Jaane kya dhoondta hai, yeh mera dil

" Jaane kya dhoondta hai, yeh mera dil
Tujhko kya chaahiye zindagi "

"wonder, what my heart is searching for...
Life, what do you want...... "

( my translation.... forgive me if not proper)

These are the starting lines of a song by Nida Fazli for the hindi movie titled "SUR". Also incidentally this was the same didactic question which i ask to myself every time for all the past and present acts of mine. During my childhood days ( 6-10 years old), i had the peculiar habit and the urge of seeing new places and seeking small adventures on my own. But one of the main disadvantage of my actions was that my parents, friends and relatives are not aware about my whereabouts during that time . This created a panic in my parents hearts and it got worsened when many of my neighbors started to refer me as a "runaway boy". At the same time one advantage of my acts was that i always return back to home within a day on my own, except for two occasions, once my grandmother found me and the other time my mom found me. Whenever i returned back to home there will be many questionings, scoldings, beatings, thrashings, advices etc...so on and on..... and every time i am not able to tell the reasons for my acts, which i really don't know so i always used to keep silent. This silence frustrated my parents a lot and which in turn made me very very sad. This affected my studies in a large way, i used to fail or just clear my exams marginally. As every troubled parents my parents also looked for help from every possible way, they consulted many astrologers and even some psychiatrists. From all of them came a positive reply for my parents, "this kid is a good boy no problems with him", "this boy is smart and normal "etc and so on. But some how my parents came to a decision and said that i can do whatever i want but i have to inform them in advance. This simple thing called FREEDOM or LIBERTY established an crystal clear understanding between me and my parents. After that there is no looking back , in each and every forward step i took , i used to convince my parents and my parents used to convince me and we proceed together.
PARENTING, my goodness, a daunting, frustrating at the same time a pleasurable task. I can aver that my parents are enjoying it a lot, as they have not only managing a menace like me, they are also taking care of my diligent brother and my lovely sister. I feel parenting is a subjective quality and parents are need not be compared with other parents ........Oooooo sorry for digressing ................PARENTING is a completely different topic, i dont want to write about that now. My crux for this post is "Jaane kya dhoondta hai, yeh mera dil" (Wonder, What my heart is searching for), Although currently everything is fine (no problem for anybody because of my small adventure acts), but still i don't know why i did and doing those acts. After those school days acts, i went to hostel in CIT for doing my Engineering degree, there also i did similar kind of acts , many times i got some company and sometimes i did on my own ...they tagged me "NAADODI" ( meaning explorer) . After college, i went to mumbai for work, there also i derived some time to do similar acts .....they tagged me "NEWLIN" ( as i always looked for doing new stuffs). Now, finally in US doing my PhD ....still i do similar acts , now here for my company i have my own car.... but some of my friends says that its an "escaping act" ... but i don't think so.... as i always come back to do what i am supposed to do.
One such act which i did on the thanksgiving break is that i took pencil and paper and rushed to Lincoln parish park and started sketching the lake view ( see below). This, i never did before, but suddenly the thought came and i did that.....reason ??? i dont know????

(After dabbling with photoshop)

Like this i am trying my hands in many other fields......Why iam trying ???? I have no answer......

but one thing is sure, life cannot be taught in school through established courses, it has to be felt through the course of living over the unpredictable events as it unfolds.

I think my PhD is easy ..... let me complete it....

Bala Hanuman

Cartoons ...... some say it is for kids..... but i deny that since still i like cartoons a lot . If I think of Cartoon, the very first thing which strikes me is Tom & Jerry and many other productions of Walt Disney. Indian based cartoon characters are very few, on doing a short web search i found many Japanese based cartoon charcters also, much recently i saw a Japanese cartoon film centered upon character Naruto, i enjoyed it. It seems our guys are just picking up, the recent Indian cartoon film "Hanuman" is an indication of that. The movie covers all the parts of the Hanuman's presence in epic Ramayana. I felt the movie a sort of OK kind as it retolds Ramayana , I would have appreciated it much if they would have delineated the character much in any one of the section of Hanuman's presence in Ramayana. But I was much attracted to the creation of Bala Hanuman sketch, it is so cute and beautiful. Hats off to the creator..... Above sketch is my replica of his creation.

DEER

Iam new to this blogging world, and iam not a good writer too. But anyhow iam attempting to write about deer. Deer is a common animal in India, but due to human civilization and spreading cities, it is becoming a rare species. When i came to US , i was surprised to see Deer common in almost all states, but at the same time i felt very sad whenever i see a hit deer on the sides of the highway. In many of the prehistoric tamil literature works and in many indian epics like Ramayana, deer has played a very significant role. More commonly Deer's eyebrows are used as a metaphor for narrating beauty of heroine's eyebrows and the way Kavarimaan ( one variety of deer in India) sacrifices its life to safeguard the prestige & respect of its group is often used as a similie in many movie dialogues.
In my childhood days, whenever any guests come to my home , i used to take the role of a tourist guide and show ZOO ( Vandalur in Chennai) as one of the attractions of Chennai, so much oftenly I used to visit ZOO, moreover it is very near to my home. During those days iam not that much attracted to deer, but much recently me and my friends went for a safari in Natural Bridge Zoo in Virginia state, there i got a very close look of many Deers . On this trip only i realised and started to appreciate the beauty of Deers as mentioned by historical tamil poets. I donno why this change in me, is it due to the closer look of Deer? or due to age ? still not sure but anyhow iam happy for realising it now.
Only few months after that , i was driving back from Houston to Ruston it was early morning 05:00 AM and i was pondering about speeding ticket which i got one hour before on US 59S. I was driving at the speed of 60MPH, suddenly i saw a female deer infront of my car trying to cross from the left side of the road to the right, i donno whether to slow down or maintain the speed, initially i reduced my speed to around 55 MPH and suddenly I remembered the snapshot of me and my friends discussion on how to handle the car when a deer comes across. We were discussing this on our forward journey to Houston, we came to a conclusion that it is safe to maintain the speed on such occasions. So based upon that i didnt reduced my speed below 55 MPH . Bang came the noise, the Deer hit the right side beamlights and a rolling screeching noise was heard for few seconds , still i kept on driving with only one beam light on , smoke started coming out from my bonnet , still i kept on rolling, Engine alarm indicator appeared then i decided to pullover . Slowly i pulled over and went to see in the front , my entire right side around the beam light is damaged . I was searching for some blood stains and any remains of the deer , but surprisingly i didnt find both. The car i used is rental one, a brand new DODGE CHARGER 2007 model , i felt very very sad for both the Deer and the car. But somehow i was consoled by the driver of the towing vehicle. He is a very old man, by judging my melancholy face, he said, "Dont worry my son the deer might not have got killed, it might have got banged a bit and started limping back towards the woods, look we didn't see neither the blood stains nor the body, so cheer up. You are very lucky guy to come out of this accident without any hurts ". I thought for a while and felt optimistic, before the old man left, i felt certain drive within me to give a hug and i did that . I felt his friendly warmth in the cold morning. This gave me full of energy to come back to Ruston and conduct the Diwali celebrations ( first event of our AIS group) though i was physically drained. From that onwards for few days all of my friends called me as deer hunter.
One month after that incident, i got the mood for pencil sketching after a gap of nearly four years, knowingly or unknowingly the first pictrure i drew is a deer couple ( the shown picture) after this only I drew Preity Zinta's picture (1st blog). Though everything got completed well, it seems that the sadness got etched in my heart.

1st Blog

This is the picture i drew after a gap of 4 years