Coincidences

When suddenly you start noticing coincidences, does it mean something?

Let me give you three examples of three recent coincidences, which happened over the last 3-4 days. I am wondering if these coincidences mean something and someone is trying to send me some message?

Red Tulips from the Film Silsila 

The first example of coincidences is about my blog. A few days ago, while searching for a picture in my image archive, I saw a picture of red tulips. It made me think about the well known Amitabh Bacchan and Rekha song from the Yash Chopra film "Silsila". So I spent some time searching for pictures of Tulip flowers that I had taken during my journeys and the next morning, chose three of those images for my photoblog.

After uploading my blogpost with the tulip pictures, I spent some time on internet to search for that Silsila song and watch it

The next day, a professor friend from India, who is visiting Bologna university for a few months, came to our home for dinner. While talking to him, suddenly he started talking to me about the film "Silsila".

Initially I thought that he had seen my photoblog and had seen my post about tulips where I had also mentioned "Silsila". However, after talking with him I realized that it was only a coincidence and he had not seen my blog.

 

The film Silsila had come out 30 years ago in 1981. I thought that it was a coincidence that I had thought of it on the same day and the professor saheb had talked about it by chance.

The James Joyce Coincidence

The second example is again related to my photoblog. Yesterday morning, looking at the pictures I had clicked last month in the northern city of Trieste, I selected three images of James Joyce for my blog.

I hardly knew anything about James Joyce except that he was considered an important figure in the world of English literature. So I checked about James Joyce on Wikipedia and read about his life and how he was forced to live in Trieste.

Yesterday afternoon, while waiting to go out, I switched on the TV and tried different channels. Suddenly I found a journalist talking about James Joyce in Trieste. Again, I was struck by the coincidence.

Importance of Being Earnest Coincidence

Now the third example - Yesterday afternoon while channel hopping, I saw a brief scene from a TV film called "Importance of being earnest", based on the novel by the same name, written by Oscar Wilde. I watched it for a few minutes and then changed the channel.

Today morning, at the website of the magazine Caravan, I opened an article about the review of Amitav Ghosh's new book, it started with the three lines that I had seen in the scene yesterday on the TV:

MISS PRISM: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.

CECILY: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily?…

MISS PRISM: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. (The Importance of Being Earnest)

Reading the dialogue between Miss Prism and Cecily seemed to me so strange, after having seen it by chance only yesterday.

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By itself, each of these coincidences is something small and insignificant. However, this third coincidence made me think of this strange feeling over the past 3-4 days. So, I am starting to wonder - is there something more to these coincidences? is somebody trying to give me some message? if yes, what kind of message?

What do you think is happening? Am I making a mountain out of an ant hill?

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Hindi Blogging and the Webring

Today morning I was looking for new Hindi fonts. I like Susha, it is really easy to use but there are some signs like the "half R" that I can't seem to get. So I was looking for new fonts and discovered a group called webrings, where they have list of blogs in Hindi. Really great. Result, I have started even a Hindi blog on Kalpana - Jo Na Keh Sake.

I am still without a good Hindi font. Perhaps the problem is with my Italian keyboard and probably people working on Hindi fonts make them for English keyboards. Since keyboards don't cost much and next week I am going to be in London, so I will see if I can find a new English keyboard to bring home and then try it for writing in Hindi.

Took some pictures of my son and our dog Brando today. They have come out really nice. One of those pictures is presented below. Having a digital camera is so liberating!

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PS: Over the past few years, Hindi blogging has been a wonderful adventure, I have made many friends and we are a group where people help each other. A friend has given me a programme called Takhti, which makes Hindi typing in Unicode font so much easier. Another friend has taught me some html commands. 

Delhi Blogs and Nostalgia

I was searching for new works of Mukul to add to his page on my website Kalpana. That is how I came across the blog of a girl called Sonal.

 

The pictures of the park over Pallika bazaar parking and CP in Delhi were like long lost friends.

From her blog-links, I went to blogs of other persons. From their links to still other blogs.

 

It is so addictive, this blog-hopping. 

 

Reading about thoughts, poems, stories, feelings of people in Delhi, because I still miss it, twenty years after leaving it. The word "Home" brings back images of Delhi in my mind. Who knows how long does it take to get over the nostalgia of our old homes?

 

I think that the nostalgia thrives on distances and absences. The more internet develops and more people from Delhi will come online, this nostalgia will also become routine.  

 

So many persons talk about their lives on the blogs. Lives after lives after lives. All similar and yet different. Or, I should say, all different and yet similar.

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Writing, Blogs and a Friend's Visit

Last year was really good. Writing my book, working on the web page, months of writing and creating without feeling tired, all the online courses exhibitions, etc. on the AIFO web page ...

 

Then suddenly one day, the energy seemed to disappear. The days passed meaningless. I was Lost in translation, don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds right aboout how I felt.

Now, suddenly this desire to write is back. Not the crazy energy that poured out all the time. More tired energy. Wonder, how long it would last. Had a look at new blog pages at Blogger.com, where Mukul has his blog. I like the colours of Mukul's blog. But I was wondering how many blogs are there about confused thoughts, random thoughts, wandering thoughts, fragments, confusion... we are full of persons, who feel they do not know how to express themselves and to whom! This is what drives most of blogs.

 

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My friend Pam Zinkin was here in Bologna, she left back for London yesterday. It was real fun to have her here in Bologna. I was her tourist guide, taking her around.

It was so good to have someone who is interested in arts and history, and who does not get bored if you talk about museums, paintings and the histories of churches. Most people do not want a real tourist guide, they just want someone to point the "important" things that are worth visiting so that when they go back, they can say that they saw them and show the pictures to prove it. To have guests who are more interested in shopping malls leaves me frustrated. I had a group of Indian students, mostly master courses, PhD students and post-docs, who were like that. Pam was not like that!

Pam is a wonderful person. She used to run the CBR course at London School of Child Health. I went to meet Prof. Pampiglione with her, in his 7th floor apartment that has wonderful views of the skyline of Bologna. They were old friends, were together in Mozambique thirty years ago.

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