Untitled

along the sun-drenched roadside*
memories bathe in shimmering gold;

i pick one, turn it around:
a coin between my fingers

you - taunting the stars one dark night,
screaming how they will never know the gleaming road,
baiting them to walk down;
cardsharp gaming the heavens.

you - who became the game
of roaring rolling stars along this road;
us - a pair of roaming dice, rolling
under reluctant stars, watchful skies.

the coin of memory flashes gold,
light spilling from my fingers -
you of yore

your rebellion on the road, imprinting itself
like the warm smell of summer on skin
three years ago -

that night along this sun-drenched road
the stars you rebelled against
rebelled against you.

---

* - This line from here

Deconstructing

Absurdity. Aquarius. Australia. ABBA. Ayn Rand. Arsenal. Alaipayudhey. Amol Palekar. Auden.

Besant Nagar. Beach. Beer. Beatles. Bhagyaraj. Badminton.

Cats. Cunning Linguist. Cruciverbalist. Cricket. Chess. Cooking. C & H. Coldplay. Cotton. Crazy Mohan. Conflicts. Contradictions. Compromises. Conversations.

Dad. Deep blue. Dumas. Dylan. Doom. Dravid. Dreamer. Deserts.

Engines. Economics. Eagles. Evanescence. Emma Thomson. Evasive. Elusive. Experiments. Escape artist.

Finding Forrester. Fall. Freedom. Ferrari. Football. Frost. Friends. Family.

God. Goli. Golmaal. Grass. Gremlins.

Happiness. Hope. Humility. Hunger. Help.

INTJ.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Jack Higgins. Jeffrey Archer. Jam.

Kerala. Kundera. Kishore Kumar. Kindness. Kites.

Lazy. Little women. Ludo. Lucid dreaming. Lucky. Linkin Park. Louis L'amour. Loyalty.

Murakami. Mourinho. Modesty Blaise. Meryl Streep. Marriage. Markets. Mentors. Maggi. Musafir.

Neruda. Norwegian Wood. North Sea.

OCD.

Paris. Purpose. Poetry. Programming. Philosophy. Photography. PGW. Pirsig. Peter O Toole. PhD. Pirate.

Quixotic. Questions. Quizzing. Queues. 0-0-0.

Roti. Rhaita. Rubik's cube. Realist. Redemption. Retreat. Renege.

SRM. SCL. Snob. Snoot. Seinfeld. Steve Waugh. Steffi Graf. Smita Patil. S & G. Sangarankoil. Sacrifices. Solitude. Sinner.

Tamil. Thirukkural. Tracy Chapman. Terry Hatcher. Top Cat. Tennis. Trees. Theories. Trial and error.

UCAL. Unforgiving. Understatements.

VVV. Vitriolic.

Writing. Wolfenstein. Winter. Warmth. Wisdom. Whimsical. Wistful.

X

Yellow. Yoghurt. Yojimbo.

Zero maintenance.

PS: I was bored.

A particularly perceptive line of dialogue from the movie The Village goes thus:

Sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others
will not know we want to do them

Yesterday, at dinner with friends from college, when we talked about a whole lot of people from back then, it was instructive to note the names that weren't taken up; names that should have popped up without any effort on anybody's part; names that eventually had to be content with hanging around the dinner table like shadows.

More importantly, it was interesting to see people walk gingerly around their memories. Which is when that dialogue came to mind.

Seven eight lay them straight

So after years of not believing in resolutions, I'm putting myself on the line here. Will review this once a month to see where I'm heading. Will expand/trim list based on progress.

Things to do -

Reading:

1. Lord of the rings
2. The wealth of nations
3. Intelligent investor
4. Genius
5. Get RSS aggregator organized

Writing:

1. Two blog posts per week
2. Review each book to increase take-away
3. One essay per month
4. One poem per month
5. One fiction piece per quarter

Thinking:

1. Work through Critical Thinking

Speaking:

Travelling:

1. See the Himalayas. Properly. (7 days?)

Sport & Fitness:

1. Continue playing Cricket during weekends
2. Continue working out

Music:

Movies:

1. Chip away at list. Least: 50. Most: All.
2. Review each movie on blog

Food:

Finance:

1. Get papers in order and file returns on time
2. Pick an index fund to invest in
3. Pick an infrastructure fund to invest in
4. Open that bloody demat account
5. Bring liquidity down to ___

Altruism:

1. Continue working with the RTI act
2. Teaching (?)

Kaizen:

1. Do what you say and say what you'll do. Commit and finish.
2. Give up coffee
3. Sleep less (6 hours?)
4. Learn to shave with a safety razor
5. Give up TV
6. Read for 2 hours everyday
7. Write a 100 words everyday
8. Work on that wordlist

Career:

1. Here, here or here.

And oh, happy new year everyone :-)