New Sense

The last time he had walked down this street, she had walked beside him… She had asked him if they were similar… without hesitating he told her they weren’t… It was much later in the day, this time around; and the street seemed less busier. He walked by the coffee shop and it brought back memories of their only conversation there…

The appointment had finished earlier than expected and that meant that he was now a whole thirty minutes ahead of time for the next one. He had two options, either to walk the street right to the end and walk back. an exercise that should put him right on time. Or to walk directly to the restaurant, half way down the street and sit at the table waiting for his guest…

He chose the latter as it provided him better opportunity to read his company. What if she arrived a little ahead of schedule, would that mean she was nervous about being late or maybe she was just like him. What if she walked in a little late, maybe that would be a sign of how things would go from there on… Or the worst case, what if she walked in on time and he was sitting right there…

He somehow felt that he was playing a game of chess that was headed towards stalemate. Any footing what so ever to get a better grip of the situation might seem like an advantage. On the flip side, maybe he was just over thinking all of this…

Then he saw the street corner, the same street corner where they had stood. It was a long time ago but it all seemed like if just happened yesterday. He some how knew that day that he probably would never see her again… This was the second time in his life that he had felt that about her. The only difference being that the first time he knew was absolutely wrong.

He walked into the restaurant and as he entered he scanned the horizon on the off chance that his date was there before him, she wasn’t. He inquired about the reservation and was pointed to a cozy corner. A projector played the music videos of the albums from the past, they did not match the songs flooding the speakers.

As he waited, his thoughts went deeper into the past. He was more comfortable thinking about the past than he had imagined he would be. He still remembered the first time, he remembered how he stood in the street looking at her and she hired a taxi. There was nothing spectacular that had happened, she sat in the taxi and left… He stood right there knowing full well they would meet again. They did… it took them 10 years but they did…

She had this endearing honesty about her. People can fake interest, attitude and maybe even a little bit of mystery but to be endearing to someone thats almost impossible to fake. A little later they were laughing their heart out… They spoke about random things and in their random talk found comfort.

The second time things were different. She stood by and watched him leave. As he drove away, the thought of never seeing her again struck him but he didn’t do anything about it. Maybe they were similar… maybe thats why it couldn’t have worked…

Before long the dinner was over and they stepped out. They walked down the same street but this time things were different. She turned to him and asked “Do you think we are similar?”. He looked at her and said “No”. She smiled and said “Thats good, I wouldn’t even consider marrying someone just like me.”

Inception has easily been one of the most entertaining and gripping movies I have had the pleasure of watching. As I sat in the the theater dumbstruck trying to navigate the mind and ideas of Christopher Nolan there was a weird sense of Déjà vu…

Thirty minutes into the movie I remembered what it was that seemed so similar… Actually what I remembered forced me into a smile and simultaneously made me extremely excited…

Five years ago, I wrote a short story – The Question. The story was little over 3 pages long and has been one of my best short stories till date. Turns out there was a lot of common ground between the concepts in Inception and The Question. While the common beliefs formulated the core of my story, in Inception they were the minor details of the story telling. Yet the similarities were clearly there…

After the movie I stood outside the theater(like many others) discussing the finer details of the movie with my friends. Among the people there I was only sure that my friend, Swetha had read that story five years ago. I told her that the movie had in parts reminded me of my short story and she immediately echoed my thoughts. Apparently she too had remembered my story while watching the movie!

The most oddest thing about the whole incident hit me only a couple of days ago. When I had first written “The Question” I was extremely vary about how it would be accepted, so I sent a proof copy of the original draft to a couple of my close friends. You wont believe that one of the proof readers’ response of the story was “This will make an awesome movie!”

Its an odd set of coincidences… You can feel free to read the story here: http://blog.chandrahasa.com/archives/333 and decide for yourself if the similarities are significant enough… I would love to hear your thoughts!

Ps: The coincidences don’t just end there; that reviewer, a very close friend of mine has gone on to become a film maker!

With the increasing acceptance of twitter and facebook as a preferred method of sharing information, a lot of bloggers I enjoyed reading are slowly moving away from blogging. As the count in my google reader decreases day by day, the number of tweets and facebook updates have been consistently increasing. In all honesty I dont blame the bloggers from moving on…

Twitter and Facebook have steadily become attractive replacements for blogging. Twitter’s 140 character “in the moment” microblogging allows immediate feedback, people respond almost immediately to a funny quote while back during blogging’s prime you would have to wait until ppl checked their RSS aggregator or did their ritualistic daily visit to your blog. Facebook provides an easier and seemingly more attractive alternative, dont know what to say but still want to appreciate the author… hit the “like” button and you are done.

Facebook and Twitter’s allure is also biased for the reason that they have slowly become the one stop spot for everything. With people sharing in the same sites there is hardly a need to remember blog URLs or keep in track of multiple sites… A long time back this very feature made livejournal my choice of blogging platform but now things have changed and my livejournal friend circle is only a shadow of what it was in its prime.

On the bright side, there is a part of me thats thankful for this change. Facebook has given me a lot of readers who otherwise would never have found my blog. One look at my notes on my facebook page and you will notice that there have been regular comments and ‘likes’ on my posts, the very same posts have attracted comparatively less comments on the blog itself!

One of the truly bothering signs of the overall trend has been that people are slowly getting turned away from long posts. If you are reading this line there is a probability that you are a part of the minority that feel 141 characters is one character too much. Another alarming trend has been that writers are slowly getting tuned to the conciseness of tweets… who can blame them, with a whole generation of mobile devices coming along its much easier to read/respond to a tweet than a blog post.

One of the strengths of blogging has been the lifespan of a blog post. Most tweets become irrelevant after a few minutes but a blog post’s relevance continues depending on the topic and the writer in question. Its this attribute of the blog that can help it survive this takeover from other platforms.

When blogging fever had hit its prime years ago, there was a sudden advent of blogs appearing everywhere; now with the drive changing direction this might actually be for the best. The surviver in this exodus will most probably be the genuine high quality writers and their insistence in holding on to blogging will hopefully bring back the blog to its niche best.

Personally I have always spoken better thru my blog than thru my tweets or my status messages, so I do hope the hay days of blogging arent behind us.

Each and every one of us has at some point in their lives wondered about the purpose of life. The purpose of life is the ultimate reason of our existence… Like an actor who walks up on stage and in their time on the stage they work towards providing their bit of substance to the play. They carefully thread the paths set by the playwright and in the few moments they appear achieve a certain predefined goal.

William Shakespeare famously once wrote “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players“… Shakespeare in his time must have also wondered about his purpose of life and during one of his epiphanies must have believed that he was closer to his purpose than ever.

But what if there is no purpose? What if life is what we truly make of it… Then what is the drive for existence? I believe the real drive for existence is the “pursuit of happiness”
Read More

My recent MIA status from the blogging world is due to an experiment of sorts. Exactly a month ago Lifehacker wrote about an interesting website entitled 750words.com. I gave the website a try and was immediately hooked to what was so simple and clearly perfect for someone like me.

The concept of 750 Words is simple: every day, you type 750 words(about three pages)of stream of conscious, whatever you want, free writing. The idea is that when you examine things locked away in your mind you not only get a better understanding about yourself but also free your mind for fresher ideas.

The website advices you to write the first thing in the morning, after 3 pages of thoughts it leaves your mind free for the rest of the day. What I do is I wake up in the morning, go for a run/exercise for a while and then sit down in front of the comp and start typing away.

The morning flow of words is stronger than I could have ever imagined, In the 10 odd days I have done the exercise I have written about my family, friends, thoughts, ideas… even on the spot essays about random phenomenons. It takes me on an average about 25min to get to 750 words(my personal best being 18min) and by then I am fully awake and feeling so much better.

On the flip-side, I have lost the drive to blog… the exhilarating 30 min in the morning leaves my thirst for writing fulfilled and that has lead me to ignore my blog. Sometimes I even felt that I should post parts of what I write on the site… who knows maybe I will.

Anyway, check out the website and have a look at the cool stats the website generates. Give it a try(you just need a google/yahoo/facebook account to login), it worked for me… who knows it might for you too