New prologue!

Before you start reading:

I’ve started writing a novel at least ten times now! Every time, at some point, I feel the story isn’t catchy enough. So, I stop, just to restart again. But, this time, having the whole story figured, I hope this will be my last attempt to my first novel. So, this is what I feel is, it! Do, read! Share a comment or two! So, here we go!

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

…you did not desert me, my brothers, in arms!

Mark Knopfler sang in his aged, yet very stable and deeply touching sound of his voice in the bar, jam packed with Saturday night booze animals like me. Enjoying the lead following the lyric, I tried to sip on the glass, when I figured it had only half-melted ice cubelets now. The steward seemed to notice my empty glass. He stood in front of me, waiting for me to order for more. New guys! I hated telling new stewards, my orders again and again. Normally, at the bars, customers come and go, and the stewards and bartenders stay and they know what the usual customers drink. But, in the case of extreme livers like me, people see bartenders change at the bar. And sadly, have to repeat the orders every time the stewards change. But, it’s kinda nice to see a few you know serving others at other tables, very busy, but still manage to throw a smile at you, making you feel that they remember you.

One more Walker, Red, please, I said.

Sure sir, and he walked away to get my drink.

Something I like the most about my bar is that, it has the portraits of rock artists/bands hiding the real colour of the walls. In fact, I don’t remember this place in new paints before. And surprisingly, the bar owner never spent a buck on these portraits. It was all donated to the bar by its customers. Every regular gifted his favourite rock star’s picture. Right besides me was perhaps the biggest, a huge black and white portrait of Joe Satriani holding his guitar in an empty backdrop. Below was written, To Pecos with love, Slaves of rock in the Old English calligraphic font. I looked at Joe for a moment, closed my eyes and started mumbling my favourite number from him, Always with me, always with you. Suddenly, I noticed that I was feeling the urge for nicotine again. There were only two cigarettes in the pack. Should’ve ordered more cigarettes too, I felt. Biting the butt of one of those tobacco filled, highly relieving, but-killer demonic sticks, I fiddled through my pockets for my vintage Zippo cigarette lighter. Your pockets try to fool you when you’re drunk. You should try harder. And finally, like I did, you find the lighter, safely hidden inside your jacket pocket.  Aaah! There it is. I don’t remember putting it in my jacket pocket, the last time I smoked, I felt. I was lighting my cigarette, when the voice of a young man, sourced closer to me, talked,

Excuse me sir! Is anyone with you? Or are you alone? He asked looking at the other two empty glasses on the table.

Nope. I’m alone. Why?

The bar is full. We can’t find a table for the both of us. So if you don’t mind, could you share the table with us? He said, showing me, may-be-his-friend.

Definitely! After all, this isn’t my bar. Just don’t use the other two glasses. They’re mine, I said.

Puzzled at what he thought a weird habit of drinking in three glasses, he said, Sure sir. Thanks a lot, and he sat down with his friend.

Both of them looked almost the same age, probably a decade younger to me. They settled down, taking off their jackets. The guy who talked to me introduced his friend and himself, I’m Vijay, and this is my friend, Nikhil. It’s his birthday today, sir, and smiled.

You can’t sit with your mouth shut, when someone introduces himself. Call me Aryan, and Happy birthday, Nikhil, I said.

Thanks a lot, Aryan. How coincidental, that all the three of us here are wearing glasses, Nikhil said in a surprised tone.

I smiled at them and added, You know what else is coincidental Nikhil? It’s my birthday too.

Whoa! Happy birthday, Aryan. This is incredible. Finding a person who is born on the same day as you are at a bar, on your birthday, is something great, don’t you think? Nikhil asked.

Thanking the steward for filling up my glass with scotch and ice cubes again, I turned at Nikhil and said,Yes. I feel good too.

Probably they had ordered for draught beer, and so, there was a fat beer tower, filled with beer to the brim on the table. They filled their mugs with beer. They knew I was waiting.

Vijay raised a toast, To the birthday boys at this table. May they live forever. The three of us cheered in chorus and started drinking. Vijay continued after the first sip, Aryan, don’t mind me asking. I find it a little weird to see two other empty glasses on your table. If it’s personal, we wouldn’t force you. Otherwise, can we know why?

Yeah, it’s kinda personal. But, I can tell you. The two glasses on the table are for the guys I love the most, my friends, Sri and Ram. Somehow, I feel those guys are present here at the table, if there’re a couple of glasses. It may sound crazy, but, it’s a mental thing. I don’t know why I told this to total strangers. May be it was the scotch inside me.

Oh! Sorry Aryan, Nikhil apologised.

You don’t have to be sorry. Oh! You got the wrong notion. They’re not dead, I said, and guffawed.

They looked puzzle. I said, OK. I’ll explain. But, this is gonna take a while. Because to know what happened, you must know the entire story. You cannot just skip to the end. So, do you guys really wanna hear it?

They said, Yeah! Sure!

And I started, You can stop me if you find this boring, and paused for a while to sip the drink again,September 19th, 1996, same day, thirteen years ago. Bangalore. This very bar, this very table…

All you need is...

It is been almost two months since I had attended PGEE, the entrance examination for post graduation at the International Institute of Information Technology. Like me, all aspirants were frustrated that they’ve not published the results yet. Every time one of us called them, they had a lady who spoke the same thing, that the results would be announced in the coming week. Huh! At least tell me, I haven’t qualified was the woe of many of us. Finally, unexpectedly, tonight, I opened my mailbox, and the spam folder, to delete mails without even looking at them, like I usually do. But, there was only one mail, and it caught my attention. It was from Admissions, IIIT, Hyderabad. I opened the result link mentioned in the mail, and it asked me for my application number and password, and the website said it in red: You’re not qualified for the interview. Well, OK, I said, although there was a feeling of failure running somewhere inside my tummy.

I was not in the best of my moods, all the evening. A bad feeling that I’ve failed, and that I’m a loser had already crept in my mind. Well, that must be normal. Every one who has failed would feel that. But, back to back failures are what make you too weak to face things. You feel cowardice. I failed miserably in GATE, then in IIIT, Bangalore and now I realise, even Hyderabad is not in my fate. Does it all stop there? Academic  failures? There’s a bigger thing you would be facing. A bitch called life! May be, if you’re as unlucky as me, you might be failing there too. You may even feel, Life seems like a ghostly apparition to live with. Too many failures, and only you can take. None of your colleagues, not your parents, not your girl friend, not even the best of the best of your friends can understand your feelings. You feel lost. You feel lonely. You feel inferior. You might as well feel, may be this is all I can do. You lose hope! Most of us do a common mistake, at such a time, Give up! May be, that solution may even seem good for the moment, given your situation. But, you forget to make justice to the real you. Most of the times, the real you, is always better than what you think you are. At such a point of time, you don’t actually need a miracle to come up like a phoenix. All you need is a little hope. A small story to illustrate…

There was a guy from Karnataka who was at the ebbs of his life. A critical age to shape life, 17, was his age. Twelfth exams were nearing! There were only two months left. He was totally into this girl in his class. Also, spent a mighty week at the police station for various things. Not an age to see the police station, you might say. He failed in all the subjects in his preparatory exams. No hope left! He really wanted to do something about it. He really wanted to study. He wanted to support his parents. He came for a below poverty line family. God knows where he got the determination from. He prepared as much as he could. He wrote his exams. And he rocked the results. He was one of the top ten percent in the state. He couldn’t believe the results himself. Well, the story is not over. AIEEE results came after that. He had an AIR of 129. JEE results were out too. He was AIR 88. He graduated out of IIT Kanpur, and works for Apple now, as an architect. The story, is still not over. He married the girl he loved when he was seventeen. They live at Sunnyvale, CA. One of the greatest love stories, I’ve seen. The greatest success story I’ve ever witnessed. He was just like us. The same brain, the same hands, the same features. Yet, he excelled. He did things, which most of us couldn’t even dream of. What drove him? It’s the determination, which most of us lack.

Write yourself a letter today. Tell yourself, that you should open that letter whenever you feel lost, and need directions. Today’s saner you, will drive your determination tomorrow and remind you of how you should live. It’s a great idea. Try it!

An excerpt from some inspirational video, a video named “Famous Failures”. Just felt, it might fit this post. Go through, if you’ve time!

1.       Dismissed from drama school, because she was too shy and she couldn’t put her best foot forward – Lucille Ball

2.       Turned down by the recording company, who said, they don’t like the sound and the guitar music is too outdated – The Beatles

3.       Failed soldier, farmer and real estate agent, and at 38 years of age went to work with his father – Ulysses Grant

4.       Cut from the high school basketball team, he went home, locked himself in his room and cried – Michael Jordan

5.       Deaf. A teacher told him, he was too stupid to learn anything and he should be opting a field where he might succeed because of his pleasant personality – Thomas Alva Edison

6.       Fired from a newspaper because he lacked imagination and original ideas – Walt Disney

7.       His fiancé died, he failed in business twice, had a nervous breakdown, and he was defeated in eight elections – Abraham Lincoln

If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.

Determine tonight, to do what you always wanted to do. And keep it burning, till you reach it.

Good night!

Au Revoir!

Dear people,

I guess it’s time. Sometimes in life, you cannot do everything you want to do. You’ll have to sacrifice some things you love. Especially when your loved ones ask you to stop doing some things. Well, I’m in that kind of a situation. Some developments in my life are not letting me to continue blogging. You may call it peer pressure. So, I guess I’m stopping, for now.

It was a great feeling to blog my mistakes, my experiences. The whole point of this blog, was to tell people about the mistakes I made in my life, to tell them in my best words, my experiences, and how terribly life can go out of the line, if you commit some mistakes. I just wanted people not to make the same mistakes I made. You know, as the saying goes, “Clever people learn from others’ mistakes, normal people make their own mistakes to learn and dumb people never learn from mistakes.” But, even before I could even start off serving the main course of the blog, I was interrupted. I feel really sorry for myself not to be able to speak to you people on this, for now. This blog was my life jacket, for the past few months. If I could be relieved of all the tensions, this it was this blog, that was the vent for it. I loved it more than anything. It was the child that gave me the desire to write. But, I’ll have to let it go.

Something inside tells me that our paths must cross again. I’ll definitely write again about my stories. Just unsure of when would that be. In anticipation of a few comments, on what you felt about the blog, from its day one!

I log off!

Ashwin Shastry