An Open Letter To A Friend

My Dear Friend,

Don't bother answering the most boring question of them all - How are you? I already know you are doing fine, we chat occasionally. Unless of course, you are trying to hide the fact that you are doing great. That would be a shame you see, because you would be doing great without involving me.

You must be wondering why am I writing to you so 'openly' even though we interact on a fairly regular basis. Well, first even though it's an open letter, I am not going to tell it's directed to YOU (points finger from the monitor), hence your privacy is safe. Secondly, I think you already know the reason why I am 'wasting a post' by writing this open letter - you asked me to make one of these 31 posts about you!

Now you and me will both appreciate that we are not "BFFs", but we do share a good camaraderie. I apologize I do not know a lot about you, but here's what I know. I come across dozens of people month after month, but you were one of very few who took interest to befriend me (instead of I being the initiator).Well, I won't forget that. Not that I am boring or anything, it's just that I like to keep a low profile.  The reason I am a little afraid to befriend new people is that I am not sure if we will be able to find a common ground to move ahead. But, I am happy we have a number of things to talk about from girls to your cigarette addiction to sucky bosses. You are an interesting person to have a conversation with it. No doubt about that.

You are dirty and lazy and don't give a damn. I like that, because I am also quite similar (although I do give a few damns). Here's another one of my POVs: I think you are a 'potential' drug addict! But I hope that turns out to be utterly ridiculous falsehood. Just be careful mate, I have seen in movies, it's not pretty. You have told me quite a few times you make music, that too not mainstream and I am eager to hear what you make. The creative ones are always my favorite!

Also, I remember that you have made a lunch offer for the second time in 2 months which I haven't honored yet even after accepting. Well, let me tell you, I am going to be all about honor and promises from next month onwards (don't ask me why next month).

We have a discussion pending on your thoughts about the post on my depression. You said you are a silent spectator of my self-apathy.  A number of other people have also empathized but only a few could give some useful advice. I assume you will have some great insights on it.

Hope to meet you in person, soon.

Yours Truly,
RavS

An Open Letter to My Reader(s)

Dear Reader(s),

Let me start by thanking you for reading this blog of mine. You might have been following it from its buzzRSH days, might have just started reading it, or might have read a few post here and there; I tell you what, you matter to me!

Every creative person, genius or not, needs an audience. Everytime I post a blog and share it with you, I wait impatiently for your appreciation, and more importantly, your feedback. That is a stamp that I was able to connect with at least a single person, which naturally encourages me to write more stuffs, to explore more ideas. While I might not have been really creative on this blog, I have been an experimenter and the support- direct or indirect- that I have received from you has been invaluable.

The principles with which I started this blog, stand true even today. My first audience is me, and I am very clear about that. But I can't ignore the fact that you have only grown in number over time, and you have spent at least some of your valuable time reading my posts. And so I must apologise that I have not been consistent and I mean really consistent with this blog. It's not fair either to me as a writer or you as a reader.

Writing is not a child's play. It is easier said than done. Thousands of blogs are made everyday but most of them never get more than a handful updates. Innumerous thoughts revolve around everyone's mind; but to recognise them and to sit and stay with them, to put them cohesively, is matter of practise and discipline. Something that I am still working on.

In my latest endeavour to recognise what's important in my life, I am trying to take out all the fluff out of it. I am leaving Facebook soon, and I hope that I will now be able to contribute more to both my blogs. But it will also create a huge problem, because Facebook was an important medium for sharing all the new stuff. Without Facebook, it is going to be up to you to do the hard work to find out and read all the latest updates.

Personally I make use of RSS readers to automatically get new updates of my own favorite blogs. But I know you don't use it. So, I have (re)activated the "Get email updates" functionality. Please do subscribe to this blog through your email ID.

Your continued support is what I desire. I just wish you could be a little more consistent with your feedbacks. Nevertheless, thanks for what you do! Till next time...

Yours Truly,
RavS

An Open Letter to My Dad

Dear Dad,

Whatever I am going to write here now is really going to be awkward for me. The reason is that, to tell the truth, we have never been really close. I never asked you how was your office today, and you don't know the names of all my friends. But, it is really important for me, that you hear all this from me today.

I have heard, read and seen about the fantastic relationships that various father-son duo share. They are almost like friends or brothers. We do not share that kind of relationship. When we sit to talk, our talks generally revolve around family problems or my studies or something like telephone bills etc. We seldom talk about movies, songs, sports. I struggle to think of one single passion that we share.

But beside all that I can say without a shred of hesitation that I am really proud of you. While I may be a grown up now, physically and mentally, but emotionally I still feel like a child. And as a child I feel protected when you are around. If I screw up something in life, I know that you will be there to support me. If I ever encounter any kind of problem, you may not understand what the problem is, but you will surely help me out in whatever way possible. 

I have been genetically passed a lot of your characteristics from the looks to the physical appearance to the behavior (shyness, anger, laziness!). And some of the things you have taught me, may be not directly but indirectly: faith in God, respect for women, being simple, being humble.

And I wish I could have a number of more features of my dad. I wish I could mingle with the society effortlessly like you, I wish I could be as hard working as you, I wish I could be as empathetic as you.

Yes, there also a lot of things that we do not agree on. And many a times, I thought I had to make compromises just to keep you happy: not being out of home late night, not wearing clothes of certain colors or styles, not keeping long hair etc. etc. I would say it's a generation gap. But I also think that you want me to do them for my own good.

I do think that you give too much importance to what the society thinks of ourselves. And that is one area where our thinking differs. You consider your drinking habit as one single thing that you feel ashamed about. And due to that, I decided long back I will never ever drink in my life.

Everyday I remind myself that I come from one middle class family where people have worked hard to go from where they were to reach where they presently are. Everyone from Papa (Grandpa), Amma (Grandma), to you and mom have worked  tirelessly to build me and brothers.

You and Papa took the responsibility of home even when you were teenagers. And even though you guys didn't complete school education, I would say you have done a pretty damn good job of providing us with whatever that is necessary to survive and a lot more. 

Whether having to wake up very early in the morning in bone-chilling cold to go to work or having to work late night even when you didn't feel well, you guys never complained. And you still had sometime for the family. For you, family always came first.

A lot of things I take for granted. But when I see, other people not having father to support them or their father not being as supportive as you are, I realize your importance in my life.

I feel ashamed that I haven't been as good a son as you have been as a father to me. I haven't shared up your responsibilities. If I had been a better son, grandson and a brother, you would have gotten better sleep at nights. There have also been times where I have pained you from my acts or words, knowingly or unknowingly, and that disgusts me. For all that I want to say sorry to you.

There is this deep desire in the heart that you guys feel incredibly proud of me. Now, I know if I ask you, you would say that "we are already proud of whatever you have done in your life.". But that doesn't satisfy me. I want to see that pride glowing in your eyes.  

I have a lot of dreams. But if I complete this one dream, of making you proud, then I will feel that my life was successful. 

At the last, I want to say one thing which I do not remember, if I ever said to you: I LOVE YOU DAD. You are not my idol, you are not my God. You are someone beyond all that.

And now, that I have said all this to you, I will try to be a little more open with you. Will try to give you more details about my life, and find out more about you. It's a little late to do that, but not too late. Is it?

Your son,

Ravi Indra Davan Singh 

(I always wanted to sign off myself as that! :)

An open letter.. to God (fictional)

Dear God,

How are you? Well before I say anything, I must confess that I was too lazy to write to you, I had to make a sketch, so I asked my friend RavS to write this letter to you. But believe me, the emotions are all mine.

So, what to say.. Matlab, pata nahin kya kahun?

You see, you have given me an awesome life. My friends love me, and though I was abused as a child (thappad gaal pe padte the impression kahin aur aate the); I have got the most loving family in the world. I am the king of my home and my brother and sister have to do whatever I say. What else can I ask for.. Matlab, aur kya maangu?

Bas mujhko ek hi cheej aur de do.. Naukri.. hehe, you thought I was gonna ask for 'Chokari' but that I want 100 times; after all I have to start my own clan. But you see, I want to take retirement soon, from life I mean, jindagi se mera matlab. And before I do that, I want to gather all the worldly pleasures and give all the happiness to my family. And a 'job', doesn't matter which kind, is key to that happiness, I think.

You also know that I am a great artist. But I want to do so much more, wet my feets in those things that I haven't tried before. So, I try a lot of things, dancing, gyming, photography, MBA preparation, GATE preparation, MBBS preparation (my biology wasn't bad), NIFT preparation. And it #includes programming too. I see everybody near me calling himself/herself a 'programmer' and I want to do that too. I am trying my best, just give me some more wisdom so that I can move from C to Java, from CUI to GUI.

But don't get me wrong God. Matlab, mujhe galat mat samjho Bhagwaan .. You have made me an artist. Art is in my blood, and that is not going anywhere. I love to spend late night working on Photoshop. Recently I have also started using Corel Draw and Flash, and then Maya is always there.

And well I have a life of my own. I am grateful to you that you gave me a 24x7 Internet connection. I am currently trying to download the whole of Internet on my new 1 TB hard disk. I don't like disturbance, so I like to keep my door shut. After all, a creative person needs a lot of time alone. Matlab, sab mila jula ke, rachnatmak vyakti ko apne saath kaafi samay chahiye. (XP: yeah what about those 13 hours? )

Oh God, matlab hey bhagwaan, ya allah, waahe guru etc. Why do all my team mates ask me to get the print outs. Am I a fax machine? Sorry, a xerox machine? I contribute so much (PK: yeah, contribution my arse) but still they are not happy. They don't like my awesome ideas. Those lunatics can't even understand my ideas. Why have you given me such an awesome mind when people can't appreciate it?

In veg I like baigan, trishna, torry and kerala. And you know, matlab aur aapko to pata hi hai, Mujhe prawn bhi bhot pasand hai. Maine sabhi tareeke ke prawn try kiye hain. Main sochta hoon kabhi mujhe bhi koi prawn* banana sikha de to majaa aa jaaye. But too much prawn is also not good for health. After all its non veg. Matlab, sab mila jula ke, ye maansahaari hai. Isi liye main share karne me vishwaas karta hoon. People think prawn is not healthy, but well curiosity about things is never unhealthy. 

I like animals too. I just love pussy, cat at my home. I feed it everyday. That to me is the most beautiful thing in the world. That's why I discuss about it all the time. And working with my friend RavS, we have tried to make Bhains and its parts ("aankh", "naak", "poonch", "thann") world famous. But what I like most about it is its gobar. I don't understand why people think of it as a dirty thing. Its just full of awesome minerals and is multipurpose. Just give those idiots some knowledge. Its insulting when they make noses hearing gobar while eating.

Did I tell you about my movie watching habits. Oh sorry, you are omnipresent matlab oh maaf karna, aap to sarvagyaata hain.Well, I have got a lot of movies, and I have always been a sharer so my friends also have them (RavS: Little does he know, I delete them all). But now having so many movies and music, I don't have time to check them all. So, I like to watch specific scenes, sometimes just posters and because of your gifted psychic powers I can tell the whole movie based on that. So, I don't understand why people need to watch the whole movie. Please give those lesser mortals similar powers, so that they also can save time.

Accha ab maang hi raha hun to mujhe ek girl friend bhi de hi do.. Matlab, hain to bhot saari but koi official nahin hai. But she has to be bigger than me. That's why I am not building my body. I don't want to look like a king, muscular terrorist of 1987.

I am an open book. You come, you read, you scribble (RavS: actually you shit) and you go. But people get me wrong, they think I am a bad person. They call me 'jhand'. Yeah yeah, I am 'jhand' but because I want to be human first before becoming superhuman. I am even learning KunguFu for that.

And God I think its high time for me to be the next God. So that people celebrate Christmas on 24th December instead. Just let me know when you are retiring.

OK Happy Birthday in advance. Merry Christmas.

Yours,

Truly Jhand

An Open Letter... to Mr. Kalmadi, President, IOA

Dear Respected Mr. Suresh Kalmadi, 

I am writing this letter to let you know what I think of about this whole CWG issue going on, fully knowing that I may not have the all the wisdom to talk about it, but still having the right to do so, being a concerned Indian. 

First of all, let me congratulate you for staging such a successful (at least for me) Common Wealth Games. I know that this wasn't done because of your efforts only. There was hard work and patience of numerous other people also involved. But since you were the head of this whole project, my first wishes are for you. 

Delhi got the Common Wealth Games 2010 hosting right in 2003 only. But, I was too small/ignorant to know about the significance of that at that time. I only came to notice about it at around 2006, when Indians went to Melbourne CWG to showcase their performance and invite the world to come to Delhi, India 4 years later. I was happy not only because India was staging a grand event, but also because the Government was promising a lot of dreamy projects in conjunction with Games. More roads, more flyovers, newer better buses, expansion in Metro network. Then there was mono rail project, renewing the Ring rail and beautification of whole city in general. And this got me salivating, after all people like me were going to take advantage of this later.But alas, many of these promised things either weren't delivered at all or were under-delivered. Of course, this isn't your fault, I know. 

2 years back, when media suddenly woke up to the reality that people under you were sleeping and working at a snails pace, then only I got to know about the whole issue of things to be done in order to stage the event successfully. But like typical Indians, I was hopeful that we will be able to do everything right at the end. And credit goes to you and other heads involved with the Games, who regularly kept on coming in open reassuring us that everything is fine and everything will be fine. But, things started to look a bit bleak when Mr. Fennell, President of CWG started to express serious concerns over the state of preparedness, there was even talk of shifting the event. And then there was that ugly cold war between you and CWG officials. Thankfully, you got it resolved on time and I felt that everything will be alright. Now I realise that like you, I was also trying to solve the problem by ignoring it. 

Anyway, as the time passed on the media became more and more hyper. Now, I don't watch news channels but the one paper that I zealously read seemed to be hell bent to prove that the Games are over before they even started. The horror news of all things bad started coming in the open everyday. For a moment even I got doubtful about the organization of Games, with deadlines after deadlines getting missed, unusually long rainy season, threat of Dengue and other diseases, bridges collapsing, corruption allegation, officials fumbling with their statements, negative publicity in the international media, athletes refusing to come, countries expressing apprehension over the security issue in the backdrop of a 'small' terrorist incident, people showing lack of interest in the Games, apprehension by sponsors et al. And it was disappointing as well as confusing. Everyone seemed to be against you. But you kept a brave face and refused to stand down till the whole thing was over. I truly respect what you did at that time. 

And finally the show arrived. I haven't had the opportunity to watch too many opening ceremonies in my life, but the one we organized will remain in my memory forever. It was heart warming to see the glory of India been shown in such a fine fashion. The roar of the crowd in the stadium filled my heart (and million others) with pride. And as we usually have, everything was forgotten quickly and temporarily to focus on the good part (finally!). I went to see a few games along with my friends and we had a great time (though we didn't win much!). But, the performance of Indians throughout the Games was exciting to watch. The Closing ceremony too was equally majestic. Now, I wonder, how would all this be possible without we organizing the Games. 

I believe that media has been biased against you. Your have been blamed for a lot of mess that wasn't yours. A lot of things going bad was because of the multiplicity of working agencies who were not ready to work in tandem and maintained a tendency of delaying things till the end. Even your own countrymen went against you because of hearing all the negative things about you. I didn't like you getting booed during opening and closing ceremonies. Thankfully, you didn't show any negative emotion then. 

But, even you will agree with the fact that, we could have done a lot of things better. The budget went to an astronomically limit reaching over 15 times the original estimate. While some of it is understandable, with inflation and procuring better facilities, but mostly money could have been saved with some smart management. It was amusing the hear about spectators being shown 'houseful' signboards but the stadium still going empty. But, you and your team were so busy taking care of million other things. 

And now that the show is over, the real show begins. You are being showcased as the real culprit, and seem destined to be trialed like Kasab. I don't have any special affection for you but I feel you should be acknowledged for what you did and should get a fair trial. If you are proved guilty than each and everyone involved must get a stick. It is so easy to criticize from a distance, but one should not forget that organizing event of such large magnitude isn't a mean task. Being made a scapegoat, is the least you deserve. I don't think you will get another chance, but you tried your best to get 2014 Asian Games into Delhi and are partly responsible for projecting a good image of India and brightening its chances to bid for 2020 Olympics.

I wish you could have resigned just after the Games. Here is wishing you good luck. 

Yours Delhiate 

RavS