Before the Clock Strikes 12

Soon I am going to be lost in drunken sopor and comprehending basic grammar, let alone actually writing sense, is going to be beyond my mortal abilities. So, here I am, on New Year's Eve listening to music that seems to be sheer spiel (I loved the word when I read it on a friend's blog), staring at a computer screen, wondering why I would be doing this when I should be already be supine in one corner, downing poisons that would probably be toxic waste in a parallel universe.

Well the answer is simple, before the time comes for Cinderella to run off leaving her glass slipper behind, I have this urge to cleanse my mind, body and soul of everything that has seemingly had a manic depressive effect on me this year. By far 2009 was the most eventful year in my life in terms of disasters and mood swings. It was also a year of decisions made on the spur of the moment and lost friendships, revealed identities and unlayering of layers.

Do not worry. I am not going all philosophical. Nor am I going to be diagnosed as prematurely senile anytime soon. But this is the year I realized that I (and a few other friends who were surprising revelations in this regard) were the target audience for all those real reality shows, television shows and movies, where a wee bit of tweaking of the music would cause us to shed tears or laugh out loud depending on the demand. Pretty much like the applause and laughter boards in studio sets. I also realized that I had more talents than I ever knew, that I took criticism pretty hard, I had the lowest of low self esteems, I was still afraid of my father, I had the coolest mother ever (I just needed to figure how to handle her at times), that I could be likeable if I wanted to and that I had the absolute best choice in friends (whatever anyone else would like to believe).

But despite the few moments of clarity, I had more downs than ups. Spending a day in the hospital with a friend on her birthday - bad, pressing the rewind button on relationships - really really bad, having no friends in the city I call home - dealable, best friend of 13 years going MIA - superlative (to the power infinite) of bad. And these were coupled with mistakes in choice of vocation and being judged by people who thought your normalcy was alien like.

So this coming year in 2010, I need the Karma of life to fulfill its obligation to me, while I go ahead and try to fulfill my obligations to others. And if the powers above are mysteriously reading this - "There is no scope of replacing need with want because this is my survival instinct butting in. I am assuming you guys gave us that instinct for Darwin to discover."

Another Apology

Do you wonder about misery,
I don't...
...worry about seemingly unrelated things
But now it is upon me
And I look for a reason.
Hidden and locked
in the recesses of excuses
made up for lack of courage.
And the reason...
...it stares at me
from every gap available.
Screams and blames, recites
an age old adage
..."for the lack of a nail..."
And I hide.
But the guilt streams through
investigating every nook
before finding me
crouching under beds
shivering in fear
of being exposed,
laid naked,
condemned, accused for
being.

Itching For a Fight!

The first time I ever met her she was wearing this floral blue thing that I completely associated with the kind of people I never became friends with, but then ideas change and so it did again, that day. She questioned constantly, during the orientation and later on, in many of the classes we had together. She would question things, we took for granted. She challenged authority, not for the sake of false rebellion but because she truly believed that somewhere, while asking us to grow up, they, the so called experienced grownups, treated us like we were in kindergarten, asking them to pin our ID cards to our shirt pockets. I adored her and probably admired her. She was that one person who I kind of looked up to, because she had the courage I never had. She would fight for all of us and then fight us, for making wrong choices, in boyfriends and in college. And then suddenly one day, on the ride back home from college, she dropped a bomb (to say the least). She was quitting college. She was not happy. I was angry at her. Yes! But I think the pride surpassed the temper. I never told her this but I was happy she could take a decision like that. And so she left.

Life went on and somewhere along the line, she started losing that spark, of life and happiness, that she had passed on to us. I hated that. I hated what people who apparently cared about her did to her. She got caught in that rigmarole of having a job which you neither love nor hate and living a life that is exciting to people not living it. She loves to criticize herself, something I never thought she would do (unless it was about weight loss, which is the constant bane of all our lives). She blames herself for the faults of self-proclaimed pricks. She calls herself the loser, when it is the other person who lost. She is slowly leeching off all my qualities and since I am such a jealous guardian of all my faults, this is the first notice to her, to leave the territory of my not-so-materialistic patented emotions. And since she knows that I am stronger and will completely kick her a$# in a fight, she will make the right decision. Anyway she bruises way too easily.

By the way, if you are reading this and if you follow the diktat, I cross my heart and swear to train you so that you can beat up the several losers. Just for the heck of it.

Random Musings

Post #1

An emptiness gnaws

A pit opens

exposing fears unknown

Uneasiness irritates

Emotions run amok

Something amiss

the feeling grows

Banished thoughts

haunt again

Semblance of normalcy

lost in the chaos

the battle between the mind and the being

Post #2

Scapes, black and brown

Clocks, overwrought and overworked

Colors, faded, awaiting the artist

dead and gone

Attempts at revival of life

A planet so dead

Searching for a glimmer

The shards of glass

faking hope

Falsifying beliefs

Dewdrops refuse

to die their daily death

Clutching on

to establish identity

Post #3

Tiny minds and tinier people. Claims exaggerated to showcase that false liberated thought process. Truthfulness, subjective, custom made and tailor-fit for a lifetime of stage shows. Chained thinking of a new kind. Inquisitiveness scores a zero. Intelligence maybe a minus on the scale. Rote learning touches phenomenal peaks. An artist? A snigger. A writer - worse still. A drifter with latent capabilities and unmatched talent - unworthy of reaction. IQ's in 3 digits. Einstein turns in his grave. Do not worry, sir. Men of superior intelligence they are not, men with more practice papers and guide books, they are.

Tolerance?

I have always thought of myself as an extremely tolerant person - secular and a life-long believer in to each his own (or her). But I have been questioning myself for a couple of days now, thanks to one specific incident, which believe me I could have happily done without. A few days ago (on the weekend to be precise), I went to watch a recently released film about terrorism. The film was pretty good, especially for a commercial potboiler which starred one of the most over-hyped actresses of recent times. Questioning the identity of the modern day man fighting for religion (and also questioning it), it made some points that need to be driven home.

It wasn't the movie that got me questioning my tolerant beliefs. It was an incident that happened while watching the film. Two seats away from me, sat two men wearing skull caps, personifying all the media stereotypes of an orthodox follower of Islam. The first thought that crossed my mind shamed me to an extent that I delayed writing this very public blog. I was shocked that these men would watch a movie that whipped religious fundamentalism and questioned blind and false beliefs and slammed the tit-for-tat attitude. I then wondered if these men had an ulterior motive in watching this movie at a multiplex. After all, it is such an easy target. After a few minutes, I started rubbishing my thoughts and admonished and berated myself for these views that were so unbecoming of a modern day cosmopolitan 23 yr old.

The explanation for my radical thinking - zilch, absolutely nothing. My pride in my tolerance was doused. The high moral stands that I take came tumbling down (pretty much like Jack's fall from the hill). Even if I dwelt upon this, like Buddha sought enlightenment, I doubt I would get my 'suitable' answer. A very good friend of mine (who happens to be a devout Muslim), once told me that there was no point fighting stereotypes, because people will believe what they want to. I fought her then. I reluctantly agree with her now. Stereotypes and images are so deeply entrenched in our beings, that even a lifetime of free thinking can't rid you of the perceptions, subliminal as they are.

So, as a way to give another push to my (till now futile) attempts at demolishing stereotypes, here is my apology for being a perpetrator of the crime.

10 Years Ago and Now

A decade ago, something inspired me. A world which seemed like it was inhabited by people and not rats running a race. It appealed to me, this land where people wanted to sensitize themselves and others to problems bigger than a lover's spat or a teenager's rebellion against her parents and maybe even bigger than the split of a family or the loss of a loved one. Even as a naive teenager, overwrought by stuff like constantly changing schools and first crushes, a part of me wanted to jump out and live that life. It felt real. So I worked towards that world, the world of news. I loved imagining myself as the savior of the free but shackled world.

Today when I think about those days and read a couple of pages, I have remaining from my failed attempt at keeping a diary, I do not know whether I should be laughing at those childish dreams or feel sad for the adult I almost became.

Nine years after those dreams first took root in my mind, I was exactly where I wanted to be, right down to to the channel I wanted to work at. And I hated it. The work was great, right in the middle of all that buzz. But I just did not enjoy it. The shallowness got to me. The need for glamor and image before reality was sickening. As was the constant use of human emotion to grab eyeballs. Sure, it was refreshing to be in a place where being blunt did not translate into bitchiness. But when the city you live in starts burning and the city you keep traveling to explodes, you really do not want to be cutting gruesome footage to music. All you want to do is help...in a concrete way. At least that is what I wanted. And so I left.

I was branded (by myself and others who will never own upto it) a failure, a quitter and also someone who just could not take the stress. Sure, all that is true but today, I have finally learnt to live with that truth. It is cool that what I strived for, was not something I could stick to. At least now,I know what I do not want. I will figure out my place in this wheel, sooner or later. For today, I am happy. So what if I have to debate the reality of aliens on the internet, it is still more fact than the fiction I manufactured a couple of months ago.

An all-nighter no more...or so I thought!!

Mugs of coffee and even cans of cola, supplemented by music loud enough to stir dead bodies. All of these, have always collectively failed against my ability to sleep in the face of tomorrow's examination. Insomnia, after all, was my mother's disease.

Walking around the house, making sounds similar to the noises made by the manacled ghost who came to visit Ebenezer Scrooge, my mother is the strongest ( and most unwilling) opponent that sleep has ever faced. Or maybe I should have written that in past tense. My mother in the typically cliched manner won the battle but lost the war. Sleep had new armor, sleeping pills, which took on a dual role, the one of weaponry as well.

But never did I think that she would pass on the baton. While my mother finally sleeps albeit fitfully, I stay awake not because another exam stares me in the eye. Hell, no! But because suddenly I seem to be left with no choice but to fight the losing war. When I should be achieving my REM sleep stage, I sit upright reading a crazed out author's rant about the perspective of a patient in coma. And if not that, then I am listening to music, which always seems to egg you on to be someone stupendously musically talented (rockstar, punk rocker...what is with the obsession, oh you lords of musictown? You sing. We can't.). Or I am sitting, staring at a computer monitor and a keyboard, wondering why I ramble at something inanimate and inane.

But then, what does one do when one cannot sleep? I guess some people update their status, others tweet. I...I just rant.

Apologies...but for what?

I know, I know. Who the hell cares about someone who blogs once in a decade? Probably, even the computer system operating this site would have forgotten the existence of this account, after sending out multiple reminders which harped about the validity expiration of this slice of heaven, where I can ramble to my heart's content, knowing that not a soul is going to be aware of my garbled verbal (fine, written) diarrhea.

After months of soliloquies, and days of staring into space, I have come to the conclusion, that intelligence, is well over-rated. Who needs it? Apparently no one. You do not need it to get a job. You definitely do not need it to pass exams. And well have you ever heard an intelligent conversation, much less been a part of it. Do not get me wrong. I am not talking about situations where people very wisely converse about the next Noble prize winner or the magnificent new invention which will force beauty queens to wish for something other than world peace. I am talking about normal everyday conversations, which could probably do with more grammatically correct language, new topics, and more importantly evidence of actual thought process. The idea just seems so refreshing.

A couple of days ago, I had another fit of no-lock-on-my-mouth-ia (it is an extremely serious disease with severe consequences, especially if you possess a functional brain). I happened to mention my apparently revolutionary thoughts to an acquaintance. Was I aware I was in for a volley? Let me think....No! I was well, a passive receptacle for an hour long discourse on how people like me with our huge superiority complexes made life miserable for normal people (who is normal?) and how our pseudo-intellectuality and deranged philosophies made people second guess themselves. I was also asked to well, apologise, for this fake intellectual stand I was taking.

So, here I am, apologising ( I can't help it, I was scared. I get nightmares about that day). I am just a little confused. I mean seriously, will President Obama have to apologise for calling a jackass, a jackass?

I rest my case.