My 'Read before Dying'

(*)- Have Read/ Am Reading/ Possess, but waiting for Death to near.

1. Tales of Belkin and other prose writings – Pushkin (*)
2. The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath (*)
3. The unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath (*)
4. In search of lost time- Marcel Proust (Swann's Way*)
5. War and Peace + Anna Karenina (*)- Leo Tolstoy
6. The Crimson Petal And The White- Michel Faber (*)
7. 100 years of solitude + Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez (*)
8. Dead Souls- Gogol (*)
9. The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier (*)
11. Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger (*)
12. Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand (*)
13. Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad
14. The Golden Notebook- Doris Lessing (*)
15. Portrait of a Lady- Henry James (*)
16. Bobbed Hair And Bathtub Gin- Marion Meade (*)
17. Emile Zola*
18. Napoleon- Frank Mclynn (*)
19. Life of Pi- Yann Martel (*)
20. Sula- Toni Morrison (*)
21. Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie (*)
22. Ethics- Benedict De Spinoza
23. Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo (*)
24. Crime and Punishment + The Brothers Karamazov (*)- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25. The Collected Stories Of Eudora Welty (*) + The Optimist's Daughter- Eudora Welty
26. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- Dave Eggers (*)
27. The Iliad + Odyssey (*)- Homer
28. Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
30. The sound and the fury- William Faulkner (*)
31. Tender Is The Night- Scott F. Fitzerald (*)
32. The Book of Mormon
33. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky
34. Memoirs Of A Dutiful Daughter- Simone De Beauvoir
35. Year Of Magical Thinking- Joan Didion (*)
36. Joseph and His Brothers- Thomas Mann
37. Running With Scissors- Augusten Burroughs
38. Buddenbrooks (*) + Magic Mountain- Thomas Mann
39. The Life of Reason- George Santayana
40. Lust For Life- Irving Stone


NOT INCLUDING SHAKESPEARE, SHORT STORIES AND THE OBVIOUS CLASSICS (Dickens, Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Austen, Twain, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway, etc.)!

Culs-de-sac

Its one of those times, you hear a word, Move Mountains to find its meaning and it is so worth your efforts that you decide to write an entire article on it!


Culs-de-sac (plural of Cul-de-sac), a French word implying ‘dead ends’.


My state of mind right now is an inextricable ordeal. When you have repeated failures you know exactly where your life is heading.
The surety of impending disappointment and destruction of all that creation has in store for you is daunting yet comforting in an odd way.


The tribulation begins when you suddenly have a brief stint with success. You can not gauge your life and your dreams are exaggerated by your delirious disposition.
For a little while you assume the role of a winner. You believe in yourself and optimism, the word.
You then apply your mind to other things that are going wrong in your life in a vain attempt to rub some of the winner luck onto them.


You fail.


You now assume that it was a small failure and blame it on what people call procrastination or lack of hard work on your part. You are still stubborn enough to try victory at other areas of your failed life.


You fail again.


You start to think, even doubt your temperament a little. But you go fishing again!


...

...

...

And it’s now that you realize that your life repudiates the success you want to define it to be.

You might as well change your definitions.


Now you repent. You even unleash the occasional fury upon whoever let you have that successful stint in the first place.


How predictable life is with failures.
So tranquil that it almost seems successful….

Morphing into machines?

"We’d be so less fragile
If we’re made from metal
And our hearts from iron
And our minds from steel
And if we built an armor
For our tender bodies
Could we love each other
Would we stop to feel…"

Accepting an argument succumbing us to a life as machines would be paying heed to the hypothesis that the human mind could ever create something as complicated as itself. Not only is it a paradox but also an absurd concept.

Let me tell you something about the human mind. We assume that the mind like our body is finite . The day we die, our mind disintegrates. We often define humanity in the physical finite sense which is the greatest contradiction.

The mind is what makes us human. The fact is in due time, the mind will find a way to preserve it self. Refrigeration in super critical conditions is an onset to what miracles are to come. Once the mind does that, it allows for the infinite to finally occur and give definition to itself.

Have you ever wondered why is it, that man is so bent on creating eternity for himself? Visualize this. Our brains are another superior world enslaving our bodies. The only purpose of the body is to assist the brain in creating other physical structures that might be able to out live the body that the brain currently occupies. The day our brains succeed in creating that physical being, there will be an end to the era of the human body! The time is not far away, when there will be a world, not inhabited by any man or machine, but by an array of brains and intelligence.

So I do believe that the human mind can conjure up, in time, a machine that will not only make the use of touch obsolete, but also end the era of instruction dependence on sensory organs of humans. This will be the birth of our minds controlling machines (the penultimate stage to the total brain reign).

So the paradox is, what do you define as human?

Maybe as we near the era of machines we aren’t a step further, but in fact a step closer to defining what humanity really is, devoid of its physical limitations!

Chronicles of the Psychedelic Reality VOL 1: My MUSINGS ON GRASS Chapter 3

Its night, but the sky has a mind of its own…

It isn’t black with stars, today it is blue, gray white with ripples like an ocean!
I want to see it and take it in…

Suddenly it seems painted and static…

Now I am falling to it...but now I am stuck mid way, hanging…almost able to touch it…I can almost feel the canvas, the oil colors, uneven surface...its rough but smooth...its like i am touching plaster of Paris...it isn't wet..i can taste the colors...the blues are cold...i can feel my cold breath...i want to breath with my mouth for sometime...the clouds are moving now, it seems someone dropped water on the painting and its trickling down…but its slow…very slow, maybe their gravity is lower than ours…

Now it looks like a sea..I can see a ship sinking in a whirlpool..
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
The sky has changed now...My sky is punctured…I seem wrapped in silver foil with a tiny opening…or am I in a pressure cooker?

Is god a cook? That’s demeaning; he should be more than jus one talent.

Has he been feeding us with food and knowledge just to make us juicy enough for dinner?

Alien abductions are god’s way of checking if the food is done!! Pick up one person, lick and put back…those who are done comprise of the unexplained disappearances!

Our days are spent in his microwave and our nights in his fridge and the rest of the time on the table…probably thawing!

Earthquakes are his moving us and rains are condensing water droplets on the cooker lid! (at least humans got the condensation part right!)

God doesn’t buy new food…quite the miser.

Or maybe we are in an egg…some one punctured a tiny hole in us and broke the sides... we are still fetal but can see outside through the hole…the clouds are the cell fluid (was it cytoplasm?), protecting us. Everyday some one comes to check inside the egg with a torch and moves the torch around from our east to west. Maybe they don’t have randomness in their world.


The clouds are covering the moon now…are we healing?

Chronicles of the Psychedelic Reality VOL 1: My MUSINGS ON GRASS Chapter 2

My reality, déjà vu and schizophrenia


Mental reality is faster than its physical counterpart.

I have traveled and lived all the physical potential I might have in this world. Visiting choices in my mind, I have experienced them indefinitely. Whatever my world has shown me, I have used to create multiple lives for my self, with infinite possibilities.

My physical body though, can only follow one reality.

At any present moment I send my mind in all directions to explore the infinite. But, as my body and mind are connected, my body is compelled to choose one of these directions to follow. It makes its choice on the basis of its environment and treads the most appealing path.

My body needs to meet up with my mind in some space to impart the necessary impulse for the mind to take off again. When my two realities (mental n physical) meet, they create an unimaginable yet veritable phenomenon. That’s déjà vu.

They are usually very mild and I don’t feel them in my life often, but some times when my reality (mental and physical) comes dangerously close to another mental possibility that did not take place, my reality is shaken and then the déjà vu is strongly felt!

Contrary to what I used to believe, my mind and body are co related. The mind is dependent on the body to follow and give life to possibility and create reality, while my body needs my mind to rush ahead and explore my choices and their implications.

If some day, my body decides that it doesn’t want to follow any mental possibility and refuses to move, my physical reality will come in contact with mental realities of other worlds around me and be crushed, making me believe in events that haven’t and will not exist.…
That is what people will call ‘schizophrenia’!

Chronicles of the Psychedelic Reality VOL 1: MUSINGS ON GRASS Chapter 1

God, the Physicist


Consider a tree. Assume that the system of leaves, twigs and trunk isn’t what it appears to be. Maybe god wanted to save space and energy, so he made reality on both sides of the ground. The system of leaves and branches for us is their underground system of roots and our sky is their soil! They breathe dust and worship the core. They bathe in hot lava rivers and sleep in bright yellow nights. They are not people but they aren’t any less either.

When people die in our world, we bury them or their ashes are washed away, their bodies disintegrating into the ground mixed with our crust slowly pass over to the other side and are recreated in the world beneath our feet. Similarly, energies that are extinguished there are ‘born’ here in our world.

Death seemed like gods blunder to me. The energy of our life and soul never appeared recreated. Our infinite essence vanished with the limitations of our body.
But I guess god defines our ‘surrounding’ differently. It’s a balance between this world and the one beneath. Energies are conserved when both are taken into consideration.

And hence we finally explain what we assumed to be creation’s biggest paradox

She used to be Her

I look back in adulation, to a person that used to be,

In love and enough for herself,

Her living, a simple point,

Her life, an unfathomable digress.


I look back at her untouched,

Unclaimed by her own

Other sides to her haven’t unfolded yet,

The complications have yet to set in.


I want to warn her, the leap,

Save her from her present loathing,

For all she blames her life to be,

Is that one decision that wrecked all in it.

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt. It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to experience life in its totality, we must endure that ordeal. Only then do we emerge fully aware of our actions and their motivation.
Misery brings out the honesty in people. Honesty we can only feign, never having experienced our worst.

My agony stems from jealousy, the origin of which is unknown even to me.
I do believe insecurity, about my ‘competence at living’, might be a factor, but I am yet to define’ competence’ and ‘life’, and it might just be “ a tale told by an idiot, full of fury, signifying nothing.”


Giving tribute where it is deserved, envy has been my constant companion in ennui and otherwise.
It might just be a poor whim of my fancy or a powerful tool, an antagonism, emancipating me from bitterness and futility.

Envy had come into her own and, little by little, in her stealthy, seductive way had encroached upon my being with long, tenacious fingers.

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”

One might pronounce this absurdly tragic but being quintessentially promiscuous, ‘happiness’ is not a possession to be prized. It faintly implies tranquility and thereby demands resistance.
We live beneath the mercy of drama. We are yet to exist because of it though.


I don’t seem virtuous, but I do seem parasitic.

“Assume a virtue, if you have it not…

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ And seem a saint, when most I play the devil”

Insidious as it may sound; my ‘villainy’ inspires my ingenuity. I do not feign indifference, my misery infuriates me, but I relish the pain.
My life, from all that I can decipher, craves drama. It yearns for that one masterpiece my mind might conjecture.


To loathe myself in the frivolity of my thoughts would be to redefine ‘living’. I wouldn’t be the furious ‘idiot’ and I wouldn’t be guilty of spite. But then, I would be insipid and mundane, falling in equality. Living in mediocrity aspiring for only love, my seduction slowly, slipping away.

But to even think of change implies infidelity. So what am I guiltier of? Not staying true to my character or adorning one whose mere existence demands penitence?

My envy is my Hamlet.

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt. It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”.

I honestly dont care about forgiveness, till the time its coming FROM ME.

Roots and wings.

Sublime in my efforts, I beckon my wings,

My erudition to shelter my honest attempts,

I wasn’t born with feathers, or the authority to dream,

Nor with the conviction of the sky, as my limit.

Yet I would marvel in proclivity and resolve,

The endless possibilities of life, in flight.


My disposition is humble, that of a leaf.

A part of many, which complete a tree.

Caught in the middle, held by a cord,

I alone am irrelevant, dead by dawn.

The strings of my existence, grounded in my roots

My freedom would be a struggle, falling further to soot.


My dreams exaggerate when a bird brushes past me,

Swiftly with purpose, yet aimless digress.

What a life it would be, to glide freely in the wind,

The possibility of twisting, observing the world round by,

And maybe a bird would catch me by the beak,

Soaring above rocks, diving into seas.


These wings I have made, with blood and broil.

Nights of yearning, days glazed in pine.

Maybe that fall, would break me by my stem,

Maybe into oblivion, to dust I would melt.

Or maybe this miracle, to my end it would be,

Though short-lived, my one escapade.

What the heart wants.

When I was a little girl, my parents put me in a boarding school in the picturesque valley of Dehra Dun. For a twelve year old girl, at such an impressionable age, it’s hard enough dealing with adolescence, let alone having the trauma of staying amidst a group of teenagers, without parents.

I never fit in well. I felt I had a different take on everything and the world around me was moving too fast in the opposite direction, to hear me out. I had questions and answers that I felt were so unique that sharing them with the ‘superficial’ people around me would only condemn my ideas to mediocrity. I needed a friend, who had experienced life in its absolute form to help me figure myself out.


In my school, it was compulsory for us to do some form of social service for three hours every Wednesday. I took on an old age home. On my very first day, as soon as I entered the gates, I noticed this wrinkled man in red and black checked tapering trousers, a crisp white shirt under a sleeveless beige woolen vest, black socks, well polished black formal shoes and, what really held my stare, the unique sailor cap, tilted on his head. It reminded me of a picture of my great grandfather.

While all the other inhabitants of that place gave us a warm welcome and immediately started singing folk songs, this man sat alone in the garden, grumpy as ever. The nurses at the home asked us to leave him alone as he suffered from ‘something’ which she explained, subjugated him to frequent and severe spouts of passionate expression and rage, which meant, he would get over zealous and sometimes violent when discussing his life. Upon hearing this, I instantly wanted to befriend him and be his ‘special one’ who loved him dearly. I wanted to make him forget all the iniquity that the immorality of life at that age and position had subjected him to. I wanted to be the person who made him smile again and seek peace and solace in the time that was left of this wonder we call life. I suffer from a ‘disease’ wherein it is not possible for me to give up on people I have made up my mind to love unconditionally. I get obsessive. A part of me identified with this fanatic.


I take immense pride in a particular quality of mine that has helped me befriend lots of people of all ages. When I want to get someone’s attention, I don’t start the conversation with greetings and introduction. I behave as though I already know the person and start the conversation first by noticing something unique about their appearance or behavior and talking about that and then correlating the conversation to some problem of mine. I pick up any trivial problem I might be going through at that time and ask for their opinion (it appears trivial to the listener but to me every problem little or huge is a crisis). I show genuine interest in their personalities and genuine misery at my problem. This always works, as sometimes people are not too good at the greetings and this sudden attachment of trust works like shock therapy.

I went up to him and sat next to his chair. He looked at me and his expression started to change. I could make out he was going to get angry and shoo me away from his privacy. Just when he was about to say something, I pointed to his cap and straightened it. I don’t think anybody had talked to him in a long time, let alone touch his cap. He stared at me unable to decide what he wanted to say next. He tilted his cap back to its original position and jus kept glaring at me. I then made a semi disgusted face and told him that my great grandfather also wore it tilted and I could never understand why. This was step one. I was waiting for him to say something about sailing or ask me about my family or just reply with anything. But he didn’t. I then went on to step two, my problem question.


Now the question that I asked him and the answer that he gave me was the whole reason I wrote this post. I was shocked at my own question. I wanted to ask him something profound so that he would be interested in talking to me. Never had I imagined such ‘stupidity’ to come out of my mouth (as I thought then, when I was 12).

The answer defines how I have lived every day my life since then to this date.

“Everyone says- Follow your heart and you will always be happy. That is so easy. But, don’t you think people are unhappiest when they don’t know what their heart wants? Now what should they listen to and follow then?”

He just laughed it off and started telling me stories about his sailing days with the navy. We played chess every week followed by a story which I was sure he made up, because no life could be so extraordinary. He told me about the independence struggle and about his wife. Their family was very well educated. His English was impeccable.
For some reason he saw himself in me. Maybe i came across as a person who didnt fear to explore her uniqueness. Or maybe I was just the first one who ever talked to him.

He gave me the answer to my question six months later on the day before he was shifted to a mental facility for throwing a chair at a fellow inmate.
He replied, “You always know what your heart wants; it’s your heart after all. Even when you claim you don’t, you truly know you do, but you are just afraid of the answer and mask it in uncertainty.”


Choose to be what you want to be. No matter who cringes or who applauds. Make every action and every word you utter so original that you remember it for the rest of your life. We often blame others for not living up to our expectations, for not being what we want them to be, but in all honesty we are dissatisfied at our own apathy to our failures and ashamed at being untrue to our individuality.

Once you start living life on your own terms and expressions your decisions will be effortless. You will never know the exact course of your life and that will satisfy you. Once you live life differently, you welcome change because you don’t fear it, on the contrary, you will handle it remarkably in your own peculiar way. You will never be afraid of solitude because your uniqueness will make even solitude a celebration. You will love unconditionally, only because it makes you happy not because you want love back.


All of us pride our selves on being unique. But when our hearts ache and ask us to do something extraordinary, we fear treading that path alone. Its easy to convince ourselves of our exceptionality, but to be it, in our actions and life is the true test. Invent ‘living’; don’t just modify what already exists.

An end too soon...

I sit on my bed, reading old letters and diary entries, trying to recollect the eventful journey these past three years have been. I feel desolate, somber somehow. I didn’t think I had it in me to be serious, ever. A feeling of emptiness floods me. I don’t really understand it. I have had a full life in college, there is nothing that I regret or still crave. What is it then that fills me up with this sense of losing something I never had?? An implication of being incomplete.

I was many people in college. I could afford to be. I experimented with people and their reactions. I took it as a ‘course’ to prep me for people I met later in life. I made choices, drastic ones, mostly impulsive. My choices did not have lifelong implications and I am not done exploiting that yet. Isn’t this what we all crave for?? A life of full authority but negligible liability..??

I made friends that in true definition are my family now. I loved them like I have never loved my own siblings. I met people who detested me. I let people hate me and enjoyed loathing them as well. I experienced diversity in regions but unity in thousands.

I took quantum physics and I butchered the subject so badly that it ashamed my teachers to fail me and allow me the massacre again. I politely threatened my ‘acquaintances’ to let me play innumerable basketball matches. I didn’t care till the time I was on every team playing my energy’s limit daily. I bullied juniors to tears from under the ‘invisible’ cloak of a department interview.

I painted on my walls, crude derogatory testimonials to the institute and its rules. I didn’t bother to remove it; the look on their faces was precious. I was penalized for coming late, in an uninhibited state of intoxication. I came that way again. And again. And again. And then they just gave up.

I lived with expression, with compassion and ambition. Then I lived like a sloth, surviving on the endless flow of TV series, enjoying their lives when mine seemed too demanding and laborious.

I gave up the right guy for reasons pertaining to matters of the heart and more. I loved the wrong guy for three whole years, suspending all my ego and self respect at his disposition. I got rejection and heartache, but I just held on. I held on because I knew it didn’t matter. I knew this behavior wasn’t anticipated. I was expected to walk out with my head held high. But my way was just so ‘different’ and implausible, that I did it just because I could.

College happens to be that one place where everything is possible. One is not too young, yet not old enough. It’s a place where responsibility doesn’t have to accompany every thought of risk and possibility. Whether it’s plunging into a career field completely unknown or taking a leap in love, falling head first every time. It’s a time when friends are made for the mere enjoyment of company, and not some underlying iniquitous purpose. It’s a world where trivial feelings of worthlessness, disappointment and betrayal have a face and are not hidden beneath masks of the pleasant disposition that comes with maturity. Every body is an equal, standing an unbiased attempt at self actualization and success. No problem is insignificant or petty, and if it’s too big then ‘li8’!!

Graduation marks the end of a life without consequences. It’s hard to let go. There is so much more I haven’t risked yet. I am not over my quota of this mad but lucky gamble.

Do not foam his room...

Some guys find it endearing, when girls play cute woozy pranks on them. They devour it as an appetizer to the girl's innate naughtiness!! A foretaste of that scrumptious 7 course meal awaiting unbridled consumption!!

But, LO BEHOLD!!! If the guy you worship exhibits the following symptoms, it’s in your sanity's best interest,to not give him any glimpse of your femininity. Else, once he is finished, you will remain no less than the little girl whose skirt he blew up when he was 5 years old. His foe in combat!!

Hem in the cuteness and DO NOT FOAM HIS ROOM if your crush exhibits the following symptoms:


1) He does not have a beard yet!! (lack of testosterone!!)

1st sign of keeping away from any form of subtle or in his face flirting!
(tiny hair on the chin which he 'shaves off' with a clipper, sadly- DO NOT COUNT).

He will probably misunderstand your actions as a 'scheme' aiming his downfall and think that your sole intention was to ruin his ‘macbook’ (his true love...sigh!!)
Remember when we were little and hated guys for their existence?? Remember how they never let Barbie get married to that damn GI JOE just because they didn’t grasp the concept of romance??? Put that precise logic to use and u will probably be his ‘Bestest Bud’ in no time!! just what you wanted all along( i am roasting with sarcasm)!!...yay!! :|


2) He gets drunk and leeches on to other guys!!!
NO NO WAIT!!...Gets drunk and calls people around him 'CHEMICAL SIBLINGS'!! What Pure Love... :) Back Off!! Lest you aim to be next in the family tree!!

(My sympathies, but, biological and philosophical don't really make it better!!)


3) The only chat U've ever had with him was about how nauseous he got when his neighbor did not shower for 3 days after playing a sweaty game of basketball.

I mean, you try your sexiness on him, and he will probably discuss your body odor and your bathing regime...trust me...Its hard to get him to rise back to the same level in your eyes (sob!) (took me like 6 months..But then, I am resilient!!)
We like our men DIRTY(ish) (wink!) (Pretend to be dirty…Puhleeez!!)


4) You enroll him in a salsa class and he steps on your feet more than five times... Big mistake!! Before you know it he will be flinging you around trying to master the DAMN Art form!! (I mean who takes dance classes to learn dance?? Just stand there man!! Let proximity do its thing…) ;)


5)You are prancing about, in a basketball game, trying to be your dainty best and the only body contact he gives you is a Moving Screen that almost knocks you over!! Get your act together gurl!!! Its probably best to just let the court be the battle field it’s meant to be n give his ribs a taste of your elbow and inertia!!

6)You get drunken n loose ;)What a time to take one of those cute 'advantages' guys try to take BUT he grabs the opportunity, and steals your food!! Tragic!! (sadly, It’s happened with me) But, if I could get over it, then it’s possible for even a pig to love him again!!

7) You finally get a chance to sit together on the bus, that anticipation, heart thudding at the idea of propinquity, and he calls you- wait for it- ‘BROAD’ (weep!!!) I mean, you are not even fat, but he still hits you with it!! It’s SOOO the time for class 3rd verbal brawl!!! Screw the cuteness, bring on the ‘Pimple face’, ‘chicken leg’, ‘cheese head’ and throw in some ‘Dude?? where's is your beard???’

I mean it’s supposed to be the 'decent guy code' to never call a girl anything more than anorexic. If you see Chivalry ceasing to exist, bring on the stilettos.

But finally, if the whole reason he is upset with you and behaving like a total five year old is because he is jealous of a romantic card you once made for someone else you loved, it’s just worth it to give him a hundred chances and be in love with him despite everything! (smooch!!)

If not, Then its just so much fun getting down to his level and playing 'class 3' again...Just keep buggin him n have your fun!!

P.S: This is out of jest; I have over exaggerated and dramatized without shame!!

Letting go….

“…at night it’s the worst. I hear ambulances, or noise…I jump up out of the bed with this scared panicky feeling…only, I don’t know what I am scared for, because what I feared the most, already happened…I still feel like he is going to walk through that door any moment now and hug me as if its all a nightmare…”

I can’t really grasp, with full conviction, the enormity of the events around me.
My best friend, my life is no more..

If only I remembered the last moments we shared with certainty and clarity. I keep searching for it incessantly. What my last words to him were, how he just passed along, did he bid farewell?
I am just looking frantically, for some insinuation to explain it all. There is this niggling feeling inside me that assures me, things will be absolutely normal once I am able to explain them, to reason them and reason with them. To try and convince ‘reason' that all this is just a terrible mistake.

The last time we were together, he jovially accused me of hiding the remote. So trivial… he didn’t say he loved me or forgave me or that I would be okay, no kissing, and no farewell. Why didn’t he say anything else? Why didn’t he prepare me? We had plans; we had to live our life. One life, Together. He wasn’t supposed to just run out and die, leaving me with fragments of what was left of our dreams.
I don’t have any dreams without him. I have nowhere to go to, no aspirations, and no ambition.

I know he wants me to move on. He wants me to reminisce, but with amusing delightful anecdotes, shared among all those he held dear. I am impatient and incensed. How does he expect me to be riveted at a conversation about how great he was? He abandoned me. I had no one, but him and he didn’t even say goodbye. With what face does he seek impunity? How do I ever forgive him? How do I absolve him, or exonerate myself for not being strong enough to end my own misery?

This picture of us I hold was a promise and now that promise is broken…
What’s left is a frame and lone pillow, moistened by the abstraction of hope.


“I have two hearts, when you are around, they race like wild animals, and you can hear them thudding, competing to win yours over. Both of them refuse to function when you are not around, and I barely survive on the promise that I will win you over someday.”

He won me over with that ludicrous twaddle.

I still remember teasing him for all those years. What garish poetry, but what a man. He never feared letting people know what he truly felt. He always put himself out there, untainted and sincere. Never delayed, expressing his love. Never the reason for distress, never a bystander either. He would have wanted me to forget him. Let go of my sorrow.

But, my pain does not want to leave. The day my pain vanishes, so does his memory. I want to cherish this grief. I want to remember him eternally. I don’t want to live completely oblivious to the fact, that he treasured me more than he feared death, so much so as to gently pass on, not giving me a moment’s grief more than death bargained for.
So I need to stay in agony, my ‘aide memoire’.

Why do people seek such ‘atrocities’ of me? Why should anyone ever move on? Why is life meant to be lived in bliss, and not in sorrow and despair? If its torture, it’s because something priceless and irreplaceable was lost. It’s not meant to be ‘moved on’ upon. People say live in the present. This is my present. And this will always remain my present, my dreadful loss.

I lost a part of my life today. I am paralyzed. My brain doesn’t think and my heart rarely beats. I merely exist now. Our life, as I nurtured and cherished for years, is over…

I didn’t deserve this retribution. It feels almost vindictive on gods’ part. It’s cruel and merciless, depriving someone of a final goodbye. What pitiable abhorrence. I sympathize with god, for being so human after all. My faith is dead, obsolete.

I sound irrational; am i not allowed to be?
Is there anything that could seem reason enough for me to forgive god for my misfortune?

The truth is, we live under the impression that we get what we deserve. Life seems to be all about ‘Karma’ and ‘circles’. That’s not the way it works. At least mine didn’t. What good did I ever do to deserve him in the first place? That love, honesty and forgiveness? My life completely turned around, in awe and admiration of this ingenious fabrication of fate. I had with me, all those years of chaste blessing in the form of this man who made me complete. This wonderful friend, who taught me how to love unconditionally and express it without hesitation.

Maybe there is no god. There is just destiny, good and bad luck. It doesn’t depend on fortune or deed. There is no algorithm to decipher this clandestine. It’s unstructured and vague. It grants you your choices and actions, also conceding you the occasional indulgences and denials. He was my indulgence, my good luck. I did nothing to deserve him, and I can do nothing to calculate and interpret my loss. That’s just the way life is. That’s the only way I can ‘explain’ it and finally Let Go.

Entries of Change

My next post is about a dear friend. He has unknowingly been a source of inspiration to many around him, including me. The entries are completely fictional, mere ‘paraphernalia’ in my endeavor to describe him. I have written them as an observer of his life in college.

I call him ‘R’ on popular request!

15^st August, 2006

“It's my first week in college. R catches my eye because of his peculiar behavior. He behaves as though he is trying too hard, yet not hard enough. He has an old friend, who provides him with an innate sense of security. R tries hard to keep this friend happy, he feels protected around him.

His friend mocks him in public. I can see how much this offends him. R once tried confronting his friend, only to be subjected to more mockery and condescension. In a way he expects too much from his friend, in a way he expects the least. He appears trivial and docile. Insignificant things affect him to tears. He does not understand moderation, Pity is all he gets. Oddly, pity satisfies him.”

When we are somewhere new, we find solace and comfort in a known face. Contrary to people finding that reassuring, there is a sense of stagnancy and dependability involved. By relying on that friend completely, R shut all his possibilities of change. This friend wouldn’t view him any differently than what he had for the past 5 years. Any change in R’s personality would only have him endure allegations of pretence and charade from his best friend. Even though it’s comfortable, people need new beginnings to constantly reinvent themselves.

Without amendment, one remains the ‘Mistake’ one is.

15^th August, 2007

“I have been talking with R at great lengths. He understands his need to turn over a new leaf. He works for it. He writes about it every day, writes so that change is engraved in his being. R struggles with the physical and mental changes he needs to bring about himself. Focusing on his fitness and looks provide him with a sense of control over his life.

R was always very social. He just needs faith and confidence. Above all, he needs new friends. People who will hear and respect him for that changed man he strives to be.”

We all need a noticeable ‘pre-change’ phenomenon to get accustomed to and finally embrace change. For most of us, a change in our physical appearance usually precedes any form of change in our outlooks or personalities. This is primarily because any visible evidence of our success is the most encouraging.

Even if we do get past our fears and conquer change and its monstrosities, one atrocious joke will never make the same audience laugh again, no matter how much you polish it. Life has default resets all along. When you shift schools, college, jobs, partners, etc. but, the real challenge is being able to reset with the same people, in the same place with the same prejudices.

All a man is, is what ‘people’ perceive him to be.

15^th August, 2008

“I see R now and he seems happy. People love to be in his company. His charms are effortless when it comes to girls. His chivalry gets him both admiration and respect. He is the most popular person on campus. There is no one I know who dislikes R. I wonder how he did it. I wonder if I am made of the same ‘stuff’ he is. I applaud his victory. I applaud his perseverance.”

R made new beginnings and new friends. People loved him for his neutral perspective and polite disposition. His positive and enthralling attitude absorbed seas of humanity into the zeal of his temperament. He let go of his past inhibitions and dared to venture into his faith. I say faith because it’s sometimes ourselves that we find the most worthless and testing.

Sometimes, an attachment to one’s past inhibitions and reticence are admonition to evasiveness and bland insipid comfort. To embark upon a journey of self actualization and conviction to that extent, is the true sign of defiance against monotony, that which truly ends life.

D's Ego

Note: This is my worst article, couldn’t put it any better. The inspiration himself though intriguing is a scumbag. Just had to write it for reasons associated with closure. But then, it’s my blog after all!!

This is a story about people who, in their ego, find it so hard to accept competition and failures that they’d much rather alter their lives than subject it to penitence and apology.

This is a story about someone named D.

D was very notorious yet popular and admired when he was in school. He knew every body there and was comfortable being what he chose to be. He had no shortage of friends, the ones who understood and accepted him for his flaws, whereas everybody else was in awe of his strapping and gregarious personality. He loved his friends with a degree of loyalty that summons salutation, and they returned it equally sustained. He had the Innocent and impish manner of a child, who was protected by the ‘wall’ of his dear ones.

When he began college, it was the first time he had ever been in an entirely new-fangled environment which was absolutely oblivious to him. His past had not educated or cultured him for this possibility. But, being bright and fiercely avaricious (for lost popularity), he soon got the attention he deserved.

He was handsome and outgoing. Ego and assertion were justly expected of him.

But this is where his malevolent traits found the better of him. His ego ‘subjugated’ him not only to dominance (endurable by people who knew him) but to condescension and pomposity.

This, as I call it, was the turning point for him.

People with more control over their Ego would have found an amiable way out of the tribulation. But D Chose to stay put. All he ever had in his life was his Ego and his friends who ‘respected’ him for that.

I lost contact with him for a year after that, but this is what I know of him now.

D wasn't good at making lasting impressions on people. He wasn’t popular outside his small circle of friends. Other people, who were less admired than him in school, flared brilliantly in college, but D got left behind. His personality did not allow for him to feel jealousy or regret, nor did it allow him amends. He couldn’t accept the fact that he needed to control his ego. He couldn’t allow himself to be jealous of the same people he had patronized. All he could do was change his area of expertise and his audience.

D chose to completely shut out that part of his life. He wouldn’t consent to comparison, at his loss. So he changed what he wanted. He didn’t want love or any form of recognition as a lover. He decided he got enough of that from his old long gone friends. If some one did offer him that, he would reject it without thought. He could be second to no one. He pronounced every thing he didn’t have ‘unworthy’ and ‘undesirable’.

“A pit of snakes.”

D put all his devotion to his career and education. People said, he was meant for great things and would become a great professor some day. People who barely knew him and were just being cordial. He convinced himself that nobody’s love was good enough for him and that he wasn’t good enough to love anybody back. He felt love as an emotion would just be an obstacle to his new found aim.

He didn’t take risks because he feared rejection.

He never understood that love and tenderness would have not only made him what he is now, but so much more than that.

There are some people, who have an undeterred faith on their ego and a firm belief that no matter how flawed and iniquitous their actions might be, they have reason to believe it justified.

What I have observed from my interaction with such people is that they have an inability to feel emotions such as jealousy, regret, shame, sorrow, guilt and denial. All they primarily feel is ego and to some extent, vicarious hatred. This inevitably leads them to their own downfall.

Someone's Battle

For all the years since its inception, the village of ‘Pixxiland’ had been suffering ‘tyranny’ as the elders still choose to describe it. From what might seem trivial to those perceived as rules of consequences, all seemed unfair to the ‘Pixxiling’ population.

One day, they avenged it all. About 2000 people gathered and brought their one man army of the dictator to justice. They ‘defined’ their freedom and ‘earned’ it too.

This is not a story about truth being victorious, BUT of how in the process Ms. T. Pixione earned her respect and lost it too.

“That night, I participated in a revolution no less in comparison to history’s definition. It was a feeling of pure exhilaration. The mob, the dictator, his minority and the saviors of the republic, not one element absent from the eventful night that it was.” recalled Ms. T.
Ms. Pixione did not plan to go for the gathering and she was certain, many like her didn’t either. The reason she chose to attend was out of mere curiosity. She did not have a personal grudge or bias towards anyone. It was shameful to admit that she wasn’t even aware of the cause for the outrage. But, like many, Ms. ‘dazzling’ T soon caught on and joined in indignantly. The next three hours of her actions gave her immense pleasure while they lasted, but slowly killed her with guilt and time.

Ms. T. Pixione was Joan of arc that night, in all her glory and fervor. She rummaged through the crowd sparking off tiny flames on her trail. She roared obscenities, stirring whoever came her way. She was the ideal mob, unaware and unassuming. As people started to notice her, she gained buoyancy. Ms. T had a mob of supporters!! Never in her life had she been so important. This impelled her to her next step. She was a demi -god in Pixxiland with followers whom she couldn’t let down. Gradually, her obscenities initially directed to thin air paved way for aimed slander.
She basked in the admiration of her supporters.

Then other people asked the dictator for explanations for the injustice done upon them. She waited patiently. They talked of taxes and laws, the gardens and benches, a bickering about the wrongful ownership of the banyan tree and something about compulsory government gifts during the holiday season. She had nothing to say. But she thought about registering for the scarf she so wanted. The reason for this revolt still seemed vague. Ms. ‘Vivacious’ T was here for the thrill of ‘fighting’ for justice. Her actions were justified in her mind. Ms. Pixione was fighting for something right. After all, 2000 people couldn’t be fighting for triviality!
“Ah! Why don’t they stop complaining so that we can get on with the revolt?” Ms. T was losing her patience at being sidelined in the endless complaints of village folk.

Amidst this pondering, Ms. T saw her people hailing another leader. He was more vocal and visible, so ‘her’ people directed their admiration to ‘his’ bravery. She was getting left behind in this revolt, becoming obsolete in this fight. She needed to win ‘her’ people back. Something drastic needed to be done.
Ms. T now wanted to be remembered in the history of Pixxiland, as the elders would tell it, a sole savior.

Here was a dictator who had apparently made many suffer. She was fighting for them.
Having thought this, her next action too, was justified.

Ms. T slowly picked up her shiny yellow rubber slippers and aimed it at the tyrant. If she missed, it would be foolish and Pixxilings would end up laughing at her. With all her might and paradox carefully resolved, she threw the slippers, one after the other, at the dictator.
One of them hit him on his head…
… And the Pixxilings cheered!!

“That rat!” She soon found other things to throw and when the time was right she started her slander ritual again. Ms. T. Pixione was back in the game. She started with choicer obscenities and insults. The mob was hers again.

This went on for four hours.

When the people yelled ‘resign’, Ms. T yelled louder!
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.
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When people got their way, she applauded.
.
.
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When the dictator finally fell, she rejoiced!!
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.
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Ms. T Pixione fought someone’s battle and came back a winner!! It was a day of independence and freedom, to all it meant so in Pixxiland.

Overrated Maturity...My favourite

It’s odd to find thoughts still stagnant after a substantial passage of time and on the contrary observing how human nature changes in such tiny time frames.I created this blog 3 years ago, without the time to publish a single entry. I find my self mystified at the déjà vu (like situation) I face before me. On one hand, I have changed so much, from the vivacious, candid brat to the melancholic dejected patron of pessimism. But, on the other hand I find maturity has not hit me yet, but a sense of losing my innocence has.

Is maturity another name for pretentious indifference? I find people putting me in the ‘grow up!’ category every time I let my stubbornness get the better of them. Is maturity an alibi for lack of perseverance? I am passionate about little things. People like to read my passion as arrogant bolshie. I go out of my way and force things to happen according to my train of thought, seldom caring for its validity or affect on others. It might sound selfish, leading to the (im) M word, but then, that’s mostly defined by the people losing against me.

This rarely bothers me, but when it does, the magnitude is gigantic. I feel depressed at my lack of steady relationships and helpless to the extent of frustrating suicidal tendencies at imminent (anticipated) failures. There are two major lanes my brain picks from. The first is a blame game, to change and accept life and its disappointments. The other is to stay put, be miserable and cry, but be stubborn and fight till all reserves are negative. I always take the second option. It is mentally taxing, and I end up making more enemies. But, at the end of the day, I am content at the thought of giving it more than my all. I am proud of being Caesar and Alexander. I know in my ‘innocent and simple’ heart that there is nothing more that could be done by anyone, and I am truly a winner.

People create maturity to assure themselves that giving in to troubles and misfortunes is the ‘right thing to do’. Why go through the surgical pain of endurance when u can take the easy way out of the ordeal. Maturity is the name given to actions of ‘gracious’ cowardice.