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!