जयोऽस्तु ते|

As I have time and again said, I am deeply influenced by the ideologies of Swatantrya Veer Savarkar. The Congress government for some god-forsaken reason try to defame him at the every opportunity they get. Its my honest opinion that the bunch of the so called politicians in Congress, have cumulatively done far less for our country that what this man has done on his own. Its not just about his heroics in trying to fight the British. Its all about the cultural outlook he had. He tried to preserve our language, and culture. He created highly Sanunskrutized words, which are a part of our daily lives now. Words like dooradhwani(for telephone) and Sansad(for parliament) were coined by him. This is what matters.

His writing are deeply influential. Books like "Bharatachya Itihasateel Saha Soneri Pane", his articles and his numerous poems instill the very foundations of patriotism in me. The following poem is a one of my favourites ever.

जयोऽस्तु ते|

जयोऽस्तु ते! जयोऽस्तु ते!

श्री महन्मंगले शिवास्पदे शुभदे

स्वतंत्रते भगवती त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!

राष्ट्राचें चैतन्य मूर्त तूं नीती संपदांची

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती श्रीमती राज्ञी तूं त्यांची

परवशतेच्या नभांत तूंचि आकाशीं होशी

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती चांदणी चमचम-लखलखशी

गालावरच्या कुसुमीं किंवा कुसुमांच्या गालीं

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती तूंच जी विलसतसे लाली

तुं सूर्याचें तेज उदधिचें गांभीर्यहिं तूंचि

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती अन्यथा ग्रहणनष्टतेची

मोक्ष-मुक्ति हीं तुझींच रूपें तुलाच वेदांतीं

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती योगिजन परब्रह्म वदती

जें जें उत्तम उदात्त उन्नत महन्मधुर तें तें

स्वतन्त्रते भगवती सर्व तव सहकारी होती

हे अधमरक्तरञ्जिते सुजनपूजिते श्री स्वतन्त्रते

तुजसाठि मरण तें जनन

तुजवीण जनन तें मरण

तुज सकल-चराचर-शरण चराचर-शरण!

-विनायक दामोदर सावरकर

de-Bearding Me!

(A post of such a nature would have embarrassed a normal person, but I am way beyond that and dont care about what others have to say... so here goes..)

Today I shaved after many days. 15, to tell you the truth. I had grown an astonishing beard, which had been a nightmare, with all the itching and scratching it brings along. Actually what had happened was that my dad had nicked my shaving cream, and gone out of station. I was acting extremely lazy, and couldnt be bothered to go and buy one...

Finally today, I got hold of shaving cream, and so, was able to shave! Anyway, it was an excellent opportunity for me to do some styling with my facial hair.. so i tried various things.. unfortunately, none of them looked that good.. infact i looked like a "bad-man" in all of them...

It was a pain in the ass to shave... The beard had grown so thick, that i had to revert to my hair-cutting machine to first trim it, and then, use the standardised method- shaving creams and razors...

It may have been a boring, long drawn act, of about 45 minutes or so, but in the end, i was happy that all of my beard had gone, and my face was itch free again! No more growing beards... from now on.. shaving takes high priority.. once ever 3 days... or atleast once a week...

Look 1: Pseudo David Beckham Beard type, after a lot of lawn moving and trimming..
Result flop



look 2: french beard look... far worse than any other look...

3.. trying to pull my hair off as im still undecieded about what to do next..

Finally... after much pondering, the standard, clean shaved me..

Chalk It up!!

Chalks, as it stands, are one of the better aspects of life when it comes to attending lectures. This was particularly true, especially when studying in school. The sole reason for its importance: not that its the only thing thats used to write on a blackboard, but for its usage as tiny projectiles, which are commonly used to hit people in middle of the boring,droning and dull lectures.

As it happens, chalk fight was a very common thing back in school. I guess there was not a single day when we didnt have one. Sometimes it even scaled ridiculous proportions. Once while chalk fighting, Somebody hit shraddha Joshi(Wolley) with a chalk. Her first accused was Piyush, who was King of chalk fights!

Wolley:"Piyush, who threw the chalk?"

Parda(piyushs nickname, his surname being Pardeshi):"I dont know, GOD THREW IT!"

Piyush was out of the class for the next few days.

Another time, Shraddha Chitale(Our Marathi teacher) had started a chalk fight in one of our off lectures. She hit a fellow with chalk and told him that someone else hit him.and then there was a chaos as everyone was hitting everyone. Anyway, by this time our chalk throwing skills were as good as the accuracy of a guided missile, so most of them did hit the target, 5-6 cm off scale. When Shraddha Chitale started laughing at us, more then 1 person hit her with the chalk!

In school, chalk was more than a mere projectile. It was a tool for wreaking peoples trousers. You see, we had a distinct Navy-blue coloured uniform trousers on which, the white of the chalk made lasting impressions. It was a pain to get rid of those chalk stains. things like Kik Me and Asshole written on peoples butts(on trousers ofcourse) were a common site. Nearly each and every one (except for the girls-they didnt have trousers :P) had their trousers marked like a minefield with chalk lines.

 Chalk- The nemesis of a silent class

After school, the chalk started taking lower an lower importance. With advancements in teaching like using white boards and those acryllic pens and projectors, the importance of the chalk dwindled, especially when i was studying in UK. it was rare to catch a glimpse of that beloved old friend of mine.

Skipping through the years, we finally arrive at yesterday. One of the more intriguing day in the mundane class life. For once the class sprung to life. There were projectiles flying here and and there. Although most of them were indeed targeted at Divya. See, we(Me, Rajendra, Mukesh and Aakash) have got into a habit of pointing and laughing at Divya if she fails to get a place on the last bench. Rajendra and Divya had a historic rivalry when it came to chalk fight, with both of them engaging in the amorphous wars. Once, Divya, on taking Rajendras' word, pelted me with a few chalks. That's when everything broke loose. Everyone started hitting everyone with chalks! Yesterday, Mohile sir caught of all the people, Vibha throwing a chalk at Rajendra! (That's like saying ki MadB is for a change not doing time pass, but instead doing something constructive when she has off time from all her chores at Mindspark, Baja and what not.) Anyway, after that, for some unknown reason, Pranjali started pelting me with chalks! dunno whats got into her- but yea, she better watch out now! What was funnier was that she hit Anant one from less than 2 feet, it hit him on the head,and because of all the acceleration and momentum it gained from his head, it went and smacked Sumedh in the face! In your face dude!I dont know what to call this...MadB.. help!

But yea... its fun to have fun with chalks.it seriously rocks.. i have never seen girls getting invloved so much with chalks! In school we used to have a fight as girls used to use chalks to write on the board(Mostly, our names in the black list!) But yea, Divya and Pranjali are devils in disguse.Whatever, i just hold my thought to Chalk wars rocks, and its good to be in middle of one, finally after years of wait!! Ay Karamba! thats gonna be rocking!

Whats in a Name?

Growing up as i did, with so many people having the same names, it was difficult, to call each by his real name, and not end up getting mltiple replies. This happens with almost all of us. Thats where the magical words- nicknames come into picture. Most of us end up getting a nickname or two. I have got god knows how many nicknames! but the most prevailant is "Chinya". I guess every chinmay gets called chinya. its the easiest thing to do in marathi. get the first part of the name, and add a suffix -ya to it... so chinmay becomes chinya, manoj becomes manya, rahul becomes rahulya etc etc.

Sometimes nicknames are derived from surnames of a particular person like Joshi becomes Joshya. But more often than not, people are referred to by their surnames. I was almost exclusively called Datar in my school. My cousin, rather than being known as Rohan is known as Soman(Surname) all over.

On the other side of the coin are some weird people who call out by taking the first name, that too formally. Mr. Datar, Mr. Chinmay! i dont think ive ever responded to such things! calling by first name, is OK, but in a crowd may again cause confusion. so nicknames come in handy.

But there are some nicknames which stand out from the everyday, commonly used standard nicknames. Ive known people who have been called some extremely weird things. Things like Chhakkya, dhunganya, kullya! eww! imagine if we apply our preceding postulate of -ya to these words! imagine if some one was called Kullya, he could actually be Kulleshwar!

Some others are totally irrelevent, although more sobre. For some reason or another, people are given some weird nicknames, and surprizingly, they stick! I know some people like that. A friend of mine, Tejas, is called Bidya. another one, Amit is called all over as Bhamtya!Aadinath is called Chaddya! Even stranger is a guy called amey is called as Kadi!Another guy, Rohit is known as Kallu!

Recently, in college, a wave of two superb nicknames has spread. Madhura is now known all over as MadB. Hats off to the person who came up with that! its really different. And Virendra is now being called Veerbhadra!  some macho nickname! (credit for this goes to madb)

College nicknames stick forever i guess. I mean names like NPower, N95, Tatya, Lakshya, Mhais, Actiwate, Mhasoba,Butukya are hard to forget!( these are Neha, Neha, Tejas, Alok, Rohini, Gautam, Rao,Siddhi-Prachi)

Some pranksters, since their school days, have an audacity to even call out their teachers by nicknames. This was extremely prevailant in my school. We used to refer to teachers with names like  wally(short for Walrus), Yam(as in yamraj), Balyaa, Badhya, Hemu, Nago, Kaku etc etc.

Nicknames, i must say have become must! how do you address someone informally otherwise!! Creating them also brings out the creativity in a person! so people, instead of doing stupid things, start coming up with some good nicknames! u can start from me if you want!(and no chini-mini please! its extremely contradictary to what i am..)

बर्फाचे तट पेटूनि उठले

When it comes to Marathi literature, as I have time and again said, I am deeply influenced by the likes of vi va Shirvadkar(Kusumagraj), Baalkavi, Govindagraj, and Savarkar. I dont know why, but for some reason their poetry seems leaps and bounds beyond the normal third grade poetry we get to read now-a-days. Just going through their poems once is sufficient to know what they want to say. Infact the language is so bejeweled that I cannot take my eyes off it, once i start reading. And once read, the content stay in my mind- word to word for an eternity.

I dont know what, but its just the effect. No one writes such poems now, which is a really sad situation, and we have to take the blame for that on ourselves as we haven't read enough of what these great men have written. The best we can get is from Sandeep Khare. He is good, but again, nowhere near to my above quartet. The effect that a "Shravan Masi harsha manasi" or "mangal desha pavitra desha", "jayostute", "anaadi me anant me avadhya me bhala" or "saat" bring out is mind blowing. i get goosebumps every time I read one of these poems. and its not just one type of poems- their poems encompass a large spectrum of human emotions.but the ones on veer-ras are the ones i really love. in that no one can surpass savarkar and kusumagraj...

so to come to the point.. here is another one of my favourites by kusumagraj...

बर्फाचे तट पेटूनि उठले सदन शिवाचे कोसळले
रक्त आपुल्या प्रिय आईचे शुभ्र हिमावर ओघळते!


असुरांचे  पद भ्रष्ट लागुनि आज सतीचे पुण्य मळे
अशा घडीला कोण करंटा तटस्थतेने दूर पळे?
कृतांत ज्वाला त्वेषाची ना कोणाच्या हृदयात जळे
साममंत्र तो सारे, राणीची नौबत आता धडधडते !
रक्त आपुल्या प्रिय आईचे शुभ्र हिमावर ओघळते!

सह्यगिरीतील वनराजांनो , या कुहरातुनि आज पुढे
रक्त हवे जर स्वतन्त्रतेला रक्ताचे पडतील सडे
एक हिमाचल राखायास्तव करा हिमाचल लक्ष खडे
समरपुराचे वारकरी हो, समरदेवता बोलविते!
रक्त आपुल्या प्रिय आईचे शुभ्र हिमावर ओघळते!


खडक काजळी घोटुनि तुमचे मनगट-बाहू घडलेले
कडेकपरिमधील वणवे उरात तुमच्या दडलेले
काबुल-कंदाहार पथावर डंके तुमचे झडलेले
शिवतेजाची दीपमाळ पाठीशी अपुल्या पाजळते!
रक्त आपुल्या प्रिय आईचे शुभ्र हिमावर ओघळते!


कोटी कोटी असतील शरीरे- मनगट अमुचे एक असे
कोटी कोटी देहात आजला एक मनीषा जगतसे
पिवळे जहरी सर्प ठेचणे अन्य मना व्यवधान नसे
एक प्रतिज्ञा, विजय मिळेतो राहील रण हे धगधगते!
रक्त आपुल्या प्रिय आईचे शुभ्र हिमावर ओघळते!
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