… an amalgam of haphazard strokes
Mumbai
I hated the place!
And then I saw Arabian Sea.
And I fell in love…
Politics to me has always been akin to filth. I have never been impressed with anything that has to do with politics. Politics to me, means pointing fingers, shouting at each other, burning effigies, throwing microphones and chapplas at each other in the parliament, wasting the money paid by the tax-payer, sometimes devouring the whole money without any sign of guilt at all and such things.
It seems to me my perception may change, thanks to these guys.
He picked up his pen and began to write.
He thought, in his thoughts he worded his sentences, he added similes and metaphors, phrases and idioms flowed, in his thoughts he read the prose, rewording it, rephrasing it, in his thoughts he had a cynic’s mindset, a reviewer’s acumen to spot flaws, he was his worst critic. He scrambled for pen and paper, sat at the table and nothing! All his thoughts trickled away. The pen was poised over the paper, hanging in mid-air, but the paper remained blank. His mind was void, not even a baseless rambling.
He had words, but what would he do without thoughts? It was not that he lacked thoughts, he had been writing for over a year, but all that had been just incoherent mumblings, giving a proper structure to his ramblings was a fiendish task. He wrote on anything and everything, the canvas resembled an amalgam of haphazard brush strokes by many amateurs, instead of the one masterpiece that was eluding him.
Words deserted him in a surfeit of thoughts. He had a hundred and twenty thoughts, but words were none. The more he thought, the less he wrote. Enough, he said; and stopped thinking. He shut the door, and peeped out at every thought that knocked, refusing entry to all but one. The cacophony subsided, and a soulful rendering filled the room.
He penned the words - He picked up his pen and began to write.
It was him against me, man vs man. Through the corner of my eyes, I saw him, my adversary, smartly dressed in white, sunglasses hiding his expression, licking his lips. He was gaining on me, he was faster than I was, he was stronger than I was. I was out in the open, vulnerable, susceptible, all alone and defenseless but for my trusted sneakers. I spotted safety few yards away. Somehow I had to get there. I was already exhausted, my legs felt as splinters about to snap, even breathing was tiring; I wanted to stop, but I was still not safe. I increased the length of my strides, I used up reserves I never knew existed and ran as fast as my thin frame would allow me. Safety was just a bound away. With a surge of adrenaline, I leaped. First I heard a whoosh, then I tasted the earth, and then I heard the sound of timber cracking.
I looked up and saw the umpire signaling for technological intervention; it was a direct hit.
Update:
The meaning of ‘Kunal‘ is ‘one with beautiful eyes‘ or ‘someone who sees beauty in everything‘. It used to mean ‘Lotus‘ in early Sanskrit, the word ‘Kunal’ was later on dropped from Sanskrit.
King Ashok named his son Kunal after a Himalayan bird which had beautiful eyes.
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Original Post
To,
Anyone who has great searching skills
Anyone who has good knowledge of Hindi
Everyone who is reading this
Subject: Your skills put to test.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I require your skills to resolve a matter that has been pestering me for ages, well almost 23 years to be precise. You would agree that your name is your identity. Your name is your calling card, literally.
My problem is thus, I do not know the meaning of my name - Kunal. I have asked everyone I know. No results. I went through online Hindi-dictionaries, I googled, I went through wikipedia, I even stopped being loyal to Google for a while and searched on Yahoo! too *shudders* You can imagine my frustration when I just keyed in my name on all Firefox-integrated-searches. Although I expected nothing of that futile exercise, but still I went through what was retrieved and I was astounded to find that three pictures have been made by my name! Finally! *sighs in relief* IMDb sheds some light on the darkness shrouding my name. I found that Kunal was the name of a son of Ashoka. But there the trail went cold. No more clues, nothing, zero, zilch, nada (ok, ok I’ll stop!)
So this is my appeal to you all. Help me in finding the meaning of my name!
Thank you,
Kunal
P.S: As soon as I posted this, I found that the meaning of Kunal is ‘Lotus Flower’. At last! 
A search spanning 23 years is over!
Brickbats & Bouquets