हक़ीक़त

वोह देखो चबूतरे पर खड़ी शर्मसार हक़ीक़त
नाकामी की चोट खा सिसकती हकीक़त
थक हार बोह्झिल हो खुद मे सिमटती हकीक़त
हो कर बेजार इस अपने नसीब की बेवफाई से
हक़ीक़ती मुकाम के लिए तरसती बेबस हकीक़त

अरमानो की बंद कोठरी मे पड़ी बदहवास हक़ीक़त
किस्मत के वहशी पिंजरे मे क़ैद हक़िक़त
रोजमरा की हाथापाई से लहुलुहान होती हक़िक़त
छुड़ा खुद को इस कुदरत के दरिंदे पंजे से
हक़िक़त बनने को मचलती हक़िक़त

- गजेंद्र "स्थिरप्रग्य" सिडाना

Of Recession, GDP growth, Inflation and Black Swans

Of late, I have been reading and hearing too much about the recession, the negative growth rate and increasing unemployment. All these developments in the global economy has left all the economists rattled and confused. Some are predicting a double dip recession while others are talking about the recovery by Q1, 2010. All this economic mayhem and the debate following it has left me with many mind boggling questions, which I am sure are going to sound so trivial and unintelligible that nobody would even attempt to answer them. I would be really grateful if someone could help me find answer to these.

Q1) Is the negative growth really bad?

From the past 2 years, journalists across the globe are turning their throat hoarse while bringing out the stories about the negative economic growth rate, fall in GDP and so on. I do see their point but one thing which keeps bothering me is that is it really practicable to have a positive GDP growth rate forever. GDP of a country is is nothing but the total market value of services and goods produced within that country. Consider the scenario that if the GDP of whole world were to always have a positive growth rate. To achieve this, the net consumption of raw materials like iron, cement, minerals and petroleum products would also grow at a similar rate. So I always wonder is really feasible of our tiny planet earth to forever supply the required raw materials at an ever increasing rate.

Q2) Is only the moderate positive inflation desirable?

Sometime back people were real scared first to see double digit inflation rates in most of the economies and then a negative inflation rate. According them a moderate inflation is what is needed for a healthy economy. I am again confused. Consider a basic question related to demand and supply. According to my knowledge the rate of increase production (call it supply) of things has definitely outstripped the rate of increase of market size (demand) i.e. increase in the rate of production is definitely more than the rate of increase of customers (because of increase in population and change in economic conditions).

So according to me if the things are left for free markets (i.e. in absence of central banks and government's intervention) to decide, the natural direction for inflation has to be negative.

Q3) Is a country's higher GDP per capita better for its residents?

I think possessing a BMW or a Merc will not necessarily make a person happy or unhappy. To me it all depends on the reference frame of the person. If a person doesn't possess a BMW or a Merc, he will not be unhappy till the repeated commercials of TV/magazines/newspapers and society brainwash him to believe that being happy and successful means being able to buy a BMW or a Ferrari. My great grandfather never wanted to posses a Porsche because he didn't know about its existence. Probably he was happier with his bicycle.

If my analysis is correct, why ruin the earth due to all this rat race to produce more. Just ban all the damn media houses and their commercials.

Q4) Black Swan or White Swan. About whom we should care more?

After reading Taleb's Black Swan, I am even more convinced that we cannot predict highly improbable events, termed as "Black Swans" by Taleb, though they have a very high consequence. I completely agree with him in all his analysis but again the question is that do we really care of such rare event. May be Tsunami killed over 3,00,000 people in a single assault but if we were to make one choice, should we prepare our self better for terrorist attacks, which happen every now and then or prepare our self for the Tsunami which may NOT come for next 100 years. So I strongly think that the prediction business is very much needed in finance particularly but only thing is that we should not always try to justify our wrong predictions. So indeed we should care more about White Swans and make our economic system robust for them. To me even the current recession is a White Swan only as it was foreseen by many in 2001 itself when Fed reduced the interest rates to zero (Q2 becomes relevant again).

PS: Please see that I am not a socialist or communist. I am a staunch capitalist but I believe in real free markets i.e. markets devoid any external interferences of central banks and governments. Call it Utopia, if you may!!!

Quotes from Douglas Adams

It has been quite sometime since I promised myself to give tribute to a man who epitomizes literary humour. Yes, I am talking about Douglas Adams, the man who gave us the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything . He is one of the few writers whose writing style I adore the most. Others would be Tolkien, R K Narayanan, Samule Backett, Bill Waterson, Scott Adams (joined my favorite list in the past couple of years only) but one blog is too less to write about all of them. In this blog, I am writing only on Douglas Adams and as a tribute to this legen....(wait for it)...dary writer, I am putting few of his famous quotes here:

• Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?
  
  
• If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
  
  
• The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
  
  
• I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
  
  
• Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
  
  
• Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen happens again. All of this, however, doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order.
  
  
• "Life! Don't talk to me about life." (Marvin)
  
  
• "What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue: Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your present circumstances seems more likely, consider yourself lucky that it won't be troubling you much longer."
  
  
• It's funny how just when you think life just can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does. (Marvin)
  
  
• Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it. (Marvin)
  
  
• There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
  
  
• I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
  
  
• In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
  
  
• In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
  
  
• The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
  
  
• You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
  
  
• Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
  
  
• He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
  
  
• Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
  
  
• The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
  
  
• Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
  
  
• The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second-rate technology, who led them into it in the first place.
  
  
• Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash form point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all decide where the hell they wanted to be.

मेरी गाड़ी छुटी जा रही थी

दूर से देख रहा था उसे
पर वो और भी दूर जा रही थी
मानो सीटी बजा बजा कर मुझे चिड़ा रही थी
कोशिश तो की बहुत मैंने उस तक पहुँचने की
पर फिर भी मेरी ट्रेन छुटी जा रही थी|

नहीं मिलेगी वो किसी अगले प्लेटफोर्म पर
यह तो मुसाफिर के दिल ने भी जाना है
पर एक मजबूर मुसाफिर को तो बस चलते जाना है
चाहे गाड़ी छुटने की टीस रह जायेगी हमेशा के लिए
पर अगली ट्रेन पकड़ अपनी मंजिल तक पहुँच जाना है|

गाड़ी को कहा होती है परवाह अधर में अटके मुसाफिर की
उसे भी तो बस बिन रुके चलते जाना होता है
मुसाफिर के लिए छूटती गाड़ी की बैचैनी को भुलाना नहीं आसान होता है
पर गाड़ी को कहा चिंता है उस मुसाफिर की बेचैनी क़ी
उसे तो बस अपने चुनिंदा मुसाफिरो के साथ चलते जाना होता है|

किसी रोज एक दिन जब एक ऐसा स्टेशन आएगा
सब मुसाफिर छोड़ गाड़ी को बढ़ जाएगे अपनी मंज़िल की और
और जब गाड़ी लौटेगी अकेले अपने गंतव्य की और
शायद सोचेगी वो भी उस बिछड़े मुसाफिर के बारे मे
जो शायद चलता उसके साथ अंतिम पड़ाव की और|

- गजेंद्र "स्थिरप्रग्य" सिडाना

साथ के मुसाफिर

चले तो थे साथ बहुत दूर तक
पर अब और दूर जा ना सकेगे
शायद इतना ही होना था सफर साथ में
जो मंजिल की झलक भी पा ना सकेगे|

ओ साथ के मुसाफिर यु ही भूल ना जाना
इन गलियों को जिन पर तू चला था
माना तीन दिन में भूलना तेरी आदत है
पर अपने निशाँ इन रहो पर जरूर छोड़ जाना|

बेखबरी और आवारगी के आलम में
जब भी फ़िर गुजरूँगा उनही गलियों से
देख वक्त के साथ शीण होते उन निशानों को
शायद याद कर लूँगा साथ कटे उस सफर को|

- गजेंद्र "स्थिरप्रग्य" सिडाना

Into the Wild Again : Trek to Brahmagiri

Having done small treks quite a number of times in past few days, I was looking for some "real" trek from quite some time. Last "real" trek I did was "Kudremukh", with the memory of all the horrible leeches and slippery terrain and what not. So when Arun asked me if I wanted to join for a trek to Chembra peak, I immediately agreed but was skeptical that it could be a bit too easy (another one day trek). After some discussions we arrived on a consensus for Brahmagiri (located near Coorg). Brahmagiri had been on our radar for quite sometime but somehow it didn't materialize so far. As always happens for any of our trek, some people joined in at last moment and some ditched, effectively leaving a group of six people just like last time. Out of these six three of us (Arun, Nidhan and I) were also part of the group that went to Kudremukh while three new persons (Shruti, Tejal and Ravindra) joined us. As expected Nidhan's fascination for the name Ravi made him really happy when Ravindra joined.

After all the preparation was done (which was not so difficult this time given our prior experience), we started from KSRTC Mysore Satellite Bus stand for Gonikoppal. We reached there at 4:30 am in the morning and had to wait for half an hour to take the bus for Virajpet, where we had booked the guest house. We relaxed there for couple of hours and had some heavy breakfast. At around 9:00 am Arun, Nidhan, Ravi and I (Gajendra) left for forest officer's office to seek permission for trekking whereas Shruti and Tejal stayed at Guest house. We were ready with the permissions and a guide by 10:30 am. So we started our journey for Irupu falls (the first stop for us). We stayed there only for 15-20 mins and then started our exciting journey for the peak.

The initial plan was to reach the mid point by 1:00 pm, have lunch and then reach the guest house near Nirmala peak by evening 4:00 pm and then visit Nirmala peak. We planned to go to Brahmagiri peak next day morning. The reason for this relaxed planning was that Arun told us that climbing Brahmagiri peak is very difficult (with elevation of 75 deg in last half km) and only 5 out 25 people from STI could make it to the peak, when they visited couple of months back. But this wasn't to be the case.

Thanks to the excellent group we had become, the time just flew by. We reached the mid point much before we had planned, ate some stuff and started for the forest ranger's guest house. We reached there at 2:30 p

m much before our own expectations. We relaxed there for sometime and by 3:30 pm we thought we had enough time to go to Brahmagiri peak and return. So instead of going to Nirmala peak, we directly started for Brahmagiri. Since till this point only there is deep forest and abovethis there are grasslands, we were worried a little about sun. I wished that if there were few drops of rain, just enough to cool the weather but yet not make it slippery, it would be great and there it was. It seemed like god had all of a sudden decided to consider very few good deeds we had ever done and reward us for it then and there itself. The moment we started, those wonderful drops full of life and energy were waiting for us.

The weather was so good and atmosphere was so full of pure oxygen making our oxygen deficient lungs so elated that not remembering our trekking anthem "Run Maadi Run" was impossible. So Nidhan and I decided to run a bit and soon left other four far behind. By the time we realized, we had already taken a wrong trail, which led us at the peak of another hill (Brahmagiri was still visible far away) with the descend that was so steep that the moment we looked at it we were sure that we were on the wrong trail. The reason being that if this were the correct path, its unlikely that even 5 out of 25 could make it to the top. Somehow we managed to descend and then ascend again to reach on the right trail leading to the summit of our ultimate destination, the Brahmagiri peak.

We looked at the watch and it was 4:23 pm. Run Maadi feeling was still so prevalent in our minds that Nidhan set a target of 4:45 pm to reach the peak whereas I set the modest target of 5:00pm. Surprisingly, what was thought to be so difficult, we could do in 12 mins and we were on the peak by 4:35 pm itself. After about half an hour, we saw the signs of our guide and other four companions, who also climbed the peak without too much difficulty. Reaching the peak was a feeling which completely overwhelmed us and we just rejuvenated at the thought having achieved what we set out for.

Though we wanted to stay longer, we had to start our return journey at 5:30 pm as it was getting dark. While descending, I was thinking that this trek was pretty easy when compared to Kumara Parvata or Kudremukh. In KP, it was the camping in the night which gave us the thrill whereas it were leeches which made our trek to Kudremukh so memorable but there was no such thing till now in this trek. It was more or less a simple beautiful trek for 12 km upwards which we easily finished running, singing and eating. Here also it seems god was just in mood to grant even smallest of my wishes. As it got a bit dark, our guide pointed out a group of four wild elephant about two hundred metres away. Knowing that elephant has a very strong sense of smell and hearing, we started walking as quietly as possibly. We had passed only a hundred more metres, we saw one more elephant again couple of hundred metres away. It was still okay till I noticed it moving and every one was dumbstruck. Every could feel the adrenaline rushing through there body. Luckily the elephant turned and went away from us. So we were all relieved and I thought that all is well that ends well but that was not all.

We had barely walked another half a km and reached near a stream, when our guide stopped us and told us that he had just now seen a tiger crossing our trail. Probably the cat might have come out to drink water from that stream. He showed us a very fresh tiger pug mark and we could still smell a typical smell (zoo kind) probably meaning that the big cat was still around. The thought of this itself passed shimmers through our spines. All of us seized talking, singing and even would have seized breathing also if it were in our hands. Thankfully our preparation was thorough and we had good enough number of torches and our guide was very experienced, which helped us find our way back to the guest house through the jungle. We all breathed a sigh of relief when we entered the concrete walls of the guest house, safe from any wild animal.

We recovered from our thrills and then decided to cooksomething. We prepared noodlesand scrambled eggs with bread, which tasted excellent after the days hard work. Finally, we decided to have bonfire despite of the fear of wild cat still reigning in our minds. We sang, shared jokes and had some excellent time around the fire. As expected, Nidhan didn't miss any chance to pull Ravi's leg. After an hour or so we all slept only to wake up next day.

In the morning, we made some excellent tea and scrambled egg as breakfast. In the morning also Arun spotted a wild elephant just 10m away from him. We wanted to go to Pakshipatalam to do some bird watching but later decided against it. So we started our journey to base in Virajpet, where we reached by 12:00 pm. Since we still had sometime, we decided to go to Rajiv Gandhi National Park at Nagarhole where we saw some deer, elephants, bison etc. We started our return journey from Gonikoppal. Just like my past experiences, again I was amazed by the hospitality of rural Karnataka. While sitting in the bus, those two days were still flashing before my eyes again and I was feeling a bit sad that this remarkable journey was coming to an end. On my way back, my feelings could probably be best summarized by Lord Byron's following lines:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more...

शायद इस रात कि सुबह नहीं।

दूर तक फैला है अँधेरा
रौशनी क्यों नजर आती नहीं
क्या मीलो लंबी है यह सुरंग
जो तारों कि भी झिलमिल नजर आती नहीं
कहते है रात के बाद दिन आता है
पर शायद इस रात कि सुबह नहीं।

व्यर्थ ही चला जा रह हूँ मैं
कहा है जाना पता नहीं
थका हारा हूँ मैं कब से
कोई आश्रय क्यों नजर आता नहीं
कहते है रात के बाद दिन आता है
पर शायद इस रात कि सुबह नहीं।

थकी है जगी है आंखें बहुत देर से
पर नींद फिर क्यों आती नहीं
गुजर गया है तूफ़ान
पर करार दिल को क्यों आता नहीं
कहते है रात के बाद दिन आता है
पर शायद इस रात कि सुबह नहीं।

कहते है जिन्दगी में सब कुछ है
पर बात इसमे क्यों नजर आती नहीं
ऐसा लगता है जीवन बेवफा है
तो मौत फिर क्यों गले लगाती नहीं
कहते है रात के बाद दिन आता है
पर शायद इस रात कि सुबह नहीं।

ख्वाब जो ख्वाब में भी ना आया

किसी रोज़ खवाब में एक हसीं महफ़िल सजाई थी
आयेगे वोह एक दिन इस महफ़िल में ज़रुर
बस ये ही सोच कर ना जाने कब तक पलकें राह में बिछाई थी

चांदनी को भी बुलाया था सामियाने और रजाई भी मंगवाई थी
खूब बंधेगा समा जब आयेगे वोह
बस यही सोच कर जाम की प्यालिया भी भरवाई थी

किया इंतेज़ार बहुत पर उन्होंने ना आने की कसम खाई थी
बहुतो आए और जाम के प्याले खाली करचले गये
पर राह त्कते हुमने एक बूद ना होट्टो पर लगाई थी

इंतेज़ार करते करते पता ना चला कब रात ख़तम होने आई थी
व्यर्थ था ये इंतेज़ार यही सोच कर चल दिया घर की और
घर पहुँचता उससे पहले ख्वाब मेरा टूटा क्योंकि भोर होने को आई थी

- गजेंद्र "स्थिरप्रग्य" सिडाना

From Economic Gloom to Economic Doom

Its been so long since I wrote anything on my blog apart from poetry. So I thought I will take a break from my poetry (which is anyways not so great that anyone is ever going to miss it if I did not write more) and write something about the job cuts (over 80,000) which has happened over the last two weeks. This particular news has disturbed me much more than any other news of past few days. Not that I didn't abhor the attacks on women in Mangalore pubs or that I didn't hate the grim response of Pakistan to the proofs provided by India, its just that this particular news forced me to question the wisdom of the very people whom I always considered as the smartest people around.

Let us do some analysis of the issue. Open any business newspaper and the first thing you will notice is that company XYZ announced 10,000 job cuts owning to bleak consumer spending forecast for next year or company ABC announced 15,000 job cuts to cut down the operational cost and boost up the profits. A close look at the solution used for a bleak consumer spending will simply reveal that by firing people companies are themselves making the future even bleaker. Say, company XYZ fires 10,000 people because it thinks that demand will go down next year but by firing 10,000 people isn't it aggravating the problem by reducing the purchasing power of 10,000 families (or roughly 40,000 people assuming avg. family size to be 4)? So over that past 1 year, the corporate America has simply pushed out 2.3 mn families (roughly 1 crore people) out of the consumer segment. Just to make the things worse, it will further create a panic among the people who have a job but will try not to spend on anything non-essential so that they can survive the bad times in case they also lose their jobs.

Now let us look at the problem from companies point of view. They claim that they are reducing the headcount to reduce their operational expenditure. I still wonder if it is really going to solve any purpose. Open ANY companies' financial statement, you will notice that employee costs are hardly a fraction of overall expenditure. So even a 20% reduction in headcount won't do any good to the company. Yesterday only in Economics Times I found the financial results of following companies and I am putting the expenditure numbers and employee costs numbers to just prove my point typically how insignificant the employee cost contribution is to the total expenditure. Though the table below shows only Indian companies and were profitable in 2008 but I am assuming that same pattern will also hold true for US companies and the cost split will remain more or less similar even for a loss making company. The companies I have mentioned below belongs to diverse sectors like Infrastructure, FMCG and Electronics etc, which means that my hypothesis that normally contribution of Employee costs to total expenditure of a company is valid across the sectors:

Company name	Total Expenditure 2008 (in Lakh INR)	Employee Costs 2008 (in Lakh INR)	Other expenditure (general/administrative expenditure) 2008 (in Lakh INR)	Ratio of Employee Cost to Total Expenditure 2008 (in Lakh INR)
GMR INFRA	67,136	7,476	7,672	0.111356053
Refex Refrigerents	1,718	56	322.62	0.032433062
Bartronics India Ltd.	10,915.02	646	1005.85	0.059181751
Daawat LT foods ltd.	23,916.87	583	3631.4	0.024370246
Selectron EMS India Ltd.	3,800.67	173	596.03	0.045489348

So looking at the table above, it is clear that even if these companies were to fire say 40% of their staff to save costs, they can hardly save say 4.5% of the total expenditure which, according to my opinion, can easily be saved by reducing the next column i.e. general and administrative expenses.

Now going a step further, a keen observation at the staff fired will reveal that these jobcuts are mainly for the people at lower section of company's hierarchal pyramid who are anyways not paid much. So for example, Bank of America announcing a job cut of 35,000 people over the next three years is a outright foolishness which they might regret once the markets pick up again. To prove my point, I will use some real statistics and few assumptions. My assumption is that people being fired mainly belong middle level management to employees who work at the lower level positions. I will assume that the average expenditure Bank of America incurs on these 35,000 employees is 100,000 USD per year, which is indeed a very liberal assumption cosidering that average salary of people passing out from HBS is roughly 100,000 USD per year. So the total cost savings by firing 35,000 employees over three years will be roughly 3.5 bn USD over three years. So yearly savings are roughly 1bn per year. Now how does that compare with the total salary offered to the top people of the company, I putting the following table from Bank of America's 2007 annual report:

Name	Base Salary ($)	Cash Incentive ($)	Restricted Stock ($)	Total Cash Incentive & Restricted Stock ($)	Stocks Options (#) shares	Value of stock options (as of end 2007)
Kenneth D. Lewis (CEO)	1,500,000	6,750,000	11,750,000	18,500,000	333,333	13333320
Joe L. Price	800,000	3,245,000	3,955,000	7,200,000	166,667	6666680
Amy Woods Brinkley	800,000	3,245,000	3,955,000	7,200,000	166,667	6666680
Barbara J. Desoer	800,000	3,245,000	3,955,000	7,200,000	166,667	6666680
Liam E. McGee	800,000	3,700,000	5,000,000	8,700,000	208,333	8333320
Brian T. Moynihan	700,000	3,310,000	3,990,000	7,300,000	166,667	6666680
R. Eugene Taylor	800,000	3,700,000	5,000,000	8,700,000	208,333	8333320
Total	6,200,000	27,195,000	37,605,000	64,800,000	1,416,667	56,666,680

The table above shows that only top 7 persons of BoA were given total benefits of about 112 USD at a time when the turbulent environments were approaching. It wouldn't surprise me if top 1000 people in the organization were given total benefits of say around 1 bn USD (though I must admit these emoluments are very less when compared with some of the other CEO of companies of equal size). The table on the left shows the highest paid CEOs of 2007.

That shows how irrational it is to cut jobs to reduce the costs specially the people whose costs hardly have any impact on the company's balance sheet. I am sure these kind of actions will push not only the company but also the whole economy from gloom to doom.

And he left me.....

I don't even know for long he was right here
Sitting with me or within me
For long he stayed in my eyes and ears
waiting for me to wake up and wipe his tears.

He knew he could never become real in daylight
So he made all his attempts to disappear
Now and then he woke me up in a restless night
As if he was having pity at his and my plight.

I was too adamant not to let him disappear in disguise
Since I didn't have the heart to see him leave
Without waking up I pressed the snooze probably twice
So that I could hold him a bit longer in my sleepy eyes.

I relentlessly persuaded and tried to stop him
I shuddered and sweated from the efforts
But he, my dream, was a creation of my own whim
And at dawn he left me alone when the light was still dim.

- गजेंद्र "स्थिरप्रग्य" सिडाना