On thoughs, fear and backsides

I think of thoughts from time to time. How fleeting they are; there one moment, gone the next instant, like a puff of smoke. Like smoke because the last threads left behind by a diffusing smoke cloud, still allows you to spot the passing puff, holding within it a world of thoughts that have decided to part ways with you. Maybe, if you try hard enough, you can inhale them back inside. And maybe, you can let them go. I just realized that you don't need to smoke to understand smoking as a metaphor.

It is exasperating to swim through the everyday ether with a fear of having your thoughts stolen. Somewhat similar to fear of the dark, Achluophobia for the nerds among us. If you have feared the dark ever in your life, much before you dared to watch a horror movie, you know how it feels. Someone's always there, and magically disappears when you decide to turn around. You never know what will happen if you surrender yourself to the darkeness. Will it engulf you? Will it possess you? Or will it hit you on the head with the bricks you have been shitting all this while? The chaps with chronic Achluophobia probably just die without a clue of why they died. So do the people who streak in front of a fast car. And so do fellows who don't use safety harnesses while bungee jumping. I mean, surely there do exist people who think bungee chords are for pussies. Eh?

But give darkness enough time to touch you, take over. The absence of light does absolutely no harm. Unless of course there's a thief in your house who entered when it was dark. In that case, you need to change your locks with more secure ones. No, wait! Get the thief out of your home, and then change the locks. Then again, there is a chance that the thief did not enter the house through the doors. 

A bit on fear here. Everything we take in, everything we are fed by our surroundings without our permission, as much as we don't like to admit it, is all driven around our fears. The non-stop ads we see and hear, jammed into our senses, feed off on our insecurities and fear, just in case they do not introduce altogether new fears into the mind. For starters, 

"If it's not an iPhone, it's not an iPhone."

 To the average mind, that one line would be a sufficient cause for feeling miserable about the phone one owns. Or maybe not. But there is something very elusively aspirational about things like an iPhone. It's probably the "i" in the name. Who knows. That said,

"If it's not an iPhone, who gives a shit?"

Okay, my dad will beat me to pulp if he happens to read this. But how much further can we stretch Steve Jobs's legacy?

Then there are a thousand advertisements, nowadays announced even through speakers  in the metro trains, just like how they play on trains of Sci-Fi movies that portray our dystopian futures. All these relentless inputs, subliminally priming the mind to jump at products that seem to come in our line of sight rather randomly. Movie stars loving and hugging all that needs to be sold, lending commodities a little bit of credibility in the process. Amitabh Bacchan seems to be getting a lot of screen-time on the telly. No, he's not doing the 25th season of KBC. He sells prams and baby products these days.

Let's hurt the head a little. I got introduced to a new term. BBW. Big Beautiful Women. Aha, Sweet! An article I came across in a newspaper documented how mannequins have reduced in girth around the waist, and actually around everywhere. Looks like 36-24-36 aren't the favorite numbers around anymore. At least for shop owners. These chaps want to display dresses on skeletons, apparently, and then subsequently watch these dresses rip apart when worn by real people. The average hip/waist size on the Indian woman hasn't gone down, mind you. No one's complaining, mind you.

We obsess over two things as far as people go. Fair skin, and "thin" frames. Nothing to do with health. Strange. In the process, we have produced an age of pill-popping weight-loss stories. By the way, our obsession has only helped pharmaceutical companies to feed on our insecurities, for goodness knows how long. Then again, someone always has the smarts to turn any situation into a profitable idea.

About big, beautiful women, I did a bit of looking around. Not on the streets, of course. No one needs to "Look" around for these gorgeous creatures out in the world. You just need open eyes, and more importantly, an aversion to social norms. Even that's not necessary, I guess. Yeah, so I read up a bit on big ladies. There seems to be an under-current shift in guys accepting the idea of healthier bodies on women, to put it subtly. It isn't any counter-culture trend like those in the 60s, like the ones our generation missed out on. But hell! Ambitions of Frail, emaciated bodies, now that should be banned!

Ever observed that while climbing a crowded flight of stairs, one's face is often confronted with the arse of another human? Well, I was approaching a staircase at a crowded railway station. My eyes happened to spot this beautiful, curvy woman walking into the line just ahead of me. Her architecture would put Kim Kardashian to shame! All fine, all heavenly gracious! Only that she started climbing the stairs, and veered off into my line. And that gorgeous derrière that I had gotten to admire moments ago, stared at me right in the face. I laughed my pants off, imagining my inevitable death, had the aforementioned woman let out a fart. Why would such a thought come to my mind?

I intended on writing about fear of losing my thoughts. Now, all I can think of is about women I know with jawdroppingly beautiful backsides. Imagine my plight.

A few tales

"That he was outnumbered did not matter, because the whole world had outnumbered him long ago, and what do numbers matter?"- Between the World and Me, a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read this quote while on a train. The train was practically empty. Standing at the gate, I felt the world whiz by, the air cooling off my sweat, and let my mind ruminate on these words. I haven't a clue about the author. I saw the title on the book, and it screamed at me to pick it up, and cradle it away.

I set out, every single day, just like everyone, to make something out of myself. Or at least to lose myself so completely in something so that I have to use the word "I" the least number of times possible. As time ticks by, you do realize that you are actually alone. Yes, you ave friends, you have parents, and you have a sea of strangers, each one of them, fighting a battle of their own, incomprehensible to you. You love, you want to be loved, you fight, you make up, you break-up, and all of that keeps happening in the back-drop.

But at the end of the day, one's pursuit of anything comes riddled with roadblocks. Why I say what everybody knows, I know not. But how about this? The world that we are born into, not the world we think of in our heads, is a lot bigger than what it looks. And we need not necessarily fight it, I suppose. But if we are to, it sounds fair enough to say that a few blows to the face will have to be dealt with. Wow! Where has all the world's sexuality gone?

I'll tell you a story, a bunch of them actually. Parts of it are ready in my head, but hopefully, I'll pull the rest out of my arse as I go along.

Here's a typical story we are used to. It's tried, tested, cliched, and seems to work every single time!

Guy meets girl, girl meets guy, some friction happens, they start liking each other after a little push from either they guy, or the girl. They make love, fight with parents, or maybe they don't, have their way, get married, make more love, have kids, fight, love fight, love, have more kids, fight, love, (sorry too old for more kids), and die. 

This has been happening for a long time, a lot before you or I cam into existence. And honestly, our survival is based on the continuity of the above mentioned string of events. And that's the deal really. A lot has happened, and a lot has kept happening before we even came into the picture.

Here's a not-so-unusual, but not necessarily typical story.

Guy meets girl, girl meets guy, some friction happens, they start liking each other after a little push from either they guy, or the girl. They make love. No one told us that both of them were a little slow. And the guy, being the guy, finished inside the girl. And a little bit of hell broke loose. Okay, don't laugh. Please. That's because the girl irrevocably fell in love, and also into trouble. That's when she did feel a little all by herself, as we all are. But time healed wounds, well, sort of. And so her tale goes, in and out of things. Maybe she knows what she's looking for. Maybe she doesn't. Who knows. 

Story #2

The girl's mother liked the guy more than the girl. Not as in sexually, like in the movie "The Graduate". So the guy never had to say to the mother

"Mrs. ************, you're trying to seduce me."

Besides, the parents, unusually had no objections all-in-all. Which is a good thing. The fellow knew all along, from the moment he'd seen the girl, about the events that would unfold, and eventually lead to the moment of ceremony. The girl didn't strike him as particularly beautiful at first glance. She was sort-of cute. But her appearance happened to rub off on his mind, purely because she happened to be around a bit more than required. Even that took a good 2 years. The chap kept hearing rumors about the girl's raunchy escapades every other day, except none of them were just rumors. But our chap never cared, not out if good-heartedness, but because he too had troubles keeping his dick in his pants. "Maybe all's fair in love and war.", the chap consoled himself. You see, that's our line of defense against our "moral codes". We simply shift the line as per our convenience. And you get such insights only when you look at things from outside yourself. 

The chap adored the girl, something he never admitted, and in all likelihood, never would. But something kept nagging him. The voice inside his head, from the first day he set eyes on his would-be woman, had told him one thing, relentlessly. 

"Dude, she's going to be the cause of your destruction. Stay the fuck away!"- The Mind

 The mind is smart. It knows a lot more than you think you do. When you realize this, that's when you know there are two people inside you. 

But our hero, naive as he is, couldn't stop himself  from singing Locha-E-Ulfat. He hadn't heard the lyrics of the song properly. Yeah, he was an ass. And she HAD an arse! All that boiled down to the imminent hitch. Now thankfully, the fellow was having existential issues for some time. All this going around him was fine. But the thoughts of his being a typical story haunted him to a point of becoming painful. Besides, he knew this arrangement would be a compromise for more reason than one for the girl and himself. Where he had seen visions of conquering his world, and where he was tying himself down with someone who would surely drown him, ever so unintentionally. And he didn't want to blame anyone for that sort of stupidity on his part. He couldn't have that kind of blood on his hands. So he packed his innocence, kept to himself, and sneaked out of his home in the middle of all the festivities, when no one was noticing. All the while, he knew his trusty Bonnevile stood beckoning him to swing his leg over her, and take her down an unending stretch of tarmac.  

And that's what he did. He kick-started her to life, like old times, her engine's gleeful roar filling his senses. And finally, his way was the highway
.

Story#3

After all the dust had settled, the girl was finally free. She didn't owe anything to anybody. No need to answer the ever-scrutinizing "society" that left her perpetually guilty for wanting pleasure. She was free to return to the one she let into her, or actually, to anyone who she pleased to, specially after the guy rode off the other day. It's a free world. No cages, no prisons, except the ones we build around ourselves.

Show and tell

A bull with too many horns is called..... A HORNY BULL.

You know, it's a bit of a trouble when “Lousy” becomes your favorite word. Somehow, it severely impedes your vocabulary, specially when you can use so many other less unpleasant words instead of “Lousy” to describe anything that is not particularly of good taste. But can the use of a less unpleasant adjective make the subject of our description more pleasant? The object sounds definitely less lousy when you describe it using a word less lousier than the word “Lousy”. But somehow, it all doesn't add up. Whatever word one replaced with “lousy” for your erstwhile description, might not alleviate the poor object of ts poverty entirely. It might feel a bit less lousy. But at the end of the day, what the eyes behold is something just a tad-bit less lousy than what it orignally was. Or maybe it is still as lousy as it was in the beginning. Just you are trying to compensate its lousiness with a fancier, a little less hideous word just to make yourself feel better about your plight of having to see, hear, taste or experience the lousy thing. Wow! That's a lot of LOUSY!

Now, despite a bit of an apparent disconnect,  comes the phrase "I shall show you!", a remark often blurted in the heat of the moment, in a mostly futile attempt to redeem one's image that has often taken a good amount of beating. Another one is "Show them what you got!". Again, a despondent attempt by patrons to perk up the player. Then you have "Show me what you got!". Is that a taunt or what?
By the way, I just learned something about this "Show me what you got!" phrase. Use it with a bit of restraint with women. You never know when the female lets her imagination loose and wonders if you're asking her to send you a photo of her boobies, when in fact, you were instigating her to put up a good fight. Women, I tell you. How naive, how beautiful. And maybe, just maybe, the lady might just oblige you with the best view of your life. Why did I not think of that before?

I know not what is at the focus of all of this is the amount of "showing" that we engage ourselves in. Too much on display. Too much addition to the already psychedelic onslaught on the senses. There's so much to see that cannot be covered in a single life time. Not to mention all the soapy TV 'shows' and all their reality. Let's leave that one for the toothless oldies. 

On the other hand, see! So much to experience with the five senses, unless of course you are Spider-man with the extra "spidey" sense. Rarely does anyone say "Let me show you how", with an intention of actually educating someone, except for something like say "How It's Made". Actually, there are many places that shall show us how things are done. And then, there come the things that you cannot be taught. You have got to do them by yourself without the help of any guidebooks. No one can help you with these things.There are books on them, that pose as instruction manuals. But they eventually veer off into unnecessary philosophy, that add up to nothing more than bungled words. Maybe a bit like what I write right now. Maybe not. Who knows?

At some point, even seeing seems to become redundant. Those things that one may regard novel at one time, may fade away into another banal thing one has to see through. That could be because of a loss of curiosity. And that sucks! Specially when we are in a world which can be a boon for the curious, and also kill our curiosity with deadly efficiency. That said, just because Google can give the answer to "How to get pregnant", doesn't mean it can answer every question. Now, for the sake of heaven, please do not go and type "How to get pregnant" in the Google search-box, just to ratify my erstwhile claim about Google. By the way, "Google" spelled "google" shows a spelling error. How full of itself is Google? Eh?
So as Steve Jobs said, "Stay hungry, Stay Foolish." Also, stay curious, and furious. And also stay horny. Damn!

Driving Crazy

The mind wanders in a cauldron of  thoughts at times. Not particularly willing to commit to anything. All of a sudden, a loud train of thought comes hurtling through space. You know for a fact that it will not hit you. What you don't know is that you have been dragging a bungee chord tied around your waist, with a hook on its dangling ends. The train passes you by, and nothing happens for a while, or at least a few moments. And then, you feel a spine-ripping tug. Only that miraculously, your spine happens to be stronger than you think. Looks like all the heavy lifting finally came of some use. Best part being that there aren't any pillars, structures, or people around that you need to be bothered about being hurled at, at break-bone(break-everything speeds) speeds. Once the sudden acceleration of the tug subsides gradually, letting your mind gather itself from the 10G jolt, everything settles down into its own place, as though there was no train. Just that now, you're being dragged through free space by a thought that didn't occur to you up until it did.
The strange part about having a thought is that the moment you have one, you begin wondering how it would be to get back to not having any thoughts running in your head. And when your mind is the devil's workshop, a.k.a empty, you scrape the bottoms of your think-tank for some thought, ANY THOUGHT, with some never before seen despondence.
And while you're tussling between your thoughts and lack of them, your sister comes barging into the room, asking for some sort of help, goodness knows what. All of that outer space warps back into the confines of your room. You mindlessly help her with what the little tyrant wants. She leaves the room(sigh!) saying TYSM..... That's "Thank You So Much". Where do they learn this shit?

What? What? What? What?

Badada Badada BadadaDAA!
I'm gonna pop some tags, only got 20 dollars in my pocket,
I'm, I'm, I'm hunting, lookin' for a come-up,
This is fucking awesome!

If you ever want to focus on one thing, and ONE thing only, go for a drive on any Mumbai road. Your troublesome sweetheart won't pop up in  your dreams after that. At least till the time you're driving. Actually, absolutely nothing shall percolate into your skull through the sieve called "sensory overload". But that realization of having taken on that monster of a Mumbai-traffic leaves you feeling like your balls are made of Adamantium. It's a good feeling as long as your balls are already made of Adamantium. Moving on. Best part is when your dad is sitting right next to you, wondering how in hell you figured out driving, without virtually any training at all. I'm a natural, you see? And while I was driving, I was also shitting bricks. That, my dad didn't know. What I also didn't know was how I pulled it off, all the city driving. Some demon driving the car back today noon.

There's something that struck my attention the other day. One often hears that the moment things start to go right for someone, they become all haughty, and up their own arse about themselves. "Oh! Now, nothing can go wrong!"
But it may be the other way around. That the moment things start going your way, you feel a sense of humility, a sense of responsibility to the task/tasks that have started to go smoothly. I think it's like this. Success and humility go hand in hand. You need one to get the other. You won't have true humility until you've tasted success. And you cannot taste success without having humility.
Just like money. To make money, you need money. And that's precisely the point where I went overboard.

After cars and humility, comes something very important. WOMEN! They are as subservient as the air we breathe. And also as suffocating as the polythene bags, that we are told as kids never to cover our head with. But  as kids, no one tells us that the elders are stupid people, at least in more measures than they'd ever care to admit. So yeah, women are amazingly crucial. But not today. Not that they aren't important right this moment. Just that I want to keep my mind free from visualizing anything sexy, voluptuous, beautiful, and maddening all at the same time. Besides, right now, I don't want to think about all the people rocking their beds for all the right reasons, like the orgasm-counting protagonist in the movie Amélie. And so, i shall talk about the next most important thing. That's "apps".

Apps for food, apps for groceries, apps for matrimonials, apps for taxis, apps for healthcare,  then came "Tinder", followed by Aziz Ansari's(Stand-up Comedian) book revolving around Tinder, perhaps.
Everything's "apps". Soon, there'll be an app to jerk you off! Why stop there? There will be apps that turn the mobile phone into your own personal sex machine (like it isn't already). Okay, maybe that's not a bad thing. But yeah, our future kids will be cyborg-babies! You never know. Specially at the rate at which we are going. More of everything! Like we're never going to have enough. EVVER! And in the process, as I repeatedly say, we'll be reduced to the two dimensional world of our  device's devices. Damn, I should try writing dystopia!

The stars, they shine for you.

What I shall say, is mostly pulled straight out of my arse. But that said, I write what I write this time as a reminder of good that's happened to me. To know that things have been right before, specially when things ain't going right. As a matter of fact, that holds true for everyone, I suppose. How while traveling through the vicissitudes of life, we forget all the good, and make 'complaining' a universal profession. 

I happen to be one of the fortunate in being able to do exactly what I want to. If there's someone out there reading this, I'm sure this fortune is bestowed upon them too, of being able to do what he/she wants. I meet random people when I travel around the city. Strangers, adrift on their own tides, surfing their own waves, fighting their own battles. Some wear quirky Harry-Potter spectacles, some dress in a manner too synonymous with their profession, and some reflect back at you what you are. I write, and hopefully, shall ride and drive for a living. But what I see is how many of us take up their occupation because they could not stand up for their calling. Or maybe, I'm not at a stage in life where I can make that judgment, perhaps. Another thing that I saw through recently, through the people I met with, is that fathers are obsessed with "Safety factor" in any occupation. hat's kind of a given, from an evolutionary perspective, as there is an inherent protective instinct that kicks in in parents when something uncertain, even dangerous confronts their progeny. Because at the end of the day, parents want their kids to live as long as they can, so their children can reproduce as much as they can, as a way to propagate their parents' genes as far and wide as possible to ensure their continuity in the gene pool. Too long-shot a claim, but that's reductionism explaining our fight for survival and our collective, yet clandestine obsession with mating. It disturbs me how all my thoughts come boiling down to the act of copulation, a.k.a sex. 

What i also discovered recently is a new-found difficulty in talking to women. Maybe, I shouldn't have said that. Anyway...

Yesterday was good. Today is good too. And tomorrow shall be too. You never know. And every once in a while, there comes a bugger, sometimes while traveling on a train, okay, mostly while traveling on a train, who sees the Book-reader in my hand and says "Uncle, is that a tab?". And I feel like pummeling this bum's face! If I did wear an oversized shirt, had a rounded back, black leather shoes, and looked lousy as hell, I wouldn't mind being called an "uncle". Here I am, all 5 feet three and a half inches of me, lean, mean, blinding you with all shine and sheen, and the lousy bugger calls me "Uncle"? Now, neither is the chap genuinely interested in reading. I asked him about the books he reads. The first thing he started off was a rant on how he likes to read, how he magically doesn't, and about how he wants to start reading. The fellow is 17. What will he be when he turns 27? And here I am, practicing our universal occupation. 

Another thing about complaining... I've lived seeing my parents, myself, most people I know, except for my grandfather, complaining all their life, or whatever fragment of their life I witnessed. My Dad drives me down to work everyday. Well, almost. And everyday, he complains about the same bottlenecks in the road, at precisely the same location, every single day, and how if he were to design it, it would be a lot more convenient to drive on that stretch of road. Now, that's me complaining. And it becomes irritating to live with yourself with this sort of rant constantly trying to fill your head. Amidst this, here I was thinking about a woman. And then this song started playing on the radio, and did a lot of things to my thoughts, that I cannot mention. Not because my thoughts contain anything unmentionable in them. Just that my thoughts of that drive, from the moment on the song started, are purely inexplicable. And I'm not complaining.

I have a lot of things to thank in life. a lot of who may go unmentioned here today, I'm afraid. Firstly, the lady in my office, who happily gave me LOTS of chocolates, when I just asked for an extra piece. She did slam the door on my face at first. But I saw her smiling through the window next to the door. Parsi ladies, I tell you. Adorable creatures. More so if they're elderly. Something about them reeks of nurturing vibes. Something just motherly enough to keep yo from feeling like you're being mothered. Then, there's my mother, who bears the plight of handling my mood swings. Yes, before I forget, thank you, Coldplay for making Yellow. More importantly, I want to thank the person at my workplace who played this song "Yellow" when I wanted to listen to it. I don't know him/her. I did not tell him/her that I wanted to listen to the song. It just happened to be that our urges to hear this happened to coincide. 

And It was all yellow....

Last, but not least, I want to thank the woman who kept me from not writing these words. Yeah, that's a double negative. Last words for today?

"The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid nearer and nearer the sill of the world. All at once, they were aware of the evening as the end of the light and warmth." - William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Thinking a little

I was walking down the street today. My eyes met with those of a girl. Nothing unusually unusual till now. That also depends on what is unusual. Finding the book "Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance" on the display of every second-hand book-stall, now that's a wee bit unusual. But that book has already been ticked off my to-read-books list. So I wasn't much concerned about it popping up right in my face everywhere i looked. Actually, it did concern me a little.

Repeatedly seeing this version of the book's cover does leave you thinking if you're tripping on something very potent. But nevertheless. I kept walking until the girl's eyes met with mine. She wasn't very attractive, to be honest. But there's something about human eye-contact that grips you, regardless of appearance. That said, I still didn't feel anything sexual about the way the girl held my gaze. Doesn't matter. She crossed my way, and something really strange happened there. She spoke. Her voice, very irritatingly shrill, took me by surprise. It was all the more irritating when words flew out of her mouth at about 450 words a minute. 350 words per minute is the maximum ideal rate of speech for easy comprehension. 450 is painful! And she didn't sing any love lullabies. Here's what she said...

"Sir, we are collecting donations for an education program for underprivileged children. We are from some *&%$# NGO. Would you like to contribute?"

 That was when I was struck by a realization that if you're in India, and your eyes meet with those of a woman, and the woman has the audacity to hold your gaze, you are either dreaming, or you are part of an NGO waiting to grab hold of someone's money, or you are the girl I've had a very hard time getting over. Wait, what?!

Ladies aside, walking on the road, it feels like all everyone's busy doing is avoiding looking into another one's eyes. Like they have a secret to hide. All looking down, somewhere into an unknown abyss, heads hanging low in shameful contemplation.

Now, some serious talk. There's something extremely empowering about working in a magazine company, or for that matter, any place that produces readable/consumable content of any kind. You get to see, and in essence, control what your target audience gets to see, and know. It all happens behind the scenes, the stories we read, the pictures we see, and all that amazing stuff that comes packed between those set of 100 odd glossy pages. And then you get behind the scenes, only to be surprised that there is nothing elusive about the stuff that reaches the consumer, the readers here, like clockwork.  

The word 'Subscribe' is thrown around with great ease, specially with the advent of Youtube. Earlier, it was a term virtually owned by the print-media industry. And there was a reason for that, which still remains a valid reason even today. A subscription doesn't end with the payment one makes for a particular service, a magazine, case in point. What one subscribes to is the manner, perspectives, outlooks, and even philosophies that our services provide us with, solely because that resonates with our own understanding of the world. Yeah, I know. Too much jargon there. In other words, we tend to drift towards things that reinforce, justify, and even build upon our world beliefs.

Some like to see the world in a very stylish light. They don't mind the brash exuberance, and the arrogance of the way things can be. At the same time, there are those who want a more sedate, mollified feed of information, which can at times, border on underestimating the consumer's intelligence.Almost like one set of people read books to keep the mind occupied, and another set read whatsapp forwards for entertainment. Mind you, there are no goods or bads here. Only choices. A simpler example? Guys are either boobs-people, or arse-people. And somewhere between the two, there are also the legs-people. Personally, boobs are fine. But derrières are mindbogglingly sexy! Now I'm not sure who's going to come and beat me up. 

The word on the button is means a lot more than a statistic on a Youtube channel.

Wow! My writing's putting me to sleep.