The Highway Man

I loved The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes too......

Beautiful Poems......

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost


IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

In A Disused Graveyard

The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say:

"The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

Yet can't help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie.

-Robert Frost

A prize from Coimbatore

I did come back with a prize from Coimbatore- but it reduced to a measely amount of money since it was a team game and had to share it with the other members who played the game!! Now...its on to " I need to study for the fast approaching exams" mood........

Anger is not so good

Anger is not so good for your health! Neither is frustration but these are two such emotions which always seem to be just around the corner. I wonder if it is possible, or if someone has lived with out these two relationship destroyers!! When anger takes over, and that too when you are the kind of person who tries to control everything including emotions like I am, well....you would definetly have a hard time dealing with the bottled pressure.....they just wait to get out- one form or another...usually after about a month, I will start a "huge no holds barred" crying project!! And god of gods, will it be relieving or what?!!!!!

I do miss my parents- my best stress relievers! Mom.......your child is suffering here.....

Coimbatore, Here I Come........

My next trip on "Visiting all the small Indian cities" agenda is to great Kovai, situated at the foot hills of the Nilgiris and the city of Kongunadu. And this time too, like last, is not for pleasure but for brand building......my humble efforts to spread the name of my college far and wide ;)

The purpose? Yet another management fest! I think by the end of my MBA, I would hopefully have seen all the good cities of India, with no money spent on my part. Infact, this time I am definetly expecting some rich goodies as prize and going with this specific mission in mind! After all I have promised my friends that I will be giving them a "Lets celebrate December and the year end" treat and desperately need a source of fund!

Sights and sounds from Orissa

We went to the famous Lingaraj Temple today! I have been wanting to see this place ever since I heard that this is the one true remaining essence of Orissan architecture and it didn't disappoint me at all!! The main temple is surrounded by lots of small ones inside and the towers were magnificent. One of the strange things about this temple is that, the main lord who is supposed to be Siva, is not actually Lord Siva but is half Vishnu and half Siva - Harihara Linga. This is because when the temple was constructed way back in the 11th century, the Jagannath craze had spread itself and the Svayambhu linga that was to be the main diety came to be known as Harihara! The temple is supposed to be offlimits to non-hindus but hey whatthehell....I asked my islam friend who had accompanied me on the trip to pretend to be a Hindu! I quite seriously find this a total nonsense...even back home in Triplicane, Chennai in the Parthasarathy Temple, non-hindus are allowed inside the temple..only not inside the main sannadi! And according to me, that is one of best temples in the world..I have got a personal attachment to it you see! After all I grew up on the four streets and the Iyengar environment surrounding the temple!

We also took lots of photographs! On the way back, we decided to take a bus and was it an experience or what? The conducter was quite pissed off when we told him we wanted to alight well before the place we took the ticket to and any near bus stand! The reason being that my eyes caught a "East-North craft sale cum exhibition" poster on the way!! ;) Had a great time shopping- Infact I have really spent lots of money on stuff I dont think I will need anytime in the near future!! I bought all of them with my future house in mind...after all the present value of the future worth of these goods will be really less than what I will be paying for them if I get them when I do get my own apartment!! Hehehe...and the selfish goose that I am, I didn't get even a single thing for anyone else back home in Chennai or Bangalore! So to wipe off that last minute guilt, I have comforted myself and decided to sacrifice a few of the stuff that I got for my Mom, Sister and Father!

God save me!

Blogging from Bhubaneshwar

Hi all!!! Am blogging from Bhubaneshwar, the temple city and the once capital city of the Kalinga empire and nothing is different!!!!!! Haven't had the chance of seeing the place yet!!

My hopes of visiting Puri Jagannath is dashed...My partner said a strict no because one of the students here warned her about going alone and the menace of young girls getting caught by the villainous guides ........ I was hoping so much to visit Puri and Konark but :( ..never mind!!

My HR paper got selected! Yay!

A year back, I didn't know that a place other than Chennai and Tamilnadu existed! Save for the fleeting trips to Andhra, Goa and Karnataka!!!! Today, barely five months after moving to bangalore my life has become one adventurous journey- I got the opportunity to visit Indore and guess what? Am leaving for Bhubaneshwar tomorrow!!

Yes! Yes! Remember that I talked about writing a HR paper for XIMB? Well....it got selected and we (my partner and me!) have been invited to do a presentation on the topic- "Human Capital Accounting" - still cant believe it!

And the last two days were wonderful- IIM B's annual culturals Vista was the place to be, and I made sure I never stepped out of the campus the whole of last two days ;) The place was so lively, so teeming with life.......wow!!!