CHERISH with HARISH

In a debate with time, I lose, with a smile. I know the big plan, but not the daily answers. In the debate, time laughs at me, but like a satisfied loser, I smile. I might work hard, and be a winner all the way, but some answers, are always with time, just with time. Like a guilty loser, I wait, with a smile... (11:45 am, at the Knowledge Management Centre, NID.)

It's 02:30 am, I am sitting in my room, tired after a happy day of work. The room's silent with this Abida Parveen song playing in my computer. The cool breeze coming from the balcony, is making the ambiance quiet and peaceful. I want chai and unfortunately there's none. This urge to have chai is driving me more inquisitive, more curious, may be more crazy. I am in this crumpled cloud of imagination, which I am enjoying. I am sleepy and 'comfortably' tired, which takes me in that cloud to these questions which are not mine, they are everyone's. I thought I should share them. When I get into these chai clouds, I see that we're all surrounded by so many smiles, so many joys, so many secrets which we hide and share throughout the day. These are rays which keep hitting our heads every hour. We choose to show interest in some, and choose to ignore some. Sometimes, we don't even realise and these 'joys' become more important than our existence. We don...

As I kept speaking of democracy, corruption and freedom, the CROWS kept ignoring me. I shouted, "You are irresponsible citizens!". One of them replied, "You talk of freedom? We are already FLYING..." They disappeared into the skies.

It has been a long time since I visited this space, or in many ways, since I visited 'my' space. I had been busy shooting my diploma film , 'The Uljhu Journal'. hat was one journey which taught me a lot. Those 10 days we worked really hard, with good results. But on the last day of shoot, we got to know that we have lost a day's footage. This was too big a shock to get on the last day of the shoot, when the actors would be leaving soon. For the next 2 days I took a break fro the film to figure out what to do next. What was really painful was that even after planning so well for months, I lost the footage because of someone's carelessness. Over the next 2 days, I realised that it was no use wasting time thinking about it, so I started editing the film. Over this period I came up with the alternative of the lost footage. So, as I was editin, I would reshoot with my cinematographer and the available actors. This taught me a new thing. Before this, whenev...

"Ek gum-sum dhalta din, woh bheeni si shaam ki khusboo, labon par chai ka woh meetha zayka, na ho isse behtar andher raat ka intezaar."

"Dar toh hamesha andhere se hi lagta tha...Par jiss din aankhen kholi, toh UJALA khud khaufnauk sa ho gaya..."

I said,"We live on lots of money,very expensive medicines, very high GDP's and other high stats! Do you have any of these? We're rich..." The crows replied," We live on the never-ending skies, we breathe the unlimited supply of breezes, and we drink the never-ending water bodies. None of this can be counted. Now who's richer?!" The crows flew away and I kept thinking...