Biking

Took a detour to Agra on my bike last Sunday. As a part of common practice, Sunday mornings are too scarce to be whiled away on a motor cycle on a moderately busy highway. But with the level of boredom coupled with intense frustration with life in general and job in particular, I decided to make the journey. Only to have a look at something different for a change.

The landscape has got much lusher while we were busy toiling at our piping and erection work. The babul trees lining the highway wore a gleaming, bright green hue along with dense foliage that has sprung forth from all nooks and corners. The fields on either sides of the highway are at different stages of being ploughed and planted, one of the farmers has even built a raw shack with four hovels for support and a thatched roof. Something thats typical of Bengal but hardly ever noticed in UP. Notably, the farming techniques in UP are much advanced than those of Bengal where you could still spot the farmers egging on their bullocks tethered at the end of the tortured plough. UP has taken to mechanical ploughs, harvestors and threshers in a big way. Its a matter of concern when you have a look at the rotary threshers seperating tonnes of grains from chaff in a day in comparison to the meagres 40 bundles of paddy that is thrashed manually by the harvestors on wooden or concrete slabs in my Bengal.

But then, I am prevaricating. The lusher landscape freshens up the mind like no other entertainment. That coupled with the wind blowing hard against the face, forcing the unwilling tear to fly past my sideburn along the unconventional arial route instead of streaming down a stubbled jaw, the fatigue in the elbows and knees from long hours of biking at average speeds of 85 to 90 Kmph bestow a feeling of retribution for all the wrongs done unto myself.

Its good. Good for the soul.

The best and the worst

The last post was followed by a blur of events and activities which happened so fast that there never was enough time to devote to updation of a blog. On another hand there was a lingering feeling confirming my fall from grace in my own eyes. I couldn't bring myself to believe that I was significant enough in the whole huge scheme of things to make my musings matter.

Two trips to Delhi one after another, followed by a Plant Shutdown when I was taught the importance of real hard work, continued illness for more than three weeks, a desperate journey home to get back to acceptable physical shape and mental state before my sister's wedding. Stuff happened, lessons were learnt and ideas were formed.

But that's the past. I am back from home after the longest vacation since June, 2006. I am back at my desk, making estimates, paying bills, calculating pressure and temperature and trying to feel happy and optimistic about a dreary future. Someone told me, an optimist lives longer. My answer was, it only increases the pain. Poor chap decided against counselling me further.

But thats not what I sat down to write today....

Have you ever moved from a state of ecstasy to despair within a couple of seconds? I never knew it could happen in reality till yesterday. I was listening to an old bong song last evening, about how the same colour means different thing to us at different ages. ( red, for example is the colour of a ball when you are 4, the colour of lips when you are 14 and the colour of communism when you are 24). I started laughing out loud and then as the realization dawned I ended up shedding tears like a weeping ninny. Times stolen past my vigilant eyes.I turn 24 next year.