ZACK - The Innovator

I created this animation film using chalk on blackboard..



Thanks to Abhishek my friend for manning the Camera!
A double thanks to my family for bearing with me all the while, and thanks to Bhabhi, for playing the role of a critic for my Coffee Cup's (Zack) expressions and design!

Also, thanks to the wall, which sadly got completely devoid of paint when the temporary blackboard was scrapped off its face! Tonnes of thanks to Papa, for having the patience, and the energy to get our home completely painted again after this wall's disaster! :D

P.S: I know I sound like a celebrity at a Filmfare award function.. but wat the heck, I am a celebrity already!

It was a full moon night, a few discrete bunch of clouds dotted the night sky. The moon light made the clouds glow with a silvery mist. A silent breeze blew, it was so subtle that it was hard to notice it. The breeze wasn't cool yet, still it provided some respite from the heat. A couple of neon bulbs sparkled atop the distant hill, saving the bulbs and the moonlight, the hill was engulfed with darkness. A dog barked carelessly and soon another one joined him, but they too fell silent soon. Silence is golden, is what the article was all about in the Sunday Times. It spoke of people preferring to remain silent to prove a point. But, did any one ever notice, that silence can not always be a choice, but sometimes a person can also be forced to remain silent.

She didn't know, exactly what made her fall silent. But, it was gradual, and certain circumstances made her silent. The silence was just as gradual as the splitting headache which she gets now. She wanted a break from the city, a break from the usual yada yada of the people around her, from the noises which were so inherent to the city, that it only worsened her headache. She wanted to escape.

Escape, not as a coward, but escape to explore herself, to find herself, to search for the girl who was long lost in the city and the expectations which the city threw at her. She had lost herself in fulfilling these expectations and couldn't realize till it was quite late. She knows now too, that escape is merely a dream, a mere wish, in her heart.

The city left her so empty that the fragile being which she is now, doesn't have the strength to search for herself. She sits here, in this moonlight, waiting as the city eats away at her strength, rendering her weaker by the second. She sits here getting lost again.

Words of Wisdom - Part I

Today I started a new thread, called 'My Words of Wisdom' :-) where as the name suggests, I will be posting some words of wisdom.. and will simultaneously post explanations of those words, which are difficult for you to understand, as you can't match my wisdom! :D

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A friend asked me to comment on "time management" and who is better at it - men or women?
I said - "Men are never on time, Adam was too early and all the others after him were too late"

Explanation-
Women are natural, when it comes to Time Management, they juggle between home, office, shopping and the list is endless.
Adam was too early, as he was the trial piece of work and Eve was the master piece, which followed the trial version. All the other men were too late to even visit the garden of Eden, and Adam had the apple, others couldn't.

My today's visit to the post office finally made me write this post. Every visit to the post office reminds me of the famous serial Malgudi Days. Why? Here is why ...
Its situated in an old structure, dating back to the time when British ruled us. It has those typical stone walls and red brick roof on the outside. On the inside it has that typical high ceiling, which requires a minimum of 10feet rods to suspend ceiling fans. It smells of old papers and glue, and of the wooden girders which support the ceiling. The men in the post office at times seem to be as old as the building itself.
These buildings always filled me with mixed emotions, on one hand when they would remind me of sweet past and of serials like Malgudi Days. Yet sometimes I couldn't feel one with them, because they also felt foreign to me, maybe because of their English architecture.
The part which makes me really uneasy, is when I see these grandfather figures in the post office working on computers. Trying to type, using only the index fingers of their hands. No-no don't get me wrong, I ain't against computerization or modernization of post-offices. But the setting of the post office, and of the huge mango trees in its backyard, make me feel that this building should be inhabited by babus wearing Kolhapuri chappals along with dhotis and a white long shirt, with paan stained lips and deep set eyes peering over thick framed glasses, with neatly oiled graying hair, the oil smelling of chameli . Don't get me wrong again, I ain't making fun of their fashion sense, lest I wouldn't call them grandfather figures. But, its just that all these years, one has the tendency of associating old buildings with old time babus, who sadly have become a rare sight now.
Now one can only find such associations in serials like Malgudi Days or one's imagination. It does make me feel uneasy, when I hear the screeching printers in place of the thuds of the rubber stamps, which were so typical of a post-office. It does make me feel uneasy, when I see barely a couple of people at the post-offices, when there was a time, one would have to wait for hours for his turn at the post-office. Although, we still have postmen who drop our letters at the mailbox and we don't even see them for years together. Whereas, there was a time, when postmen were friends, old uncles on cycles, those who helped you cross roads when you would return from school. Those, who shooed away the dogs, when you played with your friends. Those, for whom we would wait for hours, to deliver us those letters from loved ones!
I wish at times, I would get my old India back, the India which is now only a memory in serials like Malgudi Days!