MoonLit Night!

I wasnt going to write anything today, has been a bad rough, tough and ruthless day today! I walked today! The reason I am emphasizing that is coz i walked 15 miles. To some of you, not a big deal, for a guy like me who loves to laze(rem' new words...!) around. Am not the walking types. Well, the research I am doing involves me going in search of these senior care centers. The moment i see one, it seems as if I found a treasure! Well, the search and story behind me looking for these centers is another story! So, here it goes, its a tiring day, ended with a meeting with my mentor, Resting on my bed in my room is my defination of treasure! My bed's placed in such a way that when i sleep and rest my head on my pillow, my eyes can gaze directly out of the window, high above. I stay near to JFK and LGA. I mean I am somewhere in the middle of these two major airports of NYC. How do I know I am in the middle of two? I pay equal $s if I take a cab either way. So, am in the center of two. Well, my point is the view outside the window. It was probably the first time when I came to NYC that i saw more than 1 airplane in air at the same time close to each other. It was in my later days here that my sight was re-inforced with a max 7 flights at a time. Well, back home in India, my home is a three storeyed home, with a hugee terrace. Its my fav past time to sleep in the terrace when I am at home. The height prevents the mosquitoes and Gujarat summer isnt felt much at that height with a cool breeze flowing by....Baroda(my native city) is one of those cities aspiring to be Mumbai(Mumbai is aspiring to be Shanghai), we are still aspiring to be mumbai. The thing is that an aspiring city like mine, is still pollution free, i would say so coz i can clearly see stars up in the sky when i sleep at the terrace, whereas in Mumbai its an impossible sight, you got to be lucky enuf to see a constellation in Mumbai. Clear skies is an equivalent breaking news as is a solar/lunar eclipse in such mega cities.

The nights are cool, starry, moonlit,breezy,fresh and rejuvinating. I am talking about Baroda, not Mumbai! Well, nothing personally against mumbai, but couldnt help comparing. So, getting back to where we began from, the place where i am writing this from....NYC. I made sure that when i sleep, i see stars here too, just like in Baroda. My house(not home) here is a kind of a Duplex, needless to say, i stay at the top floor. Well, my purpose of star gazing is solved surely, its just that the stars here in NYC flicker! They flicker a LOT, and sometimes make noises! Not much but kindda VRoooooooming and ZZZZOooming noises, the ones that airplanes make. But, its Okay. I am living in a city, people die to visit! So what if i lost my stars to airplanes! :)

So, what motivated my tiring soul to write this piece today?? "Guzarish"....a creation of A.R.Rahman, a ha-lf moonlit night, some regular ambulances tooin toooing and fire brigades running back to touch base, made me feel a lot better. The busy people and busy lives of this city make me realise, I am not the only one who had a tiring day, people are Still busy!!

This blog goes out to all those people waiting to get to thier beds, switch on their AC's, jump in the blankies, and snuggly fit in the mattresses and slumber to sleep with all the alarms broken and no one to wake them up until they want to!

A message to the reader,'' Don't stop that yawn, let it in, and go to sleeeep....ZZZZzzz.....''.

Adios,

JRx

At the touch of a Flower....

One Of my creations, on a dry dull day, I sat down with my box of Crayola crayons, thought of an image, its a painful thing to do with an impatient guy like me, to actually sit down for hours, draw and color it up.....that too when I was drawing today after almost a decade!! Not a Hussain, but used to have a feather touch to his skills....well, this is certainly not one of my best ones, but when you are getting back to it after almost 9 years, things do not fall as they used to. Its been years of making tablets, carrying out synthesis in medichem labs, killing frogs and splitting em wide open, making presentations and websites and here it is getting back to one of the most primitive skills of Homo sapiens....man painted from the stone age....well....this is just a tribute to my stone-aged skills!!

When things get a lil' teethy....

What constitutes humor, i mean why do we actually smile, burst out in lafter, tears in eyes, werent the tears programmed to be secreted only when we were sad, why is that our tummy starts aching, mouths wide open as if its an exhibit to the world for modern day architectural technology being applied to teeth. Its during these so called 'events' (lafing) when the black sticky snakes of our mouth piece come alive. This blog is thus dedicated to a normal man's visit to his/her dentist.

Teeth, 32 of them, well dont be upset if your count comes to a lesser number, nowadays, its a regular phenomenon with most of us.. Yes, cement, ceramic, and all those expensive metal filled cavities count too. Visit to a dentist now a days is as expensive as visitng a jewellery store. I put it as a 'Dentist Crown affair'(based on pierce brosnon' Thomas crown affair)...Well as i see, not much is different, a jewellery store sells gold and silver and likes, a dentist too sells gold and silver and likes, the stuff from jewellery store goes somewhere on our bodies to be flaunted, and so does the stuff from the dentist, flaunted with every smile, in a way it's good, u end up smiling more, afterall you paid for that 'golden tooth' why not smile and flaunt it!!

I remember when i had to make a career choice after my 12th grade(HSC examz) , I was in a dilemma whether to go for Pharmacy or Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS), it was one of those hot summer noons when the intense heat had seeped in our Baroda residence and we ( dad and me) had an arguement over what profession is a better choice! It was then that we heard a knock n our door, I went up and opened it, usually salesman are expected around that part of the day, that day being exceptionally hot ( i still recall it was 45'c, that close to our 113' farenheit) and baroda's summer is intensely dry and dusty, this guy clothed in a white lab coat, a small bag in hand with the most deserving look in his eyes ( ever seen a puppy on a roadside, hungry since ages with droopy eyes and hopes of all the worlds calling out for help and a hug, with a shiny tear in the corner of the eyes), that is how he looked, and asked only 1 question,"Aapka daant tuta hai kya?'', do u have a broken teeth?, is what he meant! Now, I belong to the league of those people ( Yes we have a league of such people), who think that their teeth are made of pearls! You know, pearls in oyster, strong, beautiful, shiny, who never visited a dentist, not for the fear of one, but for believing that our teeth are the best, so for a person like me, it was a moment best described as a combination of shock, awe, plight, condolence...all these feelings in my heart and mind came out with a smirk on my face! In voluntarily, (I dont regret it though)His face litereally twitched as a strained elastic, and he gave me the angriest look ever as if i just challenged him his qualifications and snatched his degree from him and am tearing it down in tatters all while jumping and smiling in joy. I tried to reply, "No", wanted to accompany the word "Sorry" but .....hey, it's not my fault that I don't have a broken tooth! Tooth fairy has been nice to me! Its she who you got to sort your issues out with...Not me!

I walked back in and loved to stare at my dad's face, he was rooting for the profession of the guy at the door! And i was glad I did not take up BDS ( By no means I aim to hurt my fellow Dentist friends, but this is 1 incident that actually happened.)

A time does come, even for the people in the extraordinary league like me, the pearl teethed people, that our pearls become perils, gray shades start building up, afterall even the TAJ gets tarnished one day! Anyways, a visit to a dentist, once in a lifetime is an acheivement that everyone of us acheives!! Just another civil engineeer turned doctor is my defination of a dentist. Both use cement, both drill hard surfaces, both fill up dug pits and cavities. Its just a micronized set of tools that diffrentiates a dentist from a civil engineer working at a construction site. Its our mouth, the construction site for a dentist! Teeth of all, are one of the strongest part of our body, believed to surveive even when a person is totally torched!! Yes, even if u torch a person with ATF ( Aviation turbine fuel) teeth would survive, and a dentist kills these survivors in no time.

The standard protocols are annoying as such, they ask you to open your mouth and keep it open until a spider stops by and build a cob-web of a 'smiley' in your teeth! Seriously, they keep your mouth open for ages!! God gave us lips and the muscles around lips so that we keep our 'mouth pieces' closed, and violating the very creation, is a torture in itself. Next time i have an arguement with my girl friend, shes getting a ' free dentist visit' gift card from me!

The last time i visited the dentist, for a regualr check up that is, yes the day my pearly dreams were shattered, he has a look at my teeth, " everything looks pretty gud, except, 8 of the teeth here...and there...need to be re-filled." Excuse me, RE-filled! Is my teeth getting eaten up by other rival teeth?? What is a re-fill supposed to mean! He then drill 8 holes in my teeth, i would arfue any day on that, that those were really gud teeth, but thats how these civil engineered doctors are, drill first then fill that drilled hole! He would then charge you both for drilling and filling! Outrageously ridiculous!

Every visit is an adventure in itself, especially when its the wisdom tooth removal! What a nice name, but equally painful! Mouth is made to fit 32 teeth, why would you want to put in one more. Arent 32 enuf already! But No, this wisdom teeth has to come out, and it will make sure it comes out in a place that is most difficult to reach! The place that can be the most painful and the place where there is No way that you would expect such a thing to spring up! One fine morning you wake up and see the population growth increase by 1 in your mouth! The neighboring tooth is not going to make way for the new kid on the block, both cram in the same place, the mouth is not getting bigger, are we actually evovling by grwoing more teeth? No, they are just meant to create deep and sudden and throbbing sensations of pain Only! Their removal is a necessity and a story in itself! You should see a dentist' facial expressions when he/she spots a wisdom tooth, the smile runs from one ear to the other, "The tricky the place, the Bigger the moolah".....!

Teethy adventures are a memorable event in one's life! Living with it is the only option! Thers no escaping!

Blog seriously??

Well so here it goes, this was on my mind since almost 5 years, talking about memory, i have a habit of keeping some thoughts remembered all the years down the memory lane, i have certain ideas, dreams, secrets, ratlling, dangerous, devilous ( i have a way of inventing my own words, you would see that happening a lot) so, these memories, stay with me, i recall them every now and then, plan to implement them every once in a while, but actually Never do! Blogging was one of my dreams...i am a story teller by passion, a side never explored by anyone, not even me. I still claim to be a good story teller coz i know that i am. well, self proclaimed story teller. there you go!I love writng, some of my friends even believe that am a pretty good writer, yes i am, but when it comes to writng letters with sentiments and emotions ( just a way to spell out 'Love-letter')....Once upon a time...is not my cuppa coffee(i dont drink tea)...living in present and writing about it is my fantasy.

To think of it, i seriously suggest you all to try it one day, every hour that passes in a day when you are awake and breathing with your eyes open, every hour of the day, if you believe me, is a story in itself, a short story of things, new charachters may enter, old characters amy exit, you may be in an angry mood, a happy mood, you may have accomplished something, lost something, aimed something or dreamt of something, an hour in a day may have defined you love of life, it may even have broke your heart. Every hour in itslef has a story in it. Now i m not being philosophical, if thats what you may think of, its true, theres very few of those days when you actually have time to sit on a chair, in the balcony, and stare at the traffic go by on the busy roads, you are constantly staring at those cars, bikes, guys and gals pass by, but you are immersed in your own world, its then that these stories come to life.

Ever wodered how strangely a human mind works. Managing 2 things at a time is a classic example of us staring at something and thinking of completely something opposite, does that mean, we are wsting our energy in what we are seeing thrugh our eyes coz we are not thinking about what we are seeing, or is it an injustice to th thoughts cylcling in our mind that we should just close our eyes and think to what we are thinking, a living paradox that happens almost many times of a day! to explain the least, you can see for urself, this blog began with why i actually write a blog and it is ending right now with this paradox of life!....Mind wanders....i wrote this entire segment in a go, without a stop or a chat with any1 around, i am sitting in my room with slow music humming and this is the playgorund of my thoughts!! Mind really is a Nomad!!

adios until my next blog!