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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When people got their way, she applauded.
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When the dictator finally fell, she rejoiced!!
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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.