जो हम पे है गुज़री

करीब साढ़े तीन सौ नंबरों की मेरी ज़िंदगी

मेरे वाकिफ, मेरे दोस्त, मेरा काम, मेरे इश्क़

कुछ पुरानी चिंगारियाँ, थोड़ी ठंडी पड़ चुकी राख़

कुछ तस्वीरें, कुछ नज़्में, कुछ ग़ज़लें

मेरे मनसूबे, मेरी नाकामियाँ, मेरी कोशिशें

सब खो गया है, मेरा फोन चोरी हो गया है

वो बेवजह के मेसेज, वो बेमतलब की बातें

वो मिस्सड कॉल की दलीलें, वो इंतज़ार की रातें

वो टॉक टाइम खत्म हो जाने का बहाना

वो खान मार्किट में गुज़री शाम का ज़माना

वो जो जागा था अरमान मेरे दिल में पुराना

अब वो भी सो गया है, मेरा फोन चोरी हो गया है

कुछ नंबर फालतू थे, कुछ ज़रूरी थे, कुछ ऐसे ही

कुछ ज़बरदस्ती दिये गए, कुछ ज़बरदस्ती लिए गए,  

और एक खास नंबर था, खूबसूरत पहाड़ी झरने सा

बड़ी मुद्दत से बड़ी शिद्दत से, जिस पर इरादा था कॉल करने का,

वो भी सोचती होगी सब मर्द एक से होते हैं इस जमाने में

मेरा स्टैंडर्ड लो हो गया है, मेरा फोन चोरी हो गया है  

मेरी बेटी की तस्वीर थी एक पुरानी उसमें

नज़र आती थी मेरी गुड़िया की नादानी उसमें

जब तक थी वो तस्वीर मेरे फोन में महफ़ूज

मेरी उम्र नहीं बढ़ती थी, मैं कब से जवां था

नहीं रही वो तस्वीर तो अचानक कद मेरी बेटी का

बड़ा हो गया है, मेरा फोन चोरी हो गया है ।

Need To Please

It happened recently when one fine day I woke up and decided to become a stand up artist. Well actually, since I was really bad at singing and all other performing arts, I had no other option when it came down to dealing with my NPS or Need to Please disorder.

Yes, my fellow stand up artists, we all are suffering from this mental disorder at some level.

I did not know about stand up comedy and I am sure I still do not know anything about it. As far as my understanding of last three months of this rawest of art forms is concerned, it's a combination of foolhardy and tomfoolery.

I am sure we all get funny ideas in our heads but whats funny to you may not be so funny to everybody. People laughing at something has no logic or pattern to it. 

So it got me thinking, what makes people laugh. 

People laugh if someone slips over a banana peel or trips over any other thing and falls down. It's an accident but somehow people think that its funny. 

You will find hundreds of videos on YouTube showing people falling down the trees, being chased by animals, their balls being crushed basically nightmares for the persons going through that ordeal, but you will find hundreds and thousands of views for those kind of videos.

http://youtu.be/GcuB6ce3EWM

Because it is funny. Why? No idea. So what do I do to make people laugh ? I need to do that. It's therapeutic for me.

Simple. Just go out there and make a fool of myself. That will make them laugh. But it cannot be an accident happening on the stage, so I have to describe any other kind of anomaly happening in my life to them. 

I did. And people laughed. I poured my heart out to them about my personal life, my appearance, my lineage, my fears, my guilt and even my pathetic sex life and they laughed. And believe me I traded up.

However, it is not that people only laugh at other people's misery. If you are a sport or have an extended happy hours at bars, people will laugh at anything. Even their own miseries.

Political and social hypocrisy, current affairs or news, anything that concerns our lives can be a subject of a stand up act.

And it came to me while performing one day, its the honesty of the story that makes people laugh. If it is true it will be funny. If people think its true it will be funny. So if you tell a story and people buy it, its funny.

There were days when my jokes/stories were followed by pin drop silence. It was very frustrating to me in the beginning. But now I take it as if my Doctor treating my Need to Please Disorder missed an appointment.

So here I am with 40 years of life stories to be told. And trust me its all funny. And that makes me very funny.

For my daughter on her birthday

When you were born I had no doubt in my mind what I was going to name you. I had thought about it. So I named you Kashni (ਕਾਸ਼ਣੀ). It's a Punjabi word. It means sky-like. Somebody once told me that children tend to acquire the traits of the name they are given. I really never bought this idea as the meaning of my name is King.

So sky-like could be endless (असीम), pure and constantly evolving like a painting that is being painted by an unseen artist. And you turned out to be exactly as your name suggested. 

Today you are 15 years old. I wish I could rewind the time and just live some of the moments of our lives together again and again. I can never forget the first steps you took in front of me and I love it now when you mildly suggest with your eyes what kind of shoes I should buy for myself.

I had this silly wish when you were small. I used to see little girls throwing tantrums and twisting the arms of their fathers and manipulating them into buying them ice creams, toys or whatever they wanted. I wish you had done that too. Even yesterday when we were looking for a dress for you there was this little girl who was crying her heart out for something she wanted and her father was trying to console her and was doing miserably.

We both saw that and looked at each other and smiled. I understood in a second that you had that same wish too. But you never ever asked me for anything. May be you understood, I do not know how, that I could not give that thing to you at that time.

Today you sort of fulfilled that silly wish of mine and made me search for the tickets of a movie that were next to impossible to get. You made me visit various cinemas but to no avail. So in the end you made me promise that we will watch this movie on your birthday.

I wish you could do that when you were two years old and I could feel like a King as my name suggests. But a King is a King no matter how old his princess is. You are my Princess Kashni and I am your father. The King of all cinemas.

Happy Birthday my child. God bless you.

Ctrl + a + Del: A guide to making small new beginnings daily

Computers were invented and developed by humans and are a sort of miniature versions of human brain.

 

We humans have the tendency to imitate ourselves in whatever we invent or build.

 

So computers are no exceptions. A computer works the same way most human brains do.

 

Simply put, it stores the information it is fed and retrieves that information on command.

 

Obviously, the computers are not as sophisticated an information storing and retrieving machine as a human brain.

 

Computers have limitations on how much data they can store. And depending on their configuration, the time taken in retrieval of that data also varies.

 

On the other hand, the human brain has no limitation on information storage capacity and of course it all comes back to us faster than the speed of thought.

 

In fact, more often than not, humans are not able to set limits to the amount of information stored in their brain or choose that information.

 

Ironically, in the computers that limitation is set by humans according to their needs.

 

But we are unfortunately not able to do that for ourselves most of the time.

We tend to store unnecessary data or information in our brains and it affects us the same way it does a computer. It slows us down.

 

So as you all know very well that it is quite easy to get rid of unwanted and redundant information from a computer, resulting in a fast machine.

 

BUT, it seems almost impossible to remove any information from our brain. No matter what we do or where we go the old information just keeps coming back like a nightmare and with a lightning fast speed.

It is common that we forget things which are important. We have Things To Do Today  lists, alarms on our mobile phones, pop ups in our e-mail accounts and still we forget "important things" to do.

 

Then why is it so that we are not able to get rid of the unwanted, unpleasant, unnecessary information from our brains?

 

Do we have a choice in that?

 

Have we already exercised that choice?

 

Are we deliberately choosing to forget the important things and keeping the redundant things stored in our brain?

 

The answers to these questions are also there with all the other unused information in our brains. Just need to dig up those files and use that information.

Wait for the book………….its coming up……………..this centenary.

Witness to Life

I have this thing about watching a movie alone in a theatre, i.e. without company, or a play or going to a concert alone. I just can’t. I have tried it several times and that has spoiled the most wonderful movies/plays/concerts for me.
It is silly really. I have almost hoped that the movie is not too good if I am watching it alone in a theatre. What would I do if there is a great joke and I want to laugh my guts out. If there is a song so melodious that I am tempted to hum it along. I just can’t do it if I am alone. Nobody can. It just feels insane to me, not to mention to the people sitting at the seats beside you.
It seems so trivial but it isn’t. Really what would you do?
Imagine yourself sitting in a dark theatre without any company and watching a movie and enjoying it, laughing uncontrollably, getting to the edge of your seat if it's a thriller and for that matter crying at an emotional scene (a form of entertainment for a big population) with a hoard of strangers sitting beside you. Can you imagine that? Well, I can’t.
The choice of seat plays a very important role in this business of watching a movie alone. I usually book my tickets online and it gives me the opportunity to select my own seat. And if you are to watch a movie alone, it is but natural that you would try to pick an aisle seat.
Beside the fact that you are alone, you do not wish to spoil seating arrangements for some family but more importantly for the reason of some stranger coming up to you and while asking/reminding you of being alone, asks you to move a seat or two and “adjust”.
There is a flip side to it though (I mean the aisle seat). Because then person or a party sitting beside you knows for a fact that you are watching the movie alone. And God forbid if you are too fast or too slow to understand a joke and you laugh a bit too soon or wee bit late, the whispers and giggles will be very suggestive.
There can be several reasons why you have to watch a show alone. Let’s see: You are single for one (due to number of reasons), you have had enough of the dating scene, and all your friends are married.
So basically you are watching the movie alone due to lack of company. And even if you are so lucky to have single “friends” like yourself (Facebook friends not included), it is quite a task to choose one for the movies.  
Gender is an important factor while choosing someone to take along. It is very complex choice to make.
Take my example, I am a heterosexual male and if I am to ask one of my heterosexual female friends to a movie/play/concert it can very easily be misconstrued as a date. Not only in your social circle at large but by the female friend in question itself.
So what’s wrong with a date? Nothing. It's just too big a word for a damn movie.
And as it happened recently, I asked one of my friends to join me for a show of my favorite writer and she buzzed me off. Can’t exactly say why but may be because the show was very expensive for her and she was not ready for me to buy a ticket for her because as we say it in India “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun.?” (rough translation : What am I to you). Buzzed me off sounds better though and probably she had other plans, who knows.
See? Very complex.
On the other hand if I were to call one of my male buddies to watch a movie, it would just be two losers watching a movie together. Not only we would be misconstrued as two loners looking for some action but most importantly there is a big chance that we may be mistaken for a Gay couple. As liberal as I am about the sexual orientation of people, I am not ready for this.
Besides all the points made above, the real reason for my phobia of watching movies alone is that it's FUN. And you do not wish to have fun alone. You do not wish to do anything that is fun if you are alone and for that matter even if it is not fun you do not wish to be alone anyways. You need someone to share everything in your life.
You need a witness to your life.  Everybody does. Otherwise it would just be series of small incidents went unnoticed.
So get up and find a witness for your life or a movie whatever releases first.
See you at the movies.

गुलज़ार साहब के लिए

आपसे मिल सका तो ये कहूँगा

अच्छा हुआ के आपसे दिल्ली में मुलाक़ात हुई
दिल्ली से आपका-हमारा कोई वास्ता तो है
वैसे तो कोई ज़ाती पहचान नहीं है फिर भी
पुरानी सब्ज़ी मंडी से गुज़रता मेरा रास्ता तो है


उस रास्ते से गुज़रने के बहाने ढूंढ लेता हूँ
सीधे रस्ते से ना आने के बहाने ढूंढ लेता हूँ
गुलज़ार साहब यहीं रहते थे बेटा
अपनी बेटी को ये बतलाने के बहाने ढूंढ लेता हूँ


जहां से आई थी सदा के काबे से पर्दा ना उठाया जाए
वहीं ग़ालिब का बुत लगा था और आप आए थे  
वैसे तो वजह कुछ खास नहीं थी लेकिन
मैंने सोचा कि चश्मा इस बार बल्लीमारान से बनवाया जाए


ऐसी पहचान तो नहीं के पुराने दोस्त हों फिर भी
दिल्ली और हमारा ये रिश्ता अजीब सा तो है
"वो हैं ना अपने गुलज़ार साहब" कहता हूँ जब दोस्तों से
ये झूठ झूठ सही सच के करीब सा तो है

Judging a Book

How can you judge a book if not by its cover? I have been involved with publishing and bookselling industry for too long to come to terms with "Do not judge a book by its cover."

If it was not for my skill of judging the book by its cover, I would have actually never bought a book in my life let alone sold any.

I can appreciate the metaphorical connotation of this quote (with some reservations to be discussed later) but when it comes to real books, I am afraid there is no other way to judge a book but by its cover. 

As a publisher and a bookseller for a good part of my life I have been a keen observer of the book buying behavior at the bookstores. And believe me it's both funny and frustrating knowing the reasons for buying a book by the public at large.

I have seen people selecting the books for most bizarre of reasons. One of them has been during the World Book Fair at New Delhi when a gentleman picked up a book, tried judging its weight by bouncing it at his palm and then asked the bookstall attendant with a street smart look in his eye, "How much for this one."

And there is one friend of mine who recently bought some books from her favorite vendor asking him if they were any good. With "if they are bad there will be consequences" look in her eyes. It was hilarious. As if he was going to say, "No, don't buy them, they are no good."

Try buying a book when you go to a bookshop next time with these simple conditions:

You can't buy your favorite/well known author's book,

You can't buy a pre-defined "classic,"

You can't buy a book that says "A million copies sold worldwide," and

You certainly can't buy a book if the author is sitting at the bookshop signing autographs.

So how do you select a book to buy? First you go to a section of your choice, let's say Fiction and then go to a shelf marked new authors (well there is never a shelf marked new authors in any bookshop but I need to make it easier to prove my point).  

You do not know any of the authors as they all are first time published authors. There have not been any raving reviews about them in tabloids either and even if there were, that too would itself be pre-judging the book.

So you do the

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,

Catch the baby by the toe.

If it hollers let him go,

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, you are it!

in your head and pick out one.  Don't like the cheesy illustration on the cover and instantly put it back. Pick one again. Nicely done graphics with solid fonts. With a Hmmmm….. you turn it around, read the blurb and shove it in the shelf in frustration where it belongs.

The fortunes of the books and the authors heavily depend on the skills of graphic designers and blurb writers. So I learnt and accepted with reluctance much later in my career as a publisher.

One unsuccessful pick after the other, changing your criteria of selection from color of the title to Gender and then age of the author you are so disheartened by the laziness of the bookshop owners not pointing at the right book to buy.

There is another way of judging a book and that is selecting a book by one particular publisher. That is like trusting the commissioning editors of that publisher more than your taste.

Which is judging the book, again, by its cover. At bookshops, there are certain readers of this species who are more interested in the Logo printed at the spine of the book more than anything. It is rather easier for them to select a book actually.

At the end of last aisle here is a stack of assorted books which is marked 70% off. And you give in to the calculation of number of pages versus price after discount.

That is actually a very practical way of selecting a book. You do not regret it too much as you were not expecting too much out of this lot at the first place.

And maybe who knows you might get lucky and find the book of your dreams in that lot.

The truth is that the books have always been and always will be judged by their covers. So you be the judge of that.

Circle of Life: Anti-Clockwise

One can tell by the way God has designed human life that HE is a fusspot. There are ways to improve human life that even low-ranked Gods like me can come up with. Speaking of low ranks, I need a promotion and I deserve a promotion and it's high time that HE gives to me what I deserve. I have worked ranks through God of small things, God of not so small things and now as a God of slightly bigger things and…..well enough about me.  

I would totally re-do the human life if given a chance to be the God of Big Things. Actually I would turn the whole cycle around (anti-clockwise).

Imagine this:

You start your life at 70 (on a hospital bed still).

Can't see or hear properly. Your heart is fragile. You do not remember anything. Your have many risks to your life.

So till this time, nothing much is different from the existing life cycle at the time of birth.

BUT

As the time passes, your hearing improves and your sight starts clearing up. Your heart rate becomes normal and you start remembering everything one by one. All your chronic diseases start going into remission and your health miraculously starts improving.

More time passes:

At the age of 60 you start your career by receiving a Gold watch. Just 10 years after your life starts you have a steady income. You are the Boss so have less work to do at the beginning of your career.

At 50 you start growing hair on your head; first white then turning grey and eventually turning black.

At 45 your teeth start growing strong and day by day your digestion keeps improving.

At 40 your wrinkles start disappearing and glow on your face starts coming back.

You are 35 now and as your life progresses you feel adventurous and have the body accordingly. You get married. (Don't expect too much of me I am just a low-ranked God. I am not paid THAT much. Nobody can improve your married life.)

Your life progresses further and now you are 25, young and optimistic towards life and you have already spent 45 years of your life. You stop working.

You are fit as a fiddle and feel everything as if it is happening in your life for the first time. Well, it is actually.

Now you are 15 and a new chapter unfolds, you get your innocence back. You become an idealist, truthful, straight forward person. You become a better friend and totally love your friends more than anything.

As your life progresses, you become more truthful, enthusiastic and honest about your feelings (contrary to the existing regime).

Now you are 10. You are growing cuter day by day. You do not have a worry in the world and are much more interested in playing than other things in the last decade of your life.

You are 5 now and apple of every body's eye. Everything looks like a miracle to you: water, fire, rain, animals everything.

At the end of your life, you are the cutest, most pure thing anybody can imagine and you just stop existing (you don't die).

Am I right or am I right. Compare this to your miserable life so far and you will see my point. This proposal is for GOD's perusal and I will understand if HIS ego does not allow him to implement this in action.

PS: I Love you God.

A Tribute to My Superman

Everybody's got their favorite uncles and aunts. I have had my fair share of them. But there are some people in your life who are more than your favorite. You are always in awe of them, observe them and try to ape them. When you were a child you even believed them to have superpowers. I lost such a person in my life this week.

He was my father's youngest brother. May be his being a deep-sea diver was the reason behind my belief of him having extraordinary powers, considering that I was petrified of water. I remember stories regarding his experiences under the sea water. His being bitten by a poisonous fish and surviving that. I still remember vividly looking at his diving gear with a sense of majestic pride and cooking up stories about my brave uncle among my friends.

He was the first person in our family who went abroad. My father in particular was very proud of this fact and used to talk about his kid brother lovingly to everybody. And, of course, never confessed his love for him. We are like that only. A man never cries, a man never asks for help and a man never expresses his love for another out in the open.

His trips abroad had special attraction for me as he would bring back coins for my collection. Saltenat of Oman, Bahreen, Sharjah and Dubai were names that crowned my proud collection of coins. I still have somewhere that Saudi Dinar he gave me when he came back from some Arab country.

As a diehard fan you like everything your superhero does. You like the way he talks, the way he dresses, the way he laughs and you try to imitate him in whichever lame way you can. Like jumping from the side of a bed pretending the bed to be an ocean and start swimming in that imaginary ocean. I am no exception.

And when you grow up your Superman also ages with you. It evolves as the time passes. You still believe him to have superpowers but of different kind. And these powers imaginary as they are do not actually help you out in your day to day life but the idea keeps your hopes alive.

God knows I was angry with my Superman for a period of time when I hoped that he would save me but he couldn't make it as he was not my Superman exclusively as it dawned on me. But even if he could not come to my rescue, I never stopped believing in his superpowers.

It's not easy losing your Superman. My father died when I was just out of college. It was not easy to lose him either. After all he was the elder brother to my Superman and he was my Superman for daily use. It's not easy at all. It challenges your beliefs and surprisingly these beliefs never die out even if they were buried in your childhood memories you thought you forgot long back. 

Watching him losing the battle with Cancer was a blow to my idea of a man who was never defeated by anything. And actually he did make his point by coming out of this disease once before losing the final battle.

There were a lot of people at his funeral and they were saying plenty of fancy things about him being a wonderful person, which he certainly was. But at that time my mind went blank and all I could remember about him was his gold bracelet which I used to admire a lot and always wanted to wear one just like that myself. For me that bracelet was equivalent to the cape of a magician that hid his magical powers. Surprisingly, it does not sound silly to me even now.

I have lost my Superman. And I am too old to look for a new one. So goodbye my Superman. Sleep with peace.

Be Selfish say I Love You, First.

Be Selfish say I Love You, First.

Oh yes. The three most selfish words you can say to someone, I LOVE YOU.

I know, I know it does not match the years of orientation and does not suit your heroic persona you have created for yourself in your mind. But, humor me and answer the following question:

What would you expect/like to hear back as an answer when you say "I Love You" to somebody?

(Let's make it a multiple choice for fun. And, No, you will not win a trip for two to a romantic destination if your answer is right.)

a. I Love you too

b. What?

OR

c. Thanks

Let's say your answer is (a). So you were expecting it to be the reciprocation of your sentiments in an affirmation. May be an acceptance of the proposal if this is a clichéd "I love you, will you marry me" kind of proposal.  And this choice of yours, if materialized, would make you feel elated and relieved at the same time. So there was a selfish motive after all behind this.

Wait. Although I have made my point, I have more to say.

On the other hand, if you expect it to be a (b), you shouldn't have said those words in the first place. But let's just say that love is blind and stupid (God I love to be right) and you call up the entire courage in your heart and say it and get the (b). How would it make you feel?

Embarrassed, stupid, sad and may be angry. Anyways, so these words were not innocent, selfless expression of your love.

And I am sure that not many of you would opt for the choice (c). That brings us to the fact that if the words in question were to be non-selfish kind, a simple thank you should suffice.

You say, "I Love You" and

"Thanks," comes the answer.

How would you feel about a "thanks" as an answer to your "I Love You".

Well I would personally prefer saying, "I am not handing you a bottle of ketchup you moron."

So there it is. It IS actually selfish to say I Love you.

But is it really a bad thing to be selfish in this context? 

How many of you have restrained yourself dreading a (b) as an answer and regretted it later?

How many of you are still struggling to call the courage and tell someone that you love her/him?

You toy with the idea of telling someone that you love her (Not using gender biased language is hard work for me, so read appropriate gender for yourself) but you are scared of the universal answer "Oh we are just very good friends" (yeah right).

You are petrified just imagining that you may even lose the friendship you pretend to have with that person. And you will be thrown out of even the "friends" zone.

Then you start doubting your looks, your social status i.e. I'm not good looking enough or I am not rich enough or if I was just six inches taller, if I was just a wee bit fairer etc.

Happier are the people who overcome the fear of rejection.

And please do not tell me that you are waiting for him or her to say it first. That’s just plain stupid.

Be selfish and say I LOVE YOU first. Say it to your parents, your brothers, sisters and everybody and anybody you love. Whatever the answer be, you will live longer and die happier.

The Missing Piece

I have had the good fortune of visiting the most beautiful beaches in India. From the most commercialized in Goa, to far from commercialization in Pondicherry.  From the most crowded in Mumbai and Chennai to the most unexplored kind in Andaman Islands.

I was strolling down one such beach. Sun was setting. Needless to say it was beautiful.

And as is inevitable under the circumstances, the thought process slowly took a turn from single malt whiskey towards philosophical genre.

I have absolutely no idea why people turn pop philosophers/psychologists at the mere sight of a sunset.

You look at the waves sweeping away your footprints on the sand and it all seems to have a "deep" meaning other than the usual that its high-tide time dude, go home.

I am sure that it's just a trait of the people like me living in the land locked cities who seldom get the opportunity to be that near to sunset.

It was a happy ending of a good day. It rarely happens when everything goes right. Well everything was right till the philosophy butted in.

It's a human condition that we tend to improve everything around us but ourselves.

So the day was perfect, the beach was perfect, the sunset was perfect and then I tilted my head to one side like a Zen master and murmured "Something is missing."

What is it?

Well, something must be missing.

Why must it be?

Because, I am not used to the perfect. And if something resembles the perfect, it creates doubt.

But the truth is that something is always missing. The wants of our lives just come to the fore when we are nearer to the things that are perfect.

Perfect things confuse us, scare us and make us wonder, what's wrong.

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle and it's never complete. The journey of finding the missing pieces of that puzzle is an endless one. We have been provided with a lot of similar looking pieces and we need to arrange them in one particular order so that together they make a perfect picture.

This picture has our desires, our dreams, ambitions and a lot of pieces belonging to these are always missing. And if we find them we start looking for the other ones to make the picture even more perfect.

While we are busy putting these pieces together, there are some pieces lying unattended as these pieces do not fit into the current part of the picture we are trying to complete, surprisingly to fit these unattended pieces "Later."

These are actually the most important pieces which we have carefully separated from the other pieces and kept them aside.

So that when the whole picture is perfect, then we can place these pieces at appropriate places. We have already figured it out where they go in that perfect picture of ours once it is completed. But by the time we reach out for these pieces, some of them are already missing.

And as this ever unfinished puzzle keeps creating blank spaces of imperfection in our lives, at some distant canvas of life somebody is desperately looking for the most important piece missing in another unfinished and imperfect puzzle.

And suddenly it occurred to me, "I am the missing piece of somebody's puzzle".

I petted side pockets of my cargo shorts looking for the only thing that separates the two worlds of sanity, my mobile phone.

I felt a sharp need to call someone. And I did.

So sunsets have a purpose after all. They bring out the pop philosophers in us and help us find ourselves, "The missing pieces of somebody's puzzle."

I highly recommend them.