help in the dictionary.

Today's test was a bag full of sleep and lethargy - I saw the questions, answered all of them to the extent I had read those topics, yawned before starting it and after ending and left the room humble and satisfied. We have not yet given the test for the first internal assessments though it was conducted several times. The lecturer had told us that we could write it later but we haven't heard from her. It seems like a joke that keeps laughing at itself whenever it sees any test being conducted for the final year students. Today a friend of mine studied when we explained him all the topics on the phone just 10 minutes before the test.

I was driven to madness when I started eating chocolate at a buffet today. Things started as temptation, developed into rage as the taste was irresistible and ended up as craze. It was partly an exaggeration on my behalf that I continued to pour in more chocolate into my throat after my belly was full but my heart was never satisfied. I was high on spirits and was indirectly encouraged by friends. I kept taking in as much as I could knowing that I might never get such a chance again. It was heavy but left me asking for more. The soft cake dipped in lusciously rich hot chocolate was simply sinful. I couldn't count how much I drank on it and the number of pieces I broke on my tongue. My mouth still waters.

Favor Chocolate

I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that's love, even if it doesn't seem very exciting.
-Sylvester Stallone

The traffic during nights seems to have gone up near my house. The main road is the only route for people living around Gachibowli to reach the new airport with the outer ring-road still under construction. Contrary to what people have been telling, it is not any big task to reach the airport from here. The roads are wide and flat making things smooth. I am yet to pay a visit to the new place; all I know is from what I read and heard. I hear that things are much better that what we see in the pictures.

It was just after I crossed this orange-light lit street that my father prompted me to speak up about what I wanted to talk with him. I was somewhat nervous not knowing how he would react but once I started I relished the rest of the time I spent with him till I reached home. It was just another step into the kind of freedom my parents give me. In a way I didn't ask him anything which he could have refused, I only asked to get things advanced. He made it easy for me by not having me give explanations.

Yesterday my brother asked me if I don't have to study for the internal test which I was supposed to have today. I asked him "when do I have the test?". He replied "tomorrow". I explained "so I will study tomorrow". And so do I. I studied after I reached the college in the morning and I did the paper decently fair and satisfactorily; for me. I left the exam room in just 30 minutes getting inspired from how bravely my friend left. I was done with the answering and was waiting for somebody to make the move. I only continued and more people followed.