am i me...

and i try
to put words together
to somehow make sentences
and give shape to the vagueness
of my feeble thoughts..

one contradicts the other
one loves, other hates
one agrees, other debates
and i always try to know
which one is the me..

questions
one after another
striking my tired mind
breaking all
which were once built
my defences shattered..

i look for answers
amidst this duality
of my only certainty, asking
am i the seeker
or am i the sought
am i the thinker
or am i the thought..

incomplete hunger...

is desire weakness,
is hunger a curse?

questions, desires, longings
unanswered, unfulfilled, ignored
turn into rebellion, greed and lust
or nescience, deficiency and doom..

and answered incorrectly
fulfilled carelessly
tendered without elegance
become
delusion, conceit and a senseless hope..

Ah, hunger wasted!

what is done
becomes the doer
the eater and the eaten
eventually become one..

knowing answers is not enough
learning their value is important
earning the desires is essential
buying them isn't all..

every moment of hunger wasted
is a chance lost to evolve..

incomplete anger...

can't stretch any further
your limits are challenged;
you've had enough
once again
you're about to explode

but afraid
where the pieces
of your anger will fall;

worried
will you be able to
gather those torn pieces
and put yourself together,

instincts fight against
every reason you give
and
you just hope
there was a place
where you had chances
of not losing your sanity
even after defeating yourself

allow me to be...

let my thoughts fly
don't tie their wings
let me fall down
nothing can happen
let me measure my depths..

allow me to be angry
let my soul burn
let me realize
what apathy can cost..

give my greed a chance
and i will find out
how important effort is..

allow me to be jealous
and let me learn
how to let go..


let me feel the shame
and become responsible
for what i do..

allow me to be sad
let me feel this pain
let me understand
what joy is worth..

don't stop me from being
what i am now
this will change
let me be honest
i will evolve..

let me fall, i will rise
let me find
how high i need to climb
just be with me
and allow me to be..

i don't...

The first lines of warning from Fight Club:

If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned - Tyler.


‘Writing is a great habit. It brings discipline in thoughts, precision in words and clarity in ideas.’ Dindu told me this when I last had a conversation with him. I was amazed at the concept and happy at this realization which happened to his otherwise lazy arse, a little while after he started writing seriously.

My conversations with Dindu are never without arguments, simply because our points of view do not match. He believes in God and I don’t. He thinks ‘A’ and I think ‘Z’. He is SRK fan and I think he sucks. He doesn’t believe in taking bath, but I can’t do a single day without taking bath - and similar such small things where I am on the North Pole and he is stuck up somewhere at the 75 degrees of latitude down in the southern hemisphere. But it is good that we never misunderstood our differences in opinion as animosity. ‘Life goes on’ - we quip after we are done with all abusing and shouting out special character words on each other, where usually our arguments end. Next time, though, same argumentative cycle gets repeated.

This time the topic was the old ‘ghisa pitaa’, monotonous, stereotype, most discussed subject which haunts the-twenty-something’s heavily – marriage. You never intend to end up discussing something gross like that, but then at one moment you might be discussing the chaos at Terminal 5 of Heathrow airport and suddenly there will be nothing to talk about and at that very moment someone will ask ‘So! When are you getting married?’

Dindu: Dae! I heard inflation is going to 7%. Is that good or bad for me?

Strange! Tambi interested in inflation?!?

Me: Of course bad man, unless you are a ruthless hedge fund manager who sits in the-top-floor-river-facing-cabin at HSBC branch for investment banking. Inflation of 7% means an invisible hand is eating away the value of money which you have kept in your savings account. If you have 100k Rs in your savings account right now, they will be worth 93k Rs after one year given you don’t get any interest on your savings. So you need to save the value of your money by investing it into some investment instruments like Stocks, bonds or fixed deposits.

Dindu: Hmm… So! When are you getting married?

I hope you can imagine the level of frustration a person might have had here. I was religiously explaining inflation to him and even an iota of his brain wasn't interested in that. What happens when red hot iron is super-cooled with dry ice? It gets pissed off, big time!!! Apparently all the inflation chat was just a precursor to this.

Me: What the f*** happened suddenly!!!

Dindu: I might be getting married to a girl soon.

Me: Good for you man that it’s a ‘girl’ and not a ‘boy’. You will do well.

Dindu: Dae B******. No kidding. When are you getting married?

Didn’t he get the message with ‘What the f***!!!’? Patience… Take a deep breath… Count till five… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5…

Me: Cough… Cough… whenever I get the guts to say ‘I do’.

Dindu: Why do people get married man?

Me: You should tell me that a**h****! You are the one who is getting into it.

Dindu: I don’t know man. I am getting into it because all my cousins are done with it. My parents are now forcing me to get into it.

Me: That’s good enough a reason tambi! They do it; I do it - simple valid reason. My Mama asks me to brush my teeth, I do. My Pop asks me to have hairline in the left side of the head inside of in the middle, I do. Who the hell am I? Wake up man! I have told you so many times already that people have different reason of doing what they do. So you need to find your own.
Dindu: Macha! I have been thinking a lot about this from past few weeks. I have also written my thoughts about it in my journal. What I have concluded is that, marriage is not a law of nature. It is just an institution established by human species in early times of its evolution. What I can imagine is – as human population grew and disorder prevailed in society, some scholarly people introduced this concept, which is nothing greater than the concept of ‘currency notes’.

Me: Yeah, if you say so. Basically it helped people to identify who is whose father/mother and which one is which one’s child. Basic law of nature is – every species struggles to keep itself alive. Darwin! But you need to remember that we no longer follow nature’s code. We are the most intelligent species. We follow social code now which is smarter than natural laws. So better be realistic.

Dindu: True. We might have been able to outsmart nature in some ways, but we will never be able to overpower it. And I am not only talking about the nature outside of us, I am talking about our very own nature. The nature, that makes us feel our emotions - happiness, anger and pain… that nature.

Me: Are you trying to say that there is still some natural reason left which can justify people getting married?

Dindu: Yes da! There has to be some fundamental law. Otherwise why would a man get attracted towards a woman and vice versa?

Me: But how will you explain men getting attracted to men and women getting married to women though not enough instances in India till now.

Dindu: That’s not natural man. That’s bloody gay thing. That’s psychological disorder man. Even science has proved it.

Me: Ha ha ha… Crap! What exactly are you trying to say man? Where the f*** is this conversation headed?

Dindu: I am not trying to make any scholarly hypothesis here boss. I just want to understand a few things before I get laid.

Me: You don't have to be married to get laid. Understand like what?

Dindu: I want to understand why parents love their children, even among animals?

Me: Snake eats its own eggs. Cats and Lions – they eat their own infants.

Dindu: Ok da…!!! Most of the animals! But what makes us humans to love our child even when it is disabled and cannot speak and walk? Why do saints preach that we should be compassionate towards criminals and diseased? Why does a person fall in love, get married and then one day get divorced?

Me: Answer to last question might be because we are driven by our needs and when needs are satisfied we no longer care about the objects which we earlier used to satisfy those needs. I don’t know about the first two.

Dindu: But then there are people who stay married for whole of their lives.

Me: Come on man! Life is not algebra where two plus two is always four. It’s complex. You make mistakes, you learn, you move on. You make choices. Nothing is forever here. May be your first marriage won’t be successful. Try second. If that fails, try third. What’s the big deal in that? There is still polygamy in many cultures. You never stay with your first mobile phone forever, do you? As technology advances and your mobile-phone doesn’t change with it, you change it! You upgrade.

Dindu: What the f*** man. This is not a joke.

Me: I am not laughing a**h***. First of all it was you who turned this conversation from inflation to marriage. And now you don’t know what you really wanted to discuss. What the f*** man.

Dindu: Why the f*** are you so arrogant man?

Me: Look who is saying this!

Dindu: F*** this. Life goes on.

Me: C’est la vie.

So I log-off and tune into this new song to which I have got addicted to. Mad World by Gary Jules which says:

I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad;
the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..

crash...

Ah! Haven't seen such a movie for a long time. Intense, down to earth, realistic, a must watch! Below is the Academy award winning 'Best Original Song' In the Deep by Bird York. Sigh...

Thought you had
all the answers
to rest your heart upon
But something happens,
don't see it coming, now
you can't stop yourself
Now you're out there swimming
In the deep...

Damn! Made me sad, movie as well the song!

an old man's illusion...

born out of an impotent desire
grown old with a lame apathy
the tired old man
looks into the mirror
searches for the face
that was his
and sees that
he has become the illusion
in which he once believed

dreams of an oasis
every word, every thought
every blink of eyes
was poetry coming to life
he was young, restless
he had a lot to prove
so he struggled and strived
he used to die everyday
to keep his dreams alive


but then one day
reality appeared before him
and he faced the
illusion he was living
illusion of love
of hope, of greatness
of liberation
of things larger than life
illusion of a world
that was beautiful
and worth fighting for

the reality took over him
and he saw his ideas rot away
word by word, phrase by phrase
he felt his dreams dying
a slow suffocating death

and now he is alive
but not living anymore
the incomplete poem
frozen over his stoned eyes
his wrinkled soul
visible on his face
what's left
is just the illusion
in which he once believed

down 'n' out in London...

It’s been relatively pretty long. Dindu kept bombing me with the mails and messages about my whereabouts. He is always in anxiety of me reaching the caves of Himalayas before him. ‘Don’t worry man! I am not going anywhere!’

Nothing special happened during this period, only a few twists and turns. First thing – I am not going for the Masters. So, the singular episode of UoU ends with a happy note but a sad twist. Reasons, of course, were less financial and more personal. Then I had a memorable four day journey all the way from London to Scotland - memorable because I drove 500 miles of those 1600 miles of journey on a seven seater KIA on the highways of this country which are truly awesome. Maximum speed reached was 100 mph. Yeah – 160 kmph. Waterfalls, greenery, mountains, ocean, snow, clouds and lakes – everything in a single journey – Scotland is unmatchable. The cities visited – Edinburgh, Inverness, Kyle, Isle of Skye, Glasgow and Blackpool.

Since return from Scotland I have been dreaming of the next long drives. All other times, I try to kill the time watching movies.

Kilt Rock Waterfalls in Skye

In last two weeks I have watched some very disturbing and intense emotional movies - ‘Requiem for a Dream’ & ‘Trainspotting’, some Oscar level drama - ‘There will be Blood’, ‘Schindler’s List’ & ‘Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving bell & Butterfly)’ and one Bollywood flick ‘Mithya’. All of them are excellent movies within their own genres but now I am getting saturated with the celluloid. Caution: If you are weak hearted or like happy endings then first two (especially first) movies are not for you.

Let me just wrap up with some of the non sequitur observations/quotes I came across during this period of intense decisive, chaotic times:

Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning. George Orwell in Down and Out in London and Paris
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Sometimes you already know everything, but still you need a small voice, a person other than you to tell you that ‘Yes! That is right! You can do it!’
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Comparing oneself with others is very easy. More you compare with others, more you lose your own identity.
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When you are walking in a crowd to which you do not belong, it is no surprise that you will eventually become claustrophobic.
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Making choices is really difficult - especially when situation is something similar to choosing between your left hand and right hand, or left eye and right eye. No matter how difficult these moments are, they really define the character of a person. What a person is capable of letting go and what a person is ready to embrace.
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Every person was once small and that smallness never leaves that person even after that person has become big. Fears, obsessions, addictions – these are all related to that smallness.