Overnight Journey

Few things wake you up in the night. And then you doze off again. Your eyes open again, and the watch hasn't moved as much as you'd like. But after a little reading, you manage to grab a little more Zzz. Something might keep you awake. It might be the noise outside, the things you think are bearing you down, or the things that you don't even know, that might be bearing you down. It is always good to know what it is that bothers you. But only if you can do anything about it. Else, you're a lot better off not knowing the cause of your poor sleep quality.

But then here's the deal. Sometimes, of the few times when you do know the reason that wakes you up, or think you know the reason, the morning after the bad night makes you feel supremely stupid. Sleep solves a lot of riddles in the mind. I suppose hence the phrase "Sleep it over".  The reasons cooked up by the head seem trivial. Its like someone slaps you into waking up and says "Do you even know how stupid you sound when you even think of your REASONS?."

I'm only afraid that these words of mine are coming out of some compensatory defense mechanism that the human body has so smartly developed during the course of evolution, to protect itself under some stressful stimuli.

It is strange how the body functions. We see what we want to see. We hear only the parts that we would like to hear. Besides, we bend what we see and hear to suit our preference. And no two people actually hear/see one event in the same manner. There are always angles for each person. Not that a trigonometry lesson is anywhere around the corner. But here's the deal. Most of the times,  our descriptions of the things we see and experience are only a part of the full picture. Our account of that thing is what we often consider the "Bigger picture", and that is the case with most of us. Each of us considers ourselves a bit better than the next person, a bit smarter, a bit faster, basically a bit, if not way over average. The real picture is anyone's guess. Not that there's no one ahead of the curve, which would be a rather imbecile remark, but the mind does anything and everything to enhance its optimism in every possible scenario. Maybe it is that extra bit of optimism that helps humans to keep pushing in the face of adversity. And without this edge, this surge of "Will Do" feeling, progress of the human race would stall.

About foolishness, there' no better quote that can summarize it in its entirety..

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!"

We, Homo sapiens, have thrived on our foolhardiness. The outcomes of a lot many foolhardy decisions have been rather counterproductive. But I bet the thrill was worth each moment of the way. Lot of stupidity has passed under the bridges of the world. But that's how it goes, I guess. One life to live. How much of "Completely right" things can one do, if at all one can do anything called a "Completely Right Thing". Besides, the term "RIGHT" by itself is rather subjective. Right to one, might be a grievous error for another. 

Yes, there are times when you feel you should have listened to the advice that came from a rather unlikely source, maybe someone you don't exactly look up to. And maybe you should have. Then again, there are so many things one should have, could have, would have, and in all probability, not have done. How do you decide? Hypotheticals of the past... Goodness!

Another thing. Someone told me recently "Be crazy. Don't be insane!" 

There seems to be a very fine line between the two words. And trespassers are usually prosecuted. Again, how do you know where the line is? Oh! Wait a second! Craziness is probably staying at the edge of the cliff. With insanity, "All it needs is a little PUSH."

Sounds fancy, but it still doesn't answer any questions. Get a parachute or something!

Wrong questions

Why do we run into each other?

Why do things bring us back to square one, each time?

Then the long jump into each other's eyes.

Stupid smiles, stray gazes..

Utterances that stop at the tip of the tongue, as they cannot bring themselves in the form of language that anyone can comprehend. They are just to be understood the way everything intangible needs to be taken, like axioms.

Why do we say stuff which means the exact opposite of what we mean, or want to say?

Why do we drag conversations forcefully, trying to buy time so that we can think of more appropriate word that we can put our thoughts forward with?

And at the end of the day, stay undecided  on what, why and when we should say what we wanted to say?

Then turn away to quell a bit of the anxiety that has built itself up into an unmanageably unbearable weight on our chest? Why say things that are so distant for why things were brought together by some intangible forces, invisible chords, and things of that nature?

Then we stand up, walk away. Hear our name being called, then slow down, remaining undecided on whether to slow down or not. But slow down we do. But then there are times when the barrier between you and what you want to say becomes so insurmountable that you decide to get up, leave everything behind and walk away as fast as your legs can take you.  You walk for some time, feeling very strong. Knowing little that maybe, just maybe, things might have hit you at places you didn't expect.

I shout the word "Why?" inside my head so loud that were I to shout it out loud for real, it would blow a lot many eardrums. And just for a moment, I gather myself together, and ask myself "What the hell's happening?". It seems like a perpetual question. There's only one answer to that question that rings inside my mind... "Dude, No clue!"

Broken Pieces

Few things pierce you so hard, SO HARD that it takes a while to realize that the sword went right through your body, traveled its entire thickness, and emerged clean on the other side. You don't even feel the pain initially. It just happens like anything else that happens. Like breathing. Then realization strikes. You feel the blade, the part of the blade that still remains inside your body. You still don't have an ounce of pain. That is until the one moment where the pain makes its presence felt. It is still bearable. Nothing that seems like it will kill you.

But then the pain grows, spreads, up till the point that you're flooded with it.

There's one line that I'd heard in the series called House of Cards. It went like this...

"Every martyr craves a standing sword to fall on."

I know not why I remember this line of all things at this moment. As a matter of fact, I cannot recollect what I was thinking I'd write after that quote from the above mentioned series.

Sometimes, you gotta run before you can walk.

These hostel walls that surround us, these corridors, these rooms, man, these things have so much history trapped inside them! Imagine. They've borne generations of guys like you and me. They've protected so many fragile souls, reveled in high spirits of so many more, and men out of boys, dealt with more than their fair share of puking. Like a mother taking care of her baby, despite everything, all the poop, all the diaper changes, all the vomiting. This place, the walls of which are the only witnesses to what I do now, it lets you run before you can walk. Every time you hold back, this place tells you "Don't worry, Kiddo! Go sprint! Go all out. We'll see what to do if you fall. And what if you fall? You don't have anything to lose in the first place. Then why fear losing anything more?"

This might sound strange. But the things a person wants to do to someone else, be the thing good, bad, or evil, whatever it is, stems out of the person's perception of the way they are getting treated by the world. So, for example, if you want to catch hold of people who have a "Use me. I'm fragile. So after using me, break me and throw me away." neon sign on their forehead, use them, break them, and then throw them away after you're done with them, there is a good chance that you have a "Use me. I'm fragile. So after using me, break me and throw me away." neon sign on your own forehead. Strange, isn't it?

Peaceful violence- Imagine aggression, like a balloon about to blast. And that balloon is going to blast, taking a big chunk of everything around it in the bosoms of its explosion. Everything wiped clean. Like nothing ever existed there before. Clean slate. But how do you contain the explosion? You know for a fact that the explosion is contagious. The explosion sounds like a note on the piano.A consistently repeating note, every four beats... like THIS.

Such a soft sound, that of a note on a piano. But it contains within itself an unimaginable explosion. Imagine the happenings in the image below...

 

And all you hear is the sound of a single note on a piano. That is when you know for a fact that the explosion is hurtling towards you at speeds at which you cannot escape it before its blast radius engulfs you....

The universe that went missing

Did I cook up that heading? Feels like someone else doing the work for me.

The rate at which my thoughts seem to be racing past me is quite unimaginable right now.

Never before has my belief in solipsism been stronger. But what if... Just what if there's another person who can hear my thoughts? Is that even possible? And I's surprised that I'm writing what I'm writing. Because tomorrow, these words that I write won't make any sense to me, let alone anyone else.

We humans, as a race, have become so enthusiastic about our virtual lives. Photos, selfies, likes, shares, it's all there up in the cloud somewhere. And when it is all up there somewhere, what's the whole point of making things into real tangible commodities? I'm sure that in future, babies will be made online. Real human babies made via the Internet. No talking, no wooing.... Just say the magic words "Kid Wanted". BOOM! A fairy will drop one in your balcony.

Hmm..  So I am saying all this in my head, apparently.

"You're so different from the others. Dude, you know what? Remind me of this when we meet tomorrow, okay?"

Of all the things I heard the night before, this line rings in my ears for some very strange reason. I replay it as best as I can remember. It felt like a scene from a movie. A movie where the intended next day never happened somehow. So I wonder. How many things there are that stay, or get left unsaid. I don't even know if the last line is grammatically correct. Trouble being that the part of my head responsible for grammatical corrections is currently out of order. Or that's the most stylish way I can put forward my present disability. Each line that I think makes me think "What the hell am I thinking?".

I guess it is when your thought process gets so mangled that you know for a fact that shit has hit the fan. Yuck!

Another thing that I remember is this one fellow telling me about someone he knows who writes out his ramblings the way I do. I do not know how to make my point subtly, and hence, I think I should refrain from making this part of my thoughts  available in the public domain.

Oh shit! There's another line that stays in my memory...

"Imagine, no one knew this shit existed!"

Not a single one probably understood a word of what was being uttered. But you see, put a bunch of nut-cases together, and the magic unfolds. Each one of us had a different universe unraveling itself with every moment. But each of those universes were linked somehow. It probably was the words that gave each universe its origin and branching points.

This is getting scarier by the moment. Talking gets a little difficult. Specially given that I'm not a very strong proponent of talking. It's always more convenient to put the onus of talking onto the person in front. They get to talk about all they want to talk about, stuff they don't get to talk about because everyone else is too busy talking about what they want to talk about. So you get to have a conversation, know the person in front, get the reputation of a good conversationalist, and everyone remains happily ever after. Besides, it saves you your energy of thinking of ways to initiate, maintain and end a conversation intelligently. Brilliant! Am I the first one to think of this? Re reading the last line makes me laugh for reasons unknown to me.

I wonder how a normal mind would react to all of this. I'm sure I'll get to know that soon enough.

Da, Lunch!

I might just break down while writing this one. I know I won't, but something inside feels like tearing everything apart. Screw it!

I feel I have deluded myself into believing in wrong reasons, attributing incorrect rationalizations to the reasons for my ballsy nature. All this seems to be a rant about myself, which is rather strange in my case, as I told someone yesterday that I don't have much to talk about.

The only thing I can say for sure is that the adrenaline rush is worth killing for.

I was walking around her "protective cover", or what she thought was her insurance policy. Phew! Wooing is hard work! And being brazen takes its toll on you. But what's the point of all the energy in store if you can't do what you want?

Had she been sitting, her legs would have looked as though she were about to  get convulsions. You could see her smiling because of all the attention she was getting. It was then that her partner in crime said something that went like this

"I know! She's so desperate to smile..."

And my lady, for not being able to do anything else, looked at me and flashed her teeth... All 32 of them at me. I have no clue as to why she did that. Nut case.

I kept walking after we parted. Partly in damage-control mode, partly because of the cluelessness of what I was/wanted to do next. For some inexplicable reason, I still had a smile on my face. I got hold of myself, turned around, and started walking back the direction in which I'd come. The trees on either side of the Rajpath caught my fancy. I walked down the long stretch of road in a daze, with little or no thought, looking up and around of what was to remain in my life for only another 2-3 months.

"You know what? You wouldn't even see me after 15th May. I'll be gone. Like smoke."

Why did I just type that line? Again, screw it.

From the other end of the road, another lady, a really quirky one I've come to know for a while now, was walking towards me. We waved. So far, all cool...

"Hey! You told me you'll take me to that Rajasthani thhali place. So when are you taking me there?"

I thought for a while... Three classes left to go in the day. Bloody hell! And the marketing work too! Meh, Screw it!

"Chalo, let's go right now. I'll take you there for lunch today." *Ting!*

Planned stuff never works. And all the unplanned stuff has completely been mind-blowing!

Normally, I would be worried about who gets to read all this yack that happened inside my head, all of it. But then, right now, I've got other things to think about. So here goes nothing.

Patterns become a lot more clearer. Words lose their meaning. Let alone sentences. Any one apart from yourself seems like a trespasser. Sudoku becomes easier for some reason. You become a lot more aware of bullshit, about not being your true self, and also about things that secretly occupy your subconscious. Again, time for another "What the hell am I saying??" moment.

I'll stop here. Shit. This actually happened!

Yesterday

If there was one day in my life where I learned the most, it was the day before today. There ain't no lofty philosophy behind the first sentence of this post. Today is the 21st of February. Yesterday was the 20th. A day that had nothing profound about it, and yet feels important for reasons that shall find their mention below.

Nothing great about the morning. Usual class, same benches, same tantalizing smells, random jokes, and the class got over. But life exists outside class. A huge chunk of it! Time for Shorty's day out! Wow! I just now realized how big the world is. How unfathomably it extends in every direction. So out I stepped, ran a few errands, and magically landed in front of the college library.

She stood right in front. My little doll. She turned around, smiled naughtily. Random incomprehensible words, a small flutter of heartbeats, more incomprehensible conversation to kill the anxiety, a cup of coffee(bad idea), the worst handshake of my life and a "Leave her alone, man!". And I was out! And a big part of the remaining day stared me right in the face. 

Sometimes it is hard to gauge one's own ferocity. It is only when another fellow comes and tells you to just pinch a little less hard the next time, that you realize that maybe, just maybe, you could have held back a little. But then going all out is any day better than losing out because you held back that tad bit too much. Make way please!

Persuasion is a bitch! It is also an art. But it still is a bitch! Specially when you need to convince someone to give you money, or to go out on a date with you, or to convince yourself that it will all be fine, or even to convince yourself that something must be done as things are not alright.

Actually, it is a lot about understanding people. And also, frankly more so about trying till your legs hurt. You sleep well at night. Oh yes! It is also about doggedness and shamelessness. One can never persuade if afraid of saying what he/she really wants to day.

Here's where the lesson for the day started. 

This simultaneously overconfident, self doubting, uncertain, stupid, genius, obsessive, fickle mind was, remains and shall for ever remain a gift and curse. Talk about multitasking. You feel like god for a second, and the next moment, you feel like the scum floating on a pond. Thumbs up to that. And strangely enough, this केमिकल लोचा (Chemical imbalance) is what makes the whole ride fun!

When the endorphin graph is plummeting, a companion with a lifted spirit is a blessing. And yesterday, I was blessed with two. And we hit the road, almost convinced that nothing could stop us. Maybe I was the only one hallucinating. Either way, nothing topped us. So no difference if one was hallucinating, or all were. 

A few of my beliefs got more reinforced. 

You don't need someone with a lot more experience than you have to learn from them. For all you know, someone younger than you could leave you profoundly
inspired. 

Bluntness is the way to go. With nothing to hide. No mollycoddled words, nothing written in fine print (***Conditions apply). I don't know what to do if the lady is a bit taken aback by your frank stand, but maybe she'll at least know and even appreciate your honesty, if she happens to be lucky.

Quirks of life are there for a reason. To make life quirky. That was a no brainer, I suppose. 

Time for another epiphany! The greatest of leaders must have had their moments of uncertainty, which, very few people, if at all any, must have known about. But at the final moments, somehow, magically, things fell in place. They usually do. Either that, or my temporary serenity deludes me into thinking so. The ones who know about your dwindling state of mind moments before the final hour, who most certainly hate you for your indecision  till the final moment, are the only people you can truly trust. They'll never tell you what an arsehole you are. Because they know for the fact that it's not going to help the situation get any better. And so, they place that last ounce of their trust in you, with their fingers crossed behind their backs, hoping that you'll pull it off at the last moment. If you feel the smallest morsel of strength to stay at what you do, take a moment and thank your fortunes for giving you such folks who have your back.

PEACE!

Numbing silence

This is the testimony of the explosion inside.

It feels like floating in space. And no, you cannot swim in space like you thought you could. In fact, you can barely control the way your body is moving about, limbs flailing. 

Shall I squeeze every drop of happiness from every unrequited wish and spread it out into the universe? Or do I build a fortress around myself and allow it to implode on itself?

I don't know about the next second, but

WHAT DO I THIS MOMENT TO QUELL THIS UNEASNESS?

All I hear is the sound of breathing. The sound growing louder. There's a rise in temperature. And eventually, it feels like sitting inside an inferno.

The closer I feel to getting what I think I want, the more it burns.

Each time I get closer is the first time I get closer. Each time. Every time.

What it is I want, I know not. Do I snatch, or shall I let go?

The sound of silence increases in volume, until it sounds like a screech pervading all of eternity.

It doesn't stop even when I stop it. I can't seem to find a switch.

There's a string, lost in its own desired, entangled in its own knots. And the tightness seems unbearable. The string says "Disentangle me!".

If I were a knock on the door, you are a stranded palace, hollowed out from all the raids history has witnessed. Question is, will you still open?

Yes, this is a dream, the mad restless silence, all of it. But it is real. Just as real as you can see it. Live this dream for real!

Return to the inferno. Hear the breathing growing louder with each heave, all over again.. Come closer to the fire, like a moth is drawn to a flame, for reasons unknown to it. And finally burn. Watch yourself burn from far away. Watch as everything gets reduced to ashes. You wouldn't know what got burned, nor when. You only see how beautiful the embers look. The orange glow, with spots of bright yellow. The whole thing eventually turns into deeper, darker shades of orange, with the gray ashes encroaching upon the orange with every passing moment, until the embers cease to glow. All that's left is a thin streak of smoke coming from the tip that was the last remnant of the blazing inferno.

Make sense of "this" if you can.

It’s all “part of the plan.”

Fight me in my embrace. Evade looking into the deep dark abyss looking back at you. Or fail trying not to do so. Say "NO" a thousand times. Say it till you lose count. And in the end, say it out of helplessness. Say it because deep inside, you know that's precisely what you don't want to say. But say it anyway. It is a knee-jerk reaction. The words sound hollower than the vast emptiness everywhere. But then again, say it for the heck of it. 

Go sitting for hours without being able to say a thing. You wonder the reason for your plight? You want to be read for what others want to read, not what you want to write. And so you decide to write from behind the veils. You don't want another to see what you have in mind. You perhaps are petrified to see what you truly want from within. Or you already know what you truly want from within, and are petrified all the same. Good for you. Stay buried under the masks you wore to put up that face, that façade of niceties, which has now begun to weigh down on you. 

Don't bang against my chest in frustration. You brought it upon yourself, this misery. For behind the layers of masks, goodness knows how many there are, two people know what lies.

Let's joke around a little. 

“Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. -The Joker”

  All this bollocks about goodness, all this censorship, all the #, @, %, & that we use to mute the inner voices are working wonders to freedom of expression! We just don't use them to cover up curse words. We use them to eventually hide our thoughts in their entirety. Convenient, right? "What will the World think?" is a classic question to begin with. For that, we need to get to know what makes the world. Let's start with ourself. 

Everything was made up by people that were no smarter than you.- Jobs(Don't ask "Who?")

 That looks like the case. So I wonder if it really matters what anyone thinks. Why not delve deep down into that reserve, grab hold of those words which seem ugly, beautiful, rousing, quelling, spineless, violent, serene and crazy all at the same time? For sake of consolation, no one's hearing it anyway. Let's introduce some anarchy, ladies!

The Deer Hunter

Think of a hammer. Make it stand on its handle. Watch it topple. Watch it topple so that the hammer's head could come down. Even better! Hold the base of the hammer's handle with just the tips of your fingers and watch it swing to bring its heavy head down. In simple physics, this happens for a reason. Potential energy. Everything wants to be at a lower potential energy.

Being religious isn't my strong suit. That aside, the words "Conversation", "Parents" and "Interesting" seldom come in the same sentence. Not that they don't, but rarely does anyone say "I had an interesting conversation with my parents". Our parents do have a lot of history behind them, by the sheer virtue of the amount of time these folks have spent more than us here. So a lot will go unknown to us about them. 

Yesterday was Shivarathri, anniversary of the day Lord Shiva and  goddess Parvathi got married. And we got a holiday for that! Can  you believe it? Someone gets married, and a whole bunch of people get a day off? Goodness! Gods should get married more often! Anyway, mom and I were talking about my granddad, who is a Shiva devout. It was my turn for an interesting conversation with my mom. I cannot recollect what my mom told me, but it was something to do with "Bhole naath", which translates to "The innocent protector", one of Shiva's names, that caught my attention. Gods? Innocence? Now you have my attention.

The little that I know about Lord Shiva, he's been associated with purity, grounded energy, virility, strength, self control, destruction and a lot more. A male Nemesis, if you may. The truest manifestation of his own thoughts, unadulterated, without a single minced word on his tongue. Basically no bullshitting. Sorry Nandini... If you know what I mean. No offense meant.

Delve a little below the surface, into his hand, four of them. One holds an axe(Parashu), one holds a trident(Trishul), the third holds a drum(The Damru) and the fourth one holds a deer. It was the fourth one that fascinates me the most. 

Imagine a deer. It jumps, bobs, hops and runs around restlessly. It is one of the most literal manifestations of energy. Unbounded but ungrounded energy. Easily excitable. Easily sapped. It is beautiful to watch, affectionate, lovable looking creature. That's what we are. Little balls of frantic energy let out into the wild. Or rather, after realization struck, that's surely what most of us are. 

In Hindi, it is called चंचलता ("Chanchalta"). The mind hops from one thing to another, easily gets distracted, easily gets frustrated, easily gets disappointed and delighted all the same. Lots of undirected energy. A horse without reins. 

Let's get back to imagining a deer. Watch it move. Observe the amount by which it moves horizontally. Now see the amount of vertical displacement the deer makes in order to travel horizontally. Now compare that to the movements of say, a cheetah. All its energies are devoted to moving forward. Very less vertical movement. Everything is streamlined. Everything is as possibly close to the ground as things can possibly be. Its heavy tail beautifully acts as a counterbalance to keep its energies from splaying horizontally.  

Reap grim!

It happened about two years ago. A bunch of my friends and our college seniors were off to give our passing out seniors a farewell treat. I don't know how many we were when we set out on that day. But we came back with a head count of one less than what we were at the start of the day.

Fragile little thing it is, this life of ours. It slips away without anyone noticing. One moment, your heart's beating. Next moment, one might see a flat line. And it is just not in death that we see the bleakness in all that we hold so dear. Look at how old you are. Then look at how much time you've spent on this beautiful planet. Where, how, and how swiftly did time just... pass by, like a gust of wind, or a lightning bolt to a few?

I don't like to call a lot many things "Mine" barring a few. The college I've spent a good fifth of my life in which, is surely on that small "Mine"-list of mine.

Until I came to this place, death wasn't a phenomenon I was akin to. It happened in the passing, but nothing about death fascinated me, or left me awestruck. 

Enter college, and my tryst with a disappearance of life force began. That said, I haven't yet watched my own life edging away from me. I have felt like I would die. But all those times have been at times when my mental faculties couldn't be relied upon. Moving on!

Suicides, murders, genocides, executions and all the events documenting the sudden absence of lives have been well documented. We've had them in our school books, our movies, in news, and in most cases in our next of kin. Often, it is word of mouth that reaches us. We don't witness it. We're just there for the final proceedings, to mourn, sympathize, offer condolences, etc. 

What's strange is that hearing of death on the news, and hearing about death that happened about a mile away from the place you sit, that too from people you know and see everyday are two completely different feelings. On the news, it just happens. No apologies for sounding cold, but when we hear about death on the news, we're mostly sitting on a couch, hoping some clown on the screen will shout and make ruckus around himself. And hence, we watch NEWS! Death is another topic the channel will cover. Death is part of North, East, West and South. Ain't it?

Outside, in reality, depending on your proximity, and level of acquaintance to the deceased, it almost feels like a part of you has gone away. For all you know, you might not even know the chap personally. But it hits you where you least expected to. 

Witnessing a death is obviously a whole different ball-game. It gets hard to breathe. Specially when you see the father cry. Specially when the mother's still sitting a thousand miles away, thinking her son's still alive. Specially when the older brother is abroad, and cannot make it to the funeral of the one he owes a big chink of his own childhood to. Specially when the picture in the frame with the garland has a smiling face on it. A face that was among us yesterday, day before, or maybe even hours or minutes ago. 

In Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut, the author, mentions the perception of death in the minds of higher dimensional creatures. For these creatures have an x, y, z and a TIME axis. They can do time travel. And so, for them a person never dies. He's just alive in the past. 

Someone make a bloody time-machine!

UnSpent

This endless stock of energy! Wow, it feels empowering. Like you can go on, on, ON and ON! I bet that's why the elders are so pissed at us. Because they despise us for what they've lost. I sit here, trapped in this room of mine, this little matchbox, inside the confines of my skin, thinking about things that I'd promised myself to not think about about a day ago. The mind racing through memories, thoughts, and a lot of nothingness with a restlessness that I have almost gotten used to for some time now. True that this restlessness comes in bouts, bouts of helpless madness. Madness sounds fashionable, I suppose.

I woke up with a start as usual. Rather, I woke up startled, as usual. My dream never felt more real.

"पागल हूँ  मैं तेरे बारे में। पता है तुझे?"(I'm crazy about you. Do you know that?)

That's the last, and frankly the only line I recollect saying in my dream. I only remember the pair of eyes that I was looking into, that looked back into mine, transfixed. Like they couldn't move even if they tried to. The face looks blurry. But that's okay. Let's leave the resolution selection to youtube's control panel. 

The days are going by in contemplation, movies, sweat, books and plans. Now, there's purpose, or purposes, less than a month away, These new-found purposes, never before encountered, can and will break me. But hopefully, shall make me stronger, or give me a broken back. 

A thing about trying not to think....

Why is it that you think about not thinking about a thing, and end up thinking about it a lot more than you think you'll think? Think about it. Follies of the human mind, I tell you!

A thing about all this pent up energy is a lack of direction. Push-ups and squats have stopped working. They quell the restlessness for 10 minutes, till the heart-rate's back to normal. And then, goodbye, peace! Then the over-thinking starts all over again. And damn Sundays!

These folks, who claim rights to your attention, can't they just GO! GO!!

If the world were a person, I'd catch him/her by his/her lapels, and give a good shaking! The world is one person. Some sort of a unified consciousness. And a big chunk of it is scared to death. Some parts of it dies like it is not going to live again. A bigger part of it dies half death, like it is only going to half-live. Bloody zombies. All the rules of the world, all the nameless and faceless 'rule-makers' bind the half-livers in inescapable shackles of conformity. And no one sees how or when they get trapped. The only thing they remember is the day their eyes open, and when they realize their impotence. Will I be one of them? It is a question that each one of asks to oneself. The question is like shouting out loud into the abyss. You never know how deep it gets. So you stop hoping for the echo, maybe an answer. 

Fairness that I've seen turning to pink, curls that look like the ocean, a thousand times beautiful than when they are bound by the world, the curves of a guitar, and the sound of Spanish music, unadulterated, soothing, in the middle of the night, all you luscious beautiful things, stay away from my dreams. For thanks to you, I sleep a lot more than I'd like to. And because of you, the days look a tad bit less exciting than they usually are. So you top, GO! Go away to safety. Where my sight can't reach. For sleep was, is and shall be a foe. The one that's robbing my days from me. Days that 'd rather spend with you things that I dream of. 

Life ain't a spectator sport. 

Go WANT!

No one tells this sort of stuff to us. Never did, never will. The world is out there for the taking. It's just a matter of spreading arms as wide as we can, and taking it all in. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. 

Our job is to ask.

Don't ask for the permission to ask.

Ask what you truly WANT. 

Ask like you truly want every ounce of what you desire.

Ask like every single ounce of you wants what you desire.

Ask like you never wanted anything more badly.

Ask without shame, Ask with nothing held back.

Ask like the world is compelled to conspire in your favour.

Ask! Ask! Ask! 

For if you don't, no one shall know.

And the chance that your deep desire had to manifest itself, shall vanish. 

A thing with keeping arms wide open, is that you can then be hurt. And we don't like to be hurt. The pain, the agony, the scars that stay behind. Reminders of everything unrequited. 

But it all heals. Or maybe I haven't lost anything that left a scar deep enough to hot have healed yet. And that's the case for most of us. We haven't lost enough. We fear the little losses. And then lose a big one without even knowing what we lost. 

Ask, and be ready to fight for what you ask.

Ask, and be ready to be punched. 

Ask, and be ready to bleed.

Ask, wound that little one inside.

Don't NEED. We all have what we need. Else, we'd be dead. 

Don't Wish. Wishes are weak. Like castrated horses. 

WANT! Now there's the stallion! Fuelled with testosterone! With the heart to put everything at stake, all of which counts for so little anyway.

Don't just back down if your WANT is denied. You just didn't have coherence in your WANT. So ask again!

Ask till you can breathe. Ask even when you cannot. 

Ask all that you want. And then, don't wait. TAKE IT! For it's yours. For it was yours. Long before you were granted your WANT.

A bit beyond bollocks

It's an unwritten rule.

Things that are meant to be,

Will encounter one another no matter the forces that come their way.

For if they fight or not, in reality or in thought, be it rain or drought, be they things fresh, or things that rot, part they cannot. And why that happens, I know not. And with that thought, I begin to jot.

Our worlds, the worlds that each one of us have to ourself, happen to be a minuscule part of a bigger whole. Here, in this so called puny world of ours, we are so mangled, tangled and strangled in our own "troubles". What is in plain sight, looks like a puzzle of different complexity to each one of us. To some, what they see is no puzzle, as they can see it for what it is. For another some, what they see is no puzzle because they cannot see anything at all. It is like a game of Sudoku. All the necessary information is RIGHT in front of your eyes, The numbers in the grid are more than adequate to fill th entire grid. Just make sure that a number never repeats itself within any given vertical or horizontal line of the grid.

You see what I see.

I see what you see.

You know what I know. I know what you know.

We both see the same thing on the bottom left corner.

We do what we do for the same reason.

Silence speaks volumes.

And when words come out, they are so few.

At times no blood flows upstairs.

At times, there's a rush of blood to the head.

Either occasion, it's hard to think,

And who cares if either one doesn't blink.

No more ciphers for the day. I bet doing weed feels this way.

For now I keep myself and my thoughts at bay,

It's all but one life. Say what you need to say!

Say what you need to say.

Huh? What??!!

Sometimes, you just feel like shouting your heart out. After all, what's the whole point of having a loudspeaker equipped throat and a thunderous voice, if one can't shout one's heart out?

Shout I do. But again, sound doesn't travel in vacuum. Physics 101. Sucks!

It is hard to believe how even trivial issues, at least seemingly trivial issues, can nag you like a thorn in the underpants. Mind you, this is when you're in a crowded place with no toilet in sight. What do you do? And more so, you can't even zero down on the source of your irritation. That, or you just don't want to admit the true cause of your agony, because it feels too puny to be let out in the public domain. 

I was recently accused of cooking up a lot of dishes in my own head. In Hindi, this dish prepared by mental cooking is called "खयाली पुलाव "("Khayaali Pulao"), basically delicacies made out of mindless thinking. Does that even make sense? Goodness!

Now, to think or not to think, that's the question. I shall keep my doubts and questions aside for now, as all of the above ranting sounds like utter gibberish!

The games we play,

The things we say,

Of things we don't, 

And then walk away.

The things unsaid,

The things we dread,

That everyone knows,

And's in the head.

To say, then what,

To think or not,

Of pointlessness,

over things we fought.

Be day, or night,

It doesn't seem right,

Why then deny,

What is your sunlight!

Ta! DAAA!! Now THAT was a crappy poem! A thing about poems is that you can put everything into riddles, and laugh away at those who try to decipher what you wrote. Who came up with the idea of poems? Wow! That fellow surely should have given a TED talk!

I stood at the stairway. No, this one wasn't going to heaven. And despite this stairway doing down, it wasn't going to hell either. I saw the gorgeous lady coming towards a group of chaps I was just about to leave. My mind went blank. She was smiling from ear to ear. Yeah, the question paper was shit easy. Fine.

Post-Examination-Dissection-Of-Question-Paper, one of the most fruitless human activities, is what I allowed myself the liberty to indulge in. It was fruitless, specially so in my case, because the only thing my mind could make any sense of was her perfume. Shit! She held one end of the question paper, that someone committed the crime of handing to her. And there I was, holding the other end of the question paper like an idiot. Could I comprehend a word written on the question paper at this point? Obviously not!

The only thing I could notice was she trying to escape my gaze, and succeeding at it. At least my ticker wasn't hammering in my chest. Probably no one had an idea of what was happening at all. That is in case anything was happening. 

My eyes went to her face. Actually, more to her dangling earring. BIG-ass dark green stone right in the middle of the earring. I traced her jaw-line in my mind. Then, my attention went to a little reddishness below her right cheek-bone. Hmm.. That's new. 

All of a sudden, like a jolt of lightning, I was struck by my futility of looking at the question paper that the lady and I were holding onto for some very stupid reason. It wouldn't have made a difference if the contents of the question paper was written in Martian script, or Greek, or even English for that matter. I guess the question paper had stuff written in English. I'm sure that fact bears no relevance to the helplessness of my situation. 

Having realized that, I turned around, and kept walking... Kept walking.. And kept walking....

FIN! *ting*

At first sight

It doesn't take a lot to know that something is about to happen. The eyes might have been straying around out into the open somewhere. That is until the accident happens. Two pairs of eyes some in the line of sight of each other, and there you have it! Disaster strikes!
The eyes lock onto each other, refusing to let go, rather helplessly locked together, like when you accidentally have two of your fingers joined together when using super-glue.
Then comes the blood-rush! That little ticker inside the chest explodes once again, and then again, and again, telling you that

"You're officially alive now, YOU IDIOT!"

Then you struggle to break the initial gaze, the both of you, realizing that it is merely futile to do so. Then you look away, forcing your neck in another direction. Yet, each time you look around, you know for a fact that the things running in your mind are the same running in the other one's too. You look, then she looks. Then she looks, and you look again. Boom... Boom... Boom... Boom... Ahh! Beating of the heart! What pleasure it gives! Blood coursing through veins, instead of passively flowing through them. That restlessness, those second thoughts, that feeling of being uncertain, and the entire confused state of affairs! Come to think of it. Humans are stupid creatures. Confused between the two roads that diverge into the woods. One road takes you to safety. The reptilian mind. The one that wants you to survive by providing the safest possible way out of tight situations.
The other road, the one that tells you... "Damn son! You're in for one hell of a ride! No idea if you'll come unscathed on the other side, but I promise it'll be FUN!" 

When I read "The Road Not Taken", by Robert Frost, it was just another poem my classmates and I had to study to answer a bunch of random test questions. But as I recall the poem now, specially now that I haven't to answer no test-question pertaining to the poem, I realize the profoundness in those four verses. Damn! Why can't such things be told to us non-academically? But that said, had this poem not been taught the way it was, it wouldn't have stayed in the back of our minds, the way it has. And besides, our minds were rather naive back then. Our minds are still naive, even now. Maybe, just maybe, our educationists kept our mental development in mind and exposed us to profound stuff in the beginning, hoping that we'll be struck by the profoundness of what we read, in time. If that's the case, well, our educationists are a bunch of geniuses.
I'm sure they didn't put the poem into our school books thinking "Oh! This is a cool poem! Let's have the kids read it!"
They must have been thinking more in the lines of "Okay, let's put this poem in the book. Here's hoping that some one among these kids will be smart enough to make sense of this stuff."

For those of us who've forgotten the poem, here it is.....

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

And the one less traveled by, shall be one hell of a ride, and I hope to be naive enough to choose it each time, EVERY TIME!
Thank you, Robert!

The guys...

It doesn't take a lot for me to start crying. It's almost like dropping a hat. Specially when it comes to sensitive topics. 

A few days ago, I had a friend in my room. We spoke about the most unspoken things of all. Parents. They are a lost topic in our so called "busy" life. We have all the time in life to go about doing anything, and frankly everything. But calling mom or dad feels like a task all by itself. It has come to the point that my mom gets to know about me more through my blogs than my telephonic conversations with her. Sad. And here I am, riddled with my own turmoils, having least considerations about what might be happening 1200 kilometers away. My home's roughly 1200 kilometers away. 

Little do I know of how, or even why my parents met. All I know for a fact is that had they not, this world would fall short of two geniuses. Surely one. That said, I'm sure that there's a whole story about my folks meeting each other, all of which happened about a year before I entered the scene. Damn! They should have invited me beforehand. Or maybe not. 

We seldom talk about our folks. They are almost like the first chapter of a tremendously painful book. You know that's the first thing you read. But it remains in the background. This is despite the fact that one spins the story around the initial impressions of the first chapter of the book. But just that in the process of the story, the first chapter looses itself in the middle of it all, somewhere. 

I was a kid some time ago. From where our parents see, no matter what our age, we're still, and will always be the little toddlers that our parents felt overjoyed playing with. If I remember correctly, I was in grade 1 or 2. I'd just learned how to make a heart shaped card from somewhere. The first thing I remember making with this new found talent of making heart-shaped cards, was on Father's day. I wrote something like "Pappa, you're my Batman and Superman, both put together." I obviously wasn't this grammatically correct, but what I wrote was very similar to what I just wrote above. I remember my dad being very happy about what I'd written on the heart-shaped card. All I remember was it being a very awkward moment when I presented my card to dad. I guess mom helped me out, or something. But then again, dad was happy. Specially when he was experienced enough to know that Superman, or even for that fact Batman never existed in real life, and that I was naive enough to know and think that my fictitious superheroes stood as one right in front of me. 

About a decade and a half later, I stand, immersed in the hubris of my youth, and the deluge of hormones that allow me to feel limitless in every way. Everything feels within my grasp. I think about one person more than any other, one accomplishment more than any other. I think about all the moments I'm losing every moment, just as this moment passes by. Then I think about the one person, and then the one accomplishment. Then again the person, then again the one accomplishment. Behind my mind, I know that I haven't spoken with mom, or dad for the last two days. But speaking to these folks of mine is, as I mentioned earlier, a task all by itself. Same old talk. Same "Beta(Son), take care. It'll all be fine. Don't worry.", Same old people. Same old voices. Same old worries. Not until recently did I notice that the hair on my parents' heads were graying a lot faster than I'd thought they were. Never before had they looked "old". In that sense, my parents are genetically blessed, given that they look at least five years younger than their age. That is five years at the very least. 

About half a decade ago, I realized that these folks aren't all that perfect as I'd come to assume. They had their own chinks in their armors. And I took their chinks a tad too seriously. Maybe I shouldn't have. But then, I did. In the heat of my testosterone spurt. And hormonally, I still feel berserk. Driven to madness, in everything I want most in life. And a lot of that remains to be figured out yet. And I thank my genes for this unlimited reserve of madness,  that allows me to push against all odds, not caring for anything except for what I care for the most. Goodness! Someone among my ancestors must have been one BALLSY character! 

I can't thank my folks enough, just like a few people in my life, whom I can't thank enough. For they make me the man I think I am. The friends, the foes, the women, the books, the accidental acquaintances, and that heart if mine, that beats like a bloody race-horse at the very sight of beauty! What would existence be like without all of this?

What I'm sure of is that my soul wouldn't have been the way it is in another body. And for that, I'm indebted to this universe!

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

की समझावा मैं तैनू ? बोल ओये उल्लू दे पट्ठे!

Ki samjhaawaa main tainu?? Bol oye ullu tey patthey!!!!

How shall I make you understand, you dimwit (Son of an owl, to be more precise...)?!

रोने के लिए तैयार हो जाओ !

Get ready to cry, folks!

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Ki sab hai chutiyapanti.......

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Aankh kar di maa ki!

Oye kar de beda paar mera!

Chaddhaun rupaye hazaar tera!

Kisine pocket maari meri.

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Ki baj gayi meri ghannnti!

Pichhwaadi pe, laath padi hai,

Dhho bhi main nayi paiyaan!

Ab toh tu bhi maar le meri,

Thappad main nayi khaaiyaan!

Jeena mera.... hai, rona hua, ki main karaa?!

Ke tu jaake chaaaaiiii la mera!

Ke paise tere GHANNNNTA mera!

Kyun le raha hai phir tu meri?

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Oye ladki waala part tera!

Ki aur sar na chaat mera!

Tu pakka lega jaan meri!

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Ki sab hai chutiyapanti!

My life looks like a bunch of clichéd movie scenes put together into one reel. Well, to be a "little"  more specific, parts of my life are like a bunch of clichéd movie scenes put together on the same reel. It is like the scene in the movie Fight Club, where Brad Pitt inserts segments of pornographic films into reels of normal feature films in the reel room of the theater he works in. So during the running of a movie, a few frames of the pornographic movie flash in front of the audience. "Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did... A nice, big cock..."

I'm part happy, and part sad  that none of the movie frames that make up my life have anything closely pornographic about them. Sad because... Obviously!

Happy, because I don't have to bear the shock of seeing a penis flashing in front of my eyes. Well, that said, who the hell writes lyrics to songs that we hear nowadays? Mushy nonsense! The worst part is when the mushy song becomes an ear-worm, refusing to leave at no cost. Goodness! Why do we get ear-worms?

Main tainu samjhaawaa ki?

Na tere bina lagda ji,

Tu ki jane pyaar mera,

Main karu intezaar tera..

Tu dil tuiyyo jaan meri..

Main tainu Samjhaawaa ki?

Na tere bina lagda ji..

Bhak yaar!

I still don't understand how "Ullu dey patthey"(Son of an owl) can be a way to address a stupid person in Hindi. Are owls stupid?

To those who teach.

Sometimes, you are so up your own arse-hole that your head looks exactly where it is usually found to be. On that note, as pointless as it sounds, and as pointless as it is, I shall continue....

Those who teach you needn't be teachers by profession. Somehow, teaching doesn't have to be part of anyone's job description for someone to teach you a lesson, or even two. In this short time I've been on this planet, I've been fortunate with the teachers I got. Not just the ones in school and college, but even out in the real world. We get them in all shapes and sizes. Some made you fall in love. Some helped you get a hold on myself. Some made you feel humble. And some catch you moments before you stumble. Some teach you what is beauty. While a ton of them tell you your duty. That's the-end to all the rhyming.

Some come trapped in books. Some come wrapped inside human bodies. And by the time you realize the profoundness of what you learned from them, you are too blown away by your realization.

I have little idea of who Bertrand Russel is. I, like the most of us, have taken Google for granted. And since Bertrand Russel is not even 5 seconds away when one's in front of a keyboard, why bother knowing who the poor soul was. But then, I ran into Bertrand Russel's 10 commandments. And they are very different from the  10 commandments in the Bible. Here we go...

You cannot hand-pick from this list, but I'll do so anyway. Rules 2, 3, 4 and 6 come in front of you, blow you away, pass by gently, and blow you away again. That was in my case. Maybe for someone else, each one blew them away. To each his own. My favorite however, is the HELPFUL HINTS. The chap encourages us to watch MOVIES!! Okay, he also encourages us to go to classes. So what?

Talking about classes, I'm quite sure that the stuff being taught in class makes a lot more sense when you're under some form of substance abuse. Whichever class that may be that you attend under the influence. The substance might make you more influential, or something. Okay, bad joke. Moving on. 

There are some teachers whose classes you attend just to hear the teachers talk. Maybe because each word they utter is a pearl of wisdom. Like in a class I enrolled for, the teacher is one of the coolest humans I have witnessed in my lifetime. It's around people like these that you feel like you ought to be more responsible about what you say and do.

He said something today. I call it the "No-problem" theory.

He, my teacher, was discussing about the upcoming examinations. He's obviously very well aware of the "marks" frenzy that most of the students go through. Specially given that the chaps and ladies in his class, barring me and a handful others, are very particular about their academic record. 

Here's what he said. 

"If you even score a zero in your first test, NO PROBLEM! You have your Test 2, and also your Final examination to make up your scores.

If you even screw up your second test, NO PROBLEM! You still have your Final exam to make up your scores! Your finals amount to 50% of your total scores. So don't worry!

Even if you screw up your Final Examination, NO PROBLEM! Don't worry! You can avail for a correspondence course. If not that, It's just a matter of another semester that you'll clear the subject. Don't worry!"

He obviously said all of this to put us at ease. But here's the deal. We are... okay no comment about rest of Humanity, but I am pretty deep up my own arsehole. One fine day, I must have mistaken my arsehole for a rabbit-hole in Wonderland, thought of myself as Alice, and decided to see how deep the rabbit-hole went. I ended up in my own head. Wow! What a revelation! The hole wasn't that deep after all! In case you are a bit taller than I am, don't worry. You'll be back in your own head in a while. In case you end up in someone else's head, buddy, you jumped into the wrong hole! But then again, NO PROBLEM! You might just have to deal with someone else's shit....

I obviously took the liberty of considering myself a representative of humanity. Maybe I was being a bit too liberal while making that decision. But who cares? This is where Bertrand Russel's rule #4 strikes me like a hammer to the head. I, rather we, get too stuck up thinking about the possibilities of the possibilities of our actions. Yeah, the possibilities coming twice is purely intentional, not some work of fiction.Some of us are so up our arses that we've reached our heads the first time around, jumped back into the hole, and re-reached our heads a couple of times. Mind you, it's not a good experience.

Goodness! You must be jobless!

Taken

Look at me. Then run away. Feel helpless, and fidget around. But then get irritated, as you have nothing to do. Then take the long walk back, and see me again. But look down, and walk away. 

Talk to me from a mile away, fight for hours on end. Pointlessly. Then say nothing when we're two feet away. Look in my direction. But don't look at me. Then, steal glances at me. Look like you don't want to look, but then end up looking longer than you intended to. Then smile, when you realize that you just gave yourself away. 

Walk away. Run. Hide behind the first person in the vicinity. It doesn't matter. I got X-ray vision! I have superhuman hearing too, I feel. The heart is a frail animal. And yours beats too loud, and a tad too visibly. And then you heave a sigh, each time my gaze uncovers you, layer by layer. Out of excitement, your left leg begins to shake. All that energy inside needs a way out, one way or the other. 

Turn around to see me. Turn around to see me look at you. And then turn around once again. Scramble your thoughts together, and then watch your thoughts scamper away. Hear me when I say not a word. Then tell me that I am irritating. Wish me away, and then come back to me. Read me. Then say you didn't like what you read. And then read me again. Confused female!

 Go, change your fragrances. For the one that belongs to you can't change in this lifetime. And the notes of your fragrance seep through those of your scent's like water through a sieve. I wonder how you don't realize that. Every whiff of you that fill my lungs, makes me feel like Jean‑Baptiste Grenouille from the movie Perfume.

I look up in the sky on a full moon night and see a face. But there are too many trees around. So the moon too plays hide-and-seek with me, just like you know who. But then the trees stop blocking my view, for trees are clean souls. They might play around with me for a while, but then they give way, leaving the moon alone in the night sky, for me to watch. It stays up there, stark naked, in all its beauty, with nothing to cover its blemishes. Blemishes no one minds.

But anyway, Koo-koo-ka-choo gets screwed. 

Whoops!

Every once in a while

Every once in a while, you let go.

You remove every restrain off of that inner voice waiting to pounce and grab the world that lies there, up for grabs. This is one of those few times when the true self manifests itself. This is the time when the mouth blurts out the most stupid, and simultaneously the most truest, most profound words that your lips have uttered in some time. And for a change, your lines sound better than those in your favorite movie.

Every once in a while, You are a dog.

You are THE dog. It also happens to be that it's your day. What a day to be a dog! And it doesn't matter if your tail remains bent on this day. Not a soul can do a thing about it. Not that any soul can do anything about your perpetually bent tail even otherwise. Maybe, just maybe, you're not even a dog. It's just your day! Either way, wag the hell out of that bent tail!

Every once in a while, it all seems futile.

All of it. Every bit of it. All the control, all the safety, all the security. It all seems like a larger scheme to keep people from wanting what they really want. Also that people, you, I, the guy next door, have no clue of what to want. And yet we perversely cling to things that we know for a fact won't hold us in good stead in the long run. We cling to them because we want to think that these things will hold us in good stead. It's like the bird that stayed under bullshit for a tad longer than he was supposed to. Here's a story.

A bird flew for too long in winter, crashed into the ground, and lay there in the cold. It was about to die. From somewhere came a bull, and shat on the bird. The shit felt warm. So the bird lay there with the heap of bullshit covering it. The bird slowly felt better. With nothing to eat, it tasted a bit of the dung. No clue about the taste, but the bird got the impression that it was getting better, and better. It grew so happy with the feeling of feeling better with all the bullshit in and around it, that it started to sing. A cat heard the bird sing, found it, and ate it. Moral? Bullshit only gets you so far!

And that story was SO out of context. Or maybe not. No idea.

Every once in a while, a voice rings in your ears.

It rings in your ears. And then, it takes your breath away. It won't stop with your breath. It will chase your sleep away, and make you regret for having wanted to hear it all this while, till the point you heard it, of course. But you have this crazy option of un-hearing the voice, removing it from your mental repository. But NO! You'd not do that. No. Not EVER! Maybe the inconvenience caused later is worth hearing the giggle in that voice again.

Every once in a while, you see something closely.

You see it so closely, that you know the "something" better than the "something" knows itself. Its every curve, its every lock, its every crevice, every hue that adorns it, and every hue that doesn't. To the point that you can see the entire existence of the thing in front of your eyes, when the "something" remains just another object, hidden in plain sight, to the public and to the "something" itself.

Every once in a while, you realize it is all an experiment.

One of the "ten commandments" of Bertrand Russel goes as follows.

Consider everything an experiment.

There's no formula. It's all trial and error. Out here in reality, there ain't no ideal conditions. No assumptions. The consumer/customer/buyer  ain't a rational being. We'd all like to be rational beings. But sadly, we're not. And that's why chocolate tastes better when you're depressed, or stoned, I suppose. 

Each time we do something, there are only two ways out. Either one gets it right, or one gets another way to not do the thing in the first place. 

And of course, every once in a while, you come across a book.

Actually, every once in a while, you come across a ton of books, all of which you read simultaneously, few pages at a time. Some of them are bookey-books. And some.... And SOME change the paradigms of your reality

Try reading this book called Zero to One. The book is about start-ups, but gives a lot of insight into life in general.

"Every once in a while" happens every once in a while. Maybe, "Every once in a while" happens too many once in a whiles. And maybe, that's fine. Only so many whiles in a single lifetime.

Tantalizing

Smooth objects... Things without edges.. No kinks anywhere. I don't know if all humans are attracted to smooth objects, or is it just me? Whatever be the case, smooth things have a very ethereal quality to them. Their fluidity feels like jagged rocks having turned into smooth stones after millennia of running water wearing their surfaces off. And these stones are smooth as baby-bottoms. Okay, maybe not baby-bottoms that have been soaking in the baby's pee and poop, as the mother's forgotten to change the diapers, but hope you get the point without any further need on my behalf to elaborate in this regard. 

Something about angles renders them a very man-made look. Look at buildings. Look at squares, and cubes. All edgy, all pointy, all so "How-it-must-be", each one of them. We like them because they are convenient. We put our things in boxes. We sit in "cubicles", we "compartmentalize" things. All of the above give us control over our lives. Or that's he impression we give ourselves the liberty to subscribe to. And yet, when it comes to beauty, we go running, back to our curves! The subject of beauty has obsessed my mind for a while. I know not whether this obsession of mine is because of my inability to appreciate things, or it is that I have just learned how to appreciate things. Either way, here's something that caught my attention....

The Jaguar E-Type- Often called SEX on wheels..

It is probably the one thing the Britishers achieved, apart from their incessant rant about the weather. Oh no! They also made Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and many other places all over India and all over the world look the way they do. And THAT is a compliment. Anyway, coming back to the E -type...

Goodness! The E-type's designer, Malcolm Sayer, is said to have hand plotted each point on the car's bonnet to make it as streamlined as possible. This was at a time before all the computers came into the designing process. Jawdropping!

Spheres.. Balls.. Not testicles-balls. Balls-balls! Testicles aren't even spherical. Goodness knows why they are called balls. Oh! But balls needn't be spherical. Do they? Maybe I'm thinking out too loud. But ball-bearings, metal spheres, Globes made of glass, actually globes made of anything solid enough to not yield under the "crushing force" of my grip, have all fascinated me. And I write this out of a fear that if, iff I write about my current object of fascination, I might just end up sounding a tad too erotic.

So back to spheres... My math teacher asked the definition of  a sphere in class. This was way back in class 10. In a stroke of fluke intelligence and stupidity, both put together,  coupled with my incessant urge to blurt things in my head out loud, I said something that sounded like

"A sphere is when each point on an object is equidistant to a single point inside the object."

And I am shameless to quote myself. So much for being a megalomaniac. 

Something brings my attention to the word "Sexy". For some very strange reason, the word has gotten a rap on the wrist. But allow me to clear the air about this word. I do so despite knowing that doing so won't make a dent in the universe in terms of people's understanding/perception of the word SEXY. 

Sexy is virility. 

Sexy is wholeness.

Sexy is beauty.

Sexy is curvy. 

Sexy is Irresistible.

Sexy is Aphrodite, and everything that makes one realize that blood is coursing through one's veins. Don't shun the word. It's sacrilege. And NOW is the time to announce that you are sexy. But then again, that's again only if you think so.

DONE!