I like the company of intellectual people. I like it even more to surround myself with folks of spontaneous wit and humour.It's always usually anassault of broadcast of waves of the vocal chords of varying wavelengths .Sounds encompass me in monolithic proportions whether it's when I am just sitting in front of my office PC , sipping coffee with colleagues or just indulge in some small talk post lunch .

The lift lobby of our floor in our office is our favourite hangout, where we coup up with our coffee mugs and indulge in incessant conversation, discussing cars , politics , movies and, occasionally getting diverted by the sight of some pretty women walking up from the entrance and far away to other block , pretty much to our disappointments. But then our conversation only becomes more animated. The strong double layered window glass in the lobby prevents our noise from contributing any iota to the pandemonium of traffic that runs up and down the flyover in front of the office complex.

Then later we dutifully convene up for lunch mostly discussing politics while having food. I have been placed strategically with just my project mates all around in my workplace cubicle so , most of the mono saccharides earned from the lunch or the earlier cup of coffee is fully spent discussing matters of work , which involves most often repeating things again and again.

However when I return home it begins in the form of never ending saga of woes, revenge and gross humour from the idiot box in the form of soaps, supplemented by some behavioural analysis of the characters of the show , by my parents. Streams of FM through the slender wires of earphones to put myself to sleep and during weekends it's ganging up again, travelling up by the local with my mates to my mate's home to play some cricket. Well, we play some and talk some!

Man is a mysterious creature and any sense by which God had attempted to portray by providing this aptitude of thought, language and expression to human beings is even more mysterious. Perhaps he would have hoped that we would utilise these and realise higher truths and propagandize it to our peers.But only to find out we have ended up using them for all wrong reasons.We create thoughts and conversation to establish self superiority and survival and to satiate our ego.Only when we exercise moments of silence and focus our senses to the things around us the we realise the empty vessel inside imbibes things like a dry sponge drawn to water.

Nowadays I sometimes withdraw myself to a lone moment in the lift lobby for a few minutes, me and my mug of coffee alone. I gape at the same flyover , but only it doesn't look like a pandemonium anymore. To look at the multitude of cars,two wheelers and buses, to look at the peeping rooftops of other building complexes buried amidst a surprisingly thick spread of coconut trees, an occasional spice jet , kingfisher or an indigo flying low catches my view, I wonder how pilots land their planes precisely with still some hundreds of feet of altitude to lose.

In the 'room with a view', I witness the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan slowly becoming cosmopolitan from the lift lobby.

And when I travel by local train, for the weekend rendezvous, I sit by the window side , feeling the glowing warmth of the late afternoon sun that seeps through the windows, listening to the music the train wheels make with the sleepers and the occasional sound of fury underneath when the tracks are switched.

My parents had gone for a long trip out and after a initial few days felt I realise the house remains mute, without life . I come out and climb up my terrace, it is illuminated with the penumbra of the arcs of the streetlight . I lie down, listening to the soft rustle of the leaves , muffled voices of people returning late home from work, talking on their cellphones , the occasional dog barks and a very distant sound of the horn of the diesel engine chugging away some south bound express along the lengths of the GST.

High and very high above the stars invite me to play hide and seek , them and their faint light that had set towards reaching here perhaps thousands and thousands of years ago. A good old companion, much nearer to me bids adieu to her wandering guests and glow with a smile as if prophesying "there is much much to it all which is beyond the realms of your human mind".

I nod off , blanketed by the sounds and silence of the night.