Stopping by a farm on a lovely evening

I stand enchanted
As these wild, wet winds
Kiss my lips and whisper sweet nothings
To my reddening ears
The moistened air caresses my face
Sensuously, luring my mind, to chase
Her mystic perfume.
These virgin crops sway to the rhythm of my heart
Faster and faster, while some distance apart
A few shrubs giggle.

I stand captured
In this moment, trying to catch memories in a jar
Like fireflies at night, as a distant star
Will stand witness to our carefree laughs. And jibes. And glee.
Oh the stories we will share, under this mighty tree
While the chirping crickets stand by.

I stand humbled
By the graceful charm of this lovely farm
Under the reddening sky.
And as I stare at her across the curvy paths
Running through the ripening corn
While the brilliantly bright red cashews adorn
Her smile, I could’ve sworn
I felt the essence of my beloved.

Nimit Rajdev

Written on 19^th May, 2015. Edited 17^th April, 2020.
Farm visited on: 14^th May 2015
Posted on Facebook on April 17, 2020

Memories. Like pebbles on the seashore.

I stare blankly
at my pensive eyes
unruffled by flashing cams.
Unaware, of the indistinct happy voices close-by,
splashing waves, and a lonely sigh
of a distant light-house.
A faint outline of a massive cartoon
still glows, under a plump yellow moon
on this damp sand,
as cold, moist, saline winds
wash both our faces.

Fade out. Fade in. A battlefield.
And I watch, perched on a small video cam
behind the backs of most of ’em,
as a war rages on
in this sun starved training room A.
A gloomy li’ll place, as they say.
Cold, chilling winds blowing through
half dead men.
A strong stench of coffee.
And I can barely see, but there, it’s me!
Wading through an onslaught
of confounding, condensed thoughts.
The lecture goes on, and so do I,
all bloodied and battered. 

A blink, and next I think
I’m floating outside a freezing glass window
still shivering in the wake of Irene.
And my slumbering, serene figurine
is but a fluttering frame, a fraction away
from being replaced by a road, haughty and grey.
An impromptu voyage to New York.
And on the way back to Norwalk,
a pair of wakeful eyes behind a foggy windshield
sipping in a soporific night.

But that’s quickly wiped out, by the sight
of bright, smiling words flying in a dim dining light,
a scrumptious aroma of spicy food
and schmaltzy songs from the past.
But alas, that won’t last.
For next strikes a scream.
A vacillating raft, on a thundering stream,
tangled in the vicious tentacles of a psychopathic bush,
But out it goes, by the push
of the fumes of the night long ventures
at the casinos of the Atlantic,
where rewarded, was a heart, at the very last tick,
by a fresh orange sunrise, on a clean blue sky,
in the rear-view mirror.
And I close my eyes.

Time shall rob me not of these,
for what are they, but memories.
Like pebbles on a sea-shore;
brought in by a random wave, from a distant cave, 
to stay,
for a blissful ounce of eternity.

 
 

P.S.: Based on my experiences during a month of FactSet training in Norwalk, Connecticut.

 – Nimit Rajdev

   Completed on – 1st January, 2012.

Plugged In

Do you see that mannequin,
seated on that dusty green park bench,
arched like Atlas,
so lifelike, he almost seems to be breathing?
Yeah that’s me. And that black thing
in my hands, is my PSP, but you know
it could have been an iPhone, Blackberry or Nintendo. 
Who cares, as long as there’s a virtual world
to hook into.
Real world stinks. It’s true.


Look closely. You might have seen me
on some empty seat in a random train,
racking the might brain
of My Fair Macky.
No? How about that thin pale guy
with sweating eyes, on bus number five?
I may not be much of a looker,
but my seven footed six packed avatar
is unbeatable at online snooker.
You can ask my virtual GF on Second Life.


I’m drunk. I’m drowning
in this incessant flow of transient data.
So the sweat smell of jasmine wet,
a small vignette of a shy sunset
or a stream of birds that fly
across a single bright patch on a dark, clouded sky,
no longer interest me.
I have my senses blocked.
So what if a hot chick passes by.
I won’t say hi!
Although I might add her up in my 
Google Circle. Or perhaps a friend request
on Facebook, or an invite on LinkedIn.
Whatever, right now I’d just stay plugged in
this new illusion we drew.
That old one stinks. It’s true.


– Nimit Rajdev

Parting Gift. Father’s Day. 2041 AD.

They said it looked weird when Beta smiled. Very unnatural. He had the body of a superhero, no doubt, but his smile resembled that of a street chimpanzee when you toss it a dollar. Yeah they can do that nowadays. Evolution. And yet he smiled at the setting sun, panting heavily in its final descent, as a fresh new wave washed his tender feet, about two steps away from effortlessly crushing a big seashell. A familiar harsh sound in his head broadened his smile further, which had a singular effect of frightening two little kids playing nearby to such an extent that they ran to their moms, wailing loudly!

“You are fifteen centuries late for a decent talk!” Alpha said.

“You mean to say fifteen seconds, Alpha. Where in the heavens are you anyways?” Beta swept his eyes around, looking for an exceedingly out-of-place shape misclassified as human by most people too lazy to give a damn! For a second, he was mildly amused by the festive environment on the beach – huge, merry crowd, alcohol, colorful posters with bold letters shouting (literally) ‘Father’s day! Hurray!’ and what not.

“You bloody well know my brains that you streamed into your silly coordinate! Dig inside your GPS, out with your pants and jump on, you silly dog!”

“Alpha, I guess the Telepath’s coming all jumbled. It happens when you’re stressed. Or high. Wait, have you been taking those neuro-stimulants mom’s been hiding? And I’m sorry my GPS receivers are missing since two days,” sighed Beta.

“Does your GPS look like a tiny gray pebble with a single, shamefully small grasshopper antenna on it? Does it wiggle when poked? Does it Aw, aw, aaaah!” came a crackle from Alpha. “I’m pretty sure that’s a beach-bug. Bite’s harmless. Are you on top of a rock?” Beta looked around, spotted an inhuman form perched precariously on top of a small rocky mountain 79 steps away, and a faint outline of a jumbo arm comically moving up and down in an exaggerated effort of squashing a little bug. A jog, a hike and fifteen seconds later, he tapped an affable hand on a distressed shoulder.

“Waaaa! Sweat Lord of the Milky Way! You made my spirits jump outta my thumping heart for a sec!” cried Alpha.

“I’d never let your imaginary spirit leave your absent heart, big Dad” Beta said with a smile and a hug. “Wish mom could be here.”

“That old again is late lady! No sense of time. Hic.”
“I can see those neuro-stimulants taking effect,” Beta said. “Don’t you remember? Yesterday, she was getting late for her speech, and she’d asked you to drop her on your way.”
“Oh Yes. And I think I did,” smiled Alpha.
“You dropped her off the balcony!”
“Isn’t that what she meant?” retorted Alpha.
“No, you silly man. And now she’s being treated. Your language-semantics desperately needs an update!
“Ah well! I’m outdated, expiring in a year. Spare no toy for an old humanoid. Avoid. Void. Droid…” and Beta had to hit him hard on the back of his metal skull to stop the useless flow of rhyming words.

“So where’s my Father’s day gift?”

Beta took out an exquisite model of a tiny turtle out of his bag. Alpha wasn’t impressed.
“That’s just a silly gray turtle with a silly gray shell!”
“No it’s not. It’s a brilliant purple jewel, with shiny blue eyes and an emerald green shell carved by the finest hands at the Institute. They say it has a lucky charm” explained Beta.

“Lucky charm my foot. All it does is remind me of how inferior my design is. That’s the saddest gift ever” announced Alpha, disappointed. He belonged to the group of primitive robot models that lacked the sense of color. He saw the world in gray.

Beta smiled. “You remember how you had this funny feeling in your head, two days back, when James woke you up, and I had to call upon three friends to prevent you from killing him? Well, James and I had been working on your vision system. He was confident he could get you to sense color, at least for your last year of existence.”

And with this he gently slid his finger across a tiny protruding line at the back of Alpha’s head. Alpha was amazed. For the first time, he could see purple. He stared at the purple turtle for a long happy time. Then he looked up, screamed, and fell down. Beta caught him mid-air. Alpha smiled, looked into Beta’s eyes, and whispered, “Now everything’s purple!”

Back to the drawing board, Beta’s artificial intelligence thought.

– Nimit H. Rajdev
Date of Creation: 15 June, 2011.

Drying Thoughts

A felt tip pen, dried up ink,
Desolate chair, and I start to think

On a crumpled paper, through my broken lens
‘Bout clotting blood, on a rusting fence
‘Bout torn up dreams, and I stitch them up
Through the worn-out thread of misplaced chance.

‘Bout times I lost, her moistened glare
It’s difficult indeed, to hold ’em back,
A withering leaf, a dying dream, and a haggard falling hair.

– Nimit H. Rajdev

Date of Creation: December 30, 2010

Posted on Facebook in response to the status message 
of my awesome cousin – Kinjal Chug (That last line was the status message!)

The Wailing maiden of Sunnyvale

Ah! Here she comes.
I can see her.
Brighter than the burning sun
on the western horizon.
A hundred waiting eyes sweep at her.
Clad in skin-tight silver, with bright red stripes
that accentuate her youthful beauty,
she arrives at Sixty.

And she’s greeted,
as is usual,
by the Tings of the bell
reminiscent of a long lost rustic dawn
by the dusty old school, along the pastoral fields
just waking up to a canine’s yawn,
and a dancing fawn.
And there’s also the whistle;
more like a conch shell horn blown at ancient fights.
And the rhythmic Dings of the blinking lights
at a crossing nearby.

But she’s oblivious to my muse.
For she just moves on
Blowing me out of the way
Wish she could stay,
but she’s gone, leaving behind a shuttering station,
and vibrating rails, screeching in her wake.
Just like an ingenious thought, she’s gone,
Caltrain three-seventy-eight.
Great, now I’m both heartbroken and late, but wait
I guess I hear a confession in a diminishing scream.
Or maybe it’s just Doppler.

– Nimit H. Rajdev
Finalized creation on June 05, 2011

P.S.: Yes, I do spend a lot of time at the Caltrain Station, waiting for my train! And it does get boring at times!

On Pointers and References

Caution: This one’s for the programmers. Trust me. 

UPDATE. Why?
‘Coz it dawned on me, the wiser truth
That the sages preached all life,
What are Pointers but clingy girlfriends,
And a Ref but a faithful wife!

Oh come on, look at it this way.
They both seem to always wanna know
Your most updated coordinate.
And while the Pointer can be single, null
Or can simply point to another skull,
Your wife is stuck with you for sure.
Why? ‘Coz she’s your soul-mate!

And when your end is near, your scope is over,
And you’ve got to leave the Stack forever!
Your Pointer, even in a dangling state
Would still keep an eye on your empty estate,
While your Reference, I’m sure, would share your fate
And cease to exist without you.

So as I stared for long, at the blinding screen
And the blinking cursors, two of them!
And sallow warnings
And a blood red segmentation fault,
I lay there, badly wounded by the assault
But then it dawned on me, the wiser truth
In my transient, semi-conscious state,
That I had been reckless at using Pointers,
When it could’ve been Refs. UPDATE!

— Nimit H. Rajdev

Prelude to the poem – “WHAT!!! You don’t write a poem on Pointers! That’s blasphemy. You can’t combine art with coding! As Doctor Who might put it, they’re two pieces of time and space that are never meant to be together!” But that’s what happens when an innocent brain habituated to an unbounded flight of imagination gets stuck up for some time within the spectral walls of tediousness. It waits, obediently, and then all of sudden, breaks free on a new train of thought! For instance, on this perfectly normal day, as I went about my normal routine, a ping from my colleague brought to my attention that I should replace some of the pointers in my code with references. Now a seasoned C++ programmer would get this in a jiffy, but not me, so i goggled, and wikied, and what not, to understand. And guess what, an interesting analogy just binged in my head, and out sprung my poor little mind into the wide open fields of harmless imagination.

Thunder, Petrichor, And oh it all begins!

FIRST WORDS. What about it? Exactly. What is it with the ‘First words’? Why in the heavens does it take so long to get the first word out on the board, and break the resistance, releasing a deluge of thoughts to flow out on an arid piece of a blogger page lying barren since ages! And why in the heavens does it have to be so hard? In fact, why does any ‘First’ have to be so hard? The first shave, the first speech on a stage, the first push-up, the first paddle on the first bike, you get the trend. It’s always this invisible pull preventing the thumping mind from taking that first plunge into the unknown. But we’re humans, aren’t we? We take that plunge, and then this miracle of a brain gets to work, processing information at a breathtaking speed to micro-evolve and adjusts the sails. And before you know, you are halfway across the ocean, and a paragraph away into writing the first piece of blog you resisted for so long, just by releasing those magical FIRST WORDS!

So to the amazingly smart, unbelievably talented and extraordinarily wise reader of this blog, I’d say – this is my first blog of my blessed life, which is kinda obvious, and I’m not sure where the rule book is, so I’d be cruising along like a frantic driver on Indian roads – unrestrained, intuitive and unpredictable! It might well be a bumpy ride, but i do hope every drop plays its part in cultivating a new crop of thoughts on a barren land, arid since a long long time.

P.S. – I didn’t know they had a word for the scent of rain on dry earth. Amazing!