The Walrus, an august duo and yellow lights ...

Well actually the post is simply put, is the meaning of music - 2, just that naming it as i did above makes it sound all cool no?? :)

Anyway .. .moving on with the songs ...

I am the Walrus: Rajeev aka Kinky

Mash's (Marketing club) 1st online game went live during Vista 04, we had a new bunch of Mashians, one of whom was this lanky kid they fondly called Kinky. As is expected with most online events, this one had way too many glitches way too close to the exact time it was supp to go live. And since i was the senior team member in charge, there i was, hanging around the IT experts' room trying to get the damn thing online as close to 9 pm as possible.

No one else from the Junior team was around, although they were all technically on the game team - no one but this chap Kinky. I kept telling him its cool, u can go back, none of ur batchmates r here anyway, ill manage. And he wouldn't budge at all! I kinda felt sorryish for him having to hang around like that with not much to do but wait for the IT chaps to decode some bugs, not that i was doing anything hugely constructive, but still! I took one last shot, said "hey kinky, why dont u go ahd, there's not much either of us can do anyway, im sure u have other places u wanna be at". The kid turns around and looks me in the eye, and with just a mild shrug of impatience says "But its my game too! I want to be around when it goes online .. and i want it to happen well!"

And that's how Kinky officially floored me with his passion for the club, and his utter perseverance with doing a good job of anything he took on. I still rbbr the nites he stayed up devising Brand wars - the official marketing strategy simulation game. He'd ping me through his frustrating nite outs on bracket, citing how pained he was and all tht ... id say well, if ur so pained, just go to sleep!!! Why u killin urself over this game??? And he'd go, hey im just cribbing, be a good listener and let me vent! Dont discourage me from working hard!! And i'd just be like :O and listen! Gradually Kinks and i came to this incredible understanding of each others minds where he knew exactly when i needed just his ear and when i needed his wisdom, and vice versa.

Kinks always thot of the beatles as the "music tht defined the decade" ..one of his all time fav songs was " I am the walrus" ... a song i never quite got! Or even tried! Kinks is like tht i figured, sometimes u have to stop trying to understand coz he jus gets a kick out of being weird and goofy :) Everything about kinks is linked up to the walrus, even now his status msg on his blog and on orkut read something about a walrus. Man i never understood the whole funda, but u say walrus and i think Kinksssss !!! :DDD


O saathi re: Aarthi Sivaraman aka the much mostest godstep level louuuuable gal i 1st met last August!!!

Aarthi Sivaraman, not even someone i know directly and today someone i talk to on an almost daily basis. A friend of a friend of a friends, she stayed over at my place on her way from the US back to Madras last August. We hit it off, partly coz she's just a super fun talkative person with unbelievable amounts of energy and enthu for all things alive and inanimate :), and partly because of some common situations in both our lives at that point. Of the 20 odd hours she stayed home, i think 18 were spent listening to O Saathi re from the recently released Omkaara and sighing about how much it touched the innermost depths of our heart and soul. :) Oh i loved that time Aarthi!!! Ive always wanted to tell you, you know how sometimes we wonder why we met some people, became friends et al? Its coz they bring some other wonderful people along, and leave them behind even if they themselves walk away. And those wonderful people are really who we were supposed to meet and keep for life!!! :D And ur one of those wonderful people who walked in by sheer chance because of tht thing called six degrees of seperation and has stayed in .. u cannot even imagine how excited i was to hear about the whole Yale thing :D wanted to call up everyone connected to u both and tell them how u wr going to be just 2 hours away fm each other ... good luck with everything ma! We'll meet soooon!!! :D

Aahista Aahista: Sainag C aka FPG amidst the yellow lamps in A 315

The story of Sai will be told some other day. Lets just say if i had an inner circle of 10 people, he'd be one of them. Among the few people id trust my life with. Among the few who can read my silence even over a achy breaky ISD call and say "u sound different, something's up na?" and only one apart fm my mom who has the uncanny knack of smsing me with msgs like "Sudha, is everything ok?" at the most accurate times when something is indeed not ok! :) Ah the cosmic connection with him is like few others :)

Anyway, Aug 04, Swades had just released and Sai would often walk up to my room in the evening and ask me if id heard the music ... id usually respond with a bored no ... hadnt hrd .. didnt have enthu to download etc ... and he was like "but there's this song u HAVE to hear baba!!!" .. after 7 attempts or so, one fine day he walked into my room armed with a full bag, plonked himself on the floor, and opened the bag to reveal a Cd player. I gaped at him, "why do we need this when i have a PC!" i asked ... and he just shut me up and made me listen to Aahista Aahista ... hrd once, then hrd again .. then again n again ... then downloaded from the LAN to pc .. and played in loop while we talked about everything under the sun as we always did :) And then on, that was our song ... whenever he was with me, we'd play the same song, over and over again.

And so this mighty peace inducing song with minimal music and soulful lyrics is the song tht reminds me of Sai ... friend philosopher and guide .. through the best and not so best times of my life :)

And more shall follow ...