"if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." -Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence(2003)

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Regardless of where you stay, there are some sounds that you just cannot get to hear outside of your home.
being in this "situation" for quite some time now, i realise that there are quite a few of them that i miss on a regular basis.

So here they are, in no particular order.

    • Leaves rustling with the wind on a lazy Sunday afternoon (during winter, natch)
    • Night-watchman's stick hitting the ground during unearthly hours
    • A car's reverse-horn piercing through the still of the night (i never thought i'd miss this)
    • The different sounding horns of trucks,the mechanical bells on cycles and the squeeze horns on rickshaws
    • Faint sound of far off trucks passing through the streets late in the night
    • Shehenai playing on the loudspeaker of a near-by marriage hall / bands playing tunes of totally unrelated Bollywood numbers with meticulous attention to detail
    • Pheriwalas shouting out 'bhaajiiiiyaa ...' or 'paaeepaarr ...' every minute as they pass your lane roaming the streets
    • VividhBharati's jingle and the announcements of their RJs (we can call them that, right?) in their proprietary, monotonous voices
    • Bangles clinking as the womenfolk go around doing their housework
    • Stray dogs/cats barking/mewing away to glory in the middle of the night
    • dialogues from afternoon soaps coming from 5 different directions (the same one) other than your own TV set (especially when you are trying to concentrate on something)
    • unoiled, heavy iron gates/steel almirahs creaking while opening and closing
    • ...

Your mileage may vary, of course. Do you miss any sounds from your days of yore?
Do let me know in the comments...

||श्री ||

Welcome, reader!

Some FAQs regarding this latest initiative...

Why?
i have been writing even before i started blogging. So i am certain that this ...writing, i mean ...is not going to cease anytime soon.

Why now?

after dabbling in blogging for quite some time, i was exasperated by the limitations.
i signed up on blogdrive for free blog services. it was great at that time. i could build and tweak my designs, and all went well for some time. but they have limited file space and they don't allow deep linking.
a couple of years ago, I got a domain and the host offered TypePad services for free. But I found it quite tedious to update the designs. Maybe it was just me. so i switched to WordPress. the same story repeated. basically, I refuse to learn php. the blog is still there, but i stopped updating it a long time ago. I would rather host my own blog in Roller on JBoss off my home machine, if it were not for greedy ISPs who block all incoming ports.

Why this?
Thankfully, i found blogger that conveniently meets my requirements.
I can embed flickr, twitter, and whatever else is on its way that i may find myself signing up for. but most importantly, it has indic transliteration.
(The comments page is a little ugly and needs work, so maybe i'll have to look into that.)

What's in a name?
...
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Juliet not withstanding, for lack of imagination, i am calling this place wasabi.
it would, might as well, have been foo, bar or foobar, but i am trying to learn Japanese at the moment, and also recently happened to taste wasabi. to say that the flavour was weird is an understatement. (maybe, so is my blah).

What about?
ah! the $1000,000 question.
frankly, i am not sure. it will all be blah (as this post) which is what life is, anyways.

How often?
"उसका एक सवाल, मेरे दो-दो जवाब| एक सवाल, दो-दो जवाब| सवाल-जवाब, सवाल-जवाब, सवाल जवाब... चुप| लम्म्म्बी खामोशी|"
mostly, my posting frequency will also follow salmaan's dialogue, particularly the end part. :)

any more questions, let me know in the comments, and i'll be happy try to answer.

That's all folks!

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Me Me Me. ... Me Too

NY, United States
--"I have the simplest of the tastes and I am always satisfied with the best!"--
my photos on
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