Rules of the game, please?

Is this a journey with a goal?
Are we actually trying to get some place?
Or are we delusional, in this rat race,
merely, for the thrill of the chase?

Is there a zenith, a winner's post
for whoever runs at the fastest pace?
A blissful, content, shiny life prize
If only I outlast this "short, tough phase"?

What if I tire, what if I am hurt?
Where would I go if I fell from grace?
What if I can't win, is there a darkness
for the losers and quitters to hide their face?

What if I am afraid, running alone?
Will someone be waiting if I return to the base?
What if I realize, at the end when I've won
That I am out of time. That life beat me anyways...

Questions

What do you do when the rational, sane half of you "knows" the truth, knows things as they are and wants to believe it for what it is, but the other half refuses to just believe and wants to see, hear, feel the truth, wants to be reassured and comforted away from fear, doubt and insecurity?
What do you do when caught between a logical half that recognises paranoia and insecurity and a sentimentally foolish one that is running out of strength pulling oneself out of a deep abyss all alone surrounded by unhealed pain, vulnerable doubt, a need for attention and a self-preservation instinct bordering on the self-destructive.

Why don't the two of them just talk and sort it out?

Losing yourself aka test for love

Close your eyes, and for one moment, just one moment...imagine giving up all rights and control on your own life...a complete surrender...a deep breath that says 'que sera sera - let go' and prepares you, for just that moment, to leave yourself to destiny, beyond all ego and instincts of self-preservation, to someone else - their wishes, their being, their caring or not caring for you.

Take another breath, and honestly tell yourself, if there's someone you'd trust to give yourself upto like that?

Who?

Maybe your family, maybe not. But they have already proven they can do that when you were little. Who else? Your best friend. Your spouse. Your spiritual leader. Don't say God, imaginary friends don't count. The gamble is with fallible mortal real people.

Do you love someone enough that your faith in them can transcend your sense of self? Do you love someone enough to make them the Hero of the movie of your life - even if for just that moment?

What do I want anyway?

There's something I want - rather, I think I want. In fact, I only want to know if I will get it, someday, possibly. And this want stays at the back of my mind all the time these days. I don't even know if I want it badly, just that I keep thinking about it. To make matters more complicated, every time I ask myself what will I do if I had it, or if I knew I'd get it, I basically freak. I don't think I know what I'll do if I get it, how I'll handle it, and whether I will want it anymore or not. I will probably learn to deal with it, but when I try to imagine I always conclude I am better off now without it than I would be if I had it. Life is much simpler. 

And yet, I keep wanting it. 

Am I screwed up, or just my wish-o-meter?

--------------------------------------

I wasted many years of my life living pretty much in a hazy mental state of denial, self-loathing, and some random victim complex. I was not as fucked up as those words sound in English, but I was fucked up all right. Late last year I found a way out of the over-romanticised darkness. In the last few weeks, I found myself battling old familiar doubt and the new optimism seems to be winning. On my own. Reason I write this here is so that whenever future me reads these words, she remembers that it's possible to defeat darkness and she remembers that sometimes, she is better than she thinks she is. Give her a break, kiddo.

Restless peace.

This is a year of quiet restlessness. So far. A year where things have been pretty damn good for pretty much everything, and yet have always come accompanied with a fidgety restless discontentment. This is a year where joy has come aplenty, with some grief, but mostly, a lot of detachment. A lot of not feeling strongly enough. A lot of happy calm at the surface. And restlessness. I don't know if this is permanent, transient or non-existent (only in my head!). And disturbingly, the next thought that comes to my mind is, in a very Ravi Shastri-kinda way, I have a feeling that something's got to give here.

Whatever that means.:)

I like wondering every now and then of change. The whats, whys and hows. I like to pick up a lens and see things, places, and most of all myself through it to understand just a little better. You can call it a hobby. Searching for analogies and metaphors is another. One of the changes in me in the last year or two I hate the most is how my words don't flow out of me as much anymore as they could. Writing used to be a lot more effortless, and cathartic to me. It wasn't good writing, but it was brilliant clearing for mess inside my head. It sorta takes away the impact of many good changes. I so badly want to write. I want to write my book. I want to write cricket. I want to write poetry and fiction. I want to dole out crap on the back of my notebook again - not mere doodles. But it doesn't come out. Not enough. What's wrong? I feel joy, lots of peaceful joy, but not soul-stirring teary-eyed happiness like I did, a few moments in life. Is there anything wrong?

Anyway, back to the restlessness. I wonder if I feel it more because I dont write about it enough. I wonder if  it is just quarter-life crisis. I wonder if it's just hormonal over-thinking :) But that's the sort of year it has been. Job satisfaction plummeting - the flaws in people so much more visible. Stress over not knowing the future was less than the confusion over my desire to not even try to know the future. And even now, disquietude. What am I doing with my life? Why have I never done enough crazy whimsical things like others? Am I too "safe"? Am I too boring? What will the new job be like? Am I deliberately not asking hard questions? Have I become too defensive, too non-confrontational. Am I scared of drama? Fatigued? Or is this drama still.

Why isn't peace enough?

And where the f**k are the words?

PS At least, I still have unanswered questions.

Justify? Why?

I read somewhere today that one of the most important things we could learn from children is that they know how to demand with all their might that which they desire. It is amazing their ability to give everything without holding back for what they want, it is amazing the ease with which they know what they want. 

Why do we, while growing up, lose the ability to know what we truly desire - and not call it vague words like happiness, love, or purpose but something much more tangible, something we can fight for and get. Why do we struggle in the battle of heart and mind so much. Why is it sometimes so hard to hear what the heart is actually saying. And when we know, why does it take a nudge and a push to go all out and fight for it. Why is every argument a "yes, but.." or a "however". 

Words are such a handicap at times.

Funny thing is, even when we finally *know*, when we finally *hear*, when we *do*, we can't just go to sleep contented, because someone will have opinions, ask justifications and ask us why. Nobody does that to a kid.

These whys are such a pain. :-)

Blank

Complex

Getting older is almost synonymous to making decisions. Decisions that are almost always in the gray, almost always difficult and almost always leaving a significant bitter after-taste. You can be poetic and call them choices, and go into a soliloquy about the choice between choosing and not choosing. Somehow even that seems like a thing of the slightly simpler past, when the monologue gave some solace, and when it was mostly about deciding pink or purple, gems or Hajmola, engineering or sciences, crush or forgettable. Admittedly those seemed challenging at the time and this may seem trivial later - the enormity of a tragedy is a function of the speed of the passage of time, and the present does not allow time to hop days, weeks and years at will.

However, despite the complexity of today, I remember something very valuable learnt in the simpler past. That everything is as simple as you please. Even the present.

Now, only to figure out what I please.

How much is too much?

There's only so much you can stretch a string before it breaks. After a point you have got to say enough is enough, or the string will break and the recoil will hurt you bad, real bad. But it's hard, isn't it, to know when.
I mean look at cricket, IPL was a good exciting thing when it started, but it got bigger than first cut calculations and suddenly someone thinks it is an infinite money-making machine. Ad plug-ins in between balls and in every sentence of the commentary, way too much noise and crackers, way too many matches coming up, too much blatant, vulgar money - IPL3 is already an overkill I've little interest left in, and it's bound to get worse. It feels like a bubble, much like sub-prime, waiting to burst, IMHO.

It's just greed, isn't it? This desire to milk a good thing for more and more until it dies in the hope of well..more. Blinding disillusioning greed.
Greed that makes corporate bosses push their people to work harder and longer in less and less time for less and less money, screwing their lives to increase their margins until it starts hitting the breaking point and the brave among the good people begin to leave their jobs. (Sounds familiar?)

It is also greed of some kind that makes us hang on to relationships that aren't working - eternal hope or just desire to get more. I don't know really. It does feel like greed if you don't do anything about a problem just because you know that the other person is somehow living with it, even if with enough difficulty. The string will snap at some point, won't it. Wouldn't/ shouldn't at some point, you hear - enough is enough.
What's the right thing to do - I'm confused (and incoherent, sorry!)

Is the world really one big family?

Suppose you kill someone - any one random person, then kill everyone who would be grieving for them, all people who would be hurt or pained or angry or deprived because you killed someone, then you iterate and kill everyone still alive grieved by the deaths of everyone you killed. Hopefully you wouldn't have picked a well-loved celebrity in the first place, but nevertheless, you go on and on till there're no living people affected by the people you killed.
At the end of it all, you kill yourself, because a heartless inhumane mass-murderer like you doesn't deserve to live anyway.

The question is - how many, if any, people would still be alive? Half the world?


PS This morbid idea came to me when I was a kid and first learnt about over population (psycho-analysis, anyone?) Even then, I remember thinking about it as a sick, shocking but effective way to check the population of the world and all assoiated effects on the environment. Thoughts?

Random notes

As life drifts apart
should we try to hang on
or just get up and leave?

Why do something "better"
if it cannot keep you happy
if it wouldn't let you live?

As we grow up,
it becomes easier to accept
and harder to believe.

The questions we ask
are more important
than the answers we give.

Single and available???

My colleague at work was complaining yesterday, how all the nice guys (half-decent was her choice of adjective) in this world are taken and how we suddenly live in a terribly super-committed world. One could feel the agony in her words and see it in her eyes - "..and they don't ever break up either" - and now when I think about it, on one hand I still know a ton of people (esp guys) frustratingly single and ready to mingle, but that number (esp of the good ones) is definitely going down alarmingly. Have the times changed, or have we really become so old and settled in life? People I know are getting married for God sakes. Will I ever be able to find someone 'half-decent' to 'settle' with, *if* God forbid I ever want to, in another 2 or 3 years?

That is to say, should I start panicking about dying a maiden just yet? :P

On a related note, does anyone know any cute available guys in Mumbai? :P You are allowed to self-recommend, but self-introspect first.

On another note, I did a ton on household shopping yesterday, and fixed dinner and breakfast. I like the rhythm of things moving. :)

And does anyone know, why does every shop in Mumbai, including Dominos and Barista, have their shop boards in Hindi (and sometimes marathi, but that's logical) alongwith English? Curious.

Getting there, somewhere

अंत का आगाज़ है यह
या स्वागत गीत का अन्तिम छंद
Is it the end of the beginning of life
or of something more important, the beginning of the end?

हाथ बढ रहा है आगे एक, क्षितिज की तलाश में
लड़ रहा है दूसरा कि वक्त पर पकड़ बनी रहे|
An excited hand stretches out, towards the horizon limitless
The other struggles to keep its hold, on time running fast, away...

India, Bharat or Hindustan?

It's an interesting question: which country do you belong to: India, Bharat or Hindustan, because each of these three popular names have, irrespective of their historical origin, a semantic meaning attached, so your choice indicates your own position and view of the country. Officially of course, India and Bharat are the two chosen names in the two official languages respectively, but Hindustan is widely used in popular usage as well. The difference between India and Bharat in today's times is of the kind Arvind Adiga demonstrates well in The White Tiger as the bright vs dark India, the India Shining vs the India of the poor and the forgotten. Hindustan maybe saare jahan se achha in many eyes, but it has the unmistakable majoritarian "hindu" flavor, not all in sync with the secular, varied flavor of this country. It is also the contrast of choice with Pakistan, by people on both sides of the border.

So for its divisive air Hindustan is not my favorite, and though there exists opinions such as this numerological view why India is a better choice, India vs Bharat is still an open bet.

The semantics of language are the most accentuating part of this contrast, the difference between English, Hindi and the dialectic. It is the difference in the way sections of our nation debate on national, social and cultural issues, from voting to reservation to homosexuality. The nation lives on despite this, among many such, differences, but identifying ourselves on either side of the divide is a disturbing idea.

Because the question still remains, by belonging to a shiny, pacy India, am I alienated from real Bharat?

Why are so many people in marriage mode?

A friend (another!!!) has decided to get married (rather her parents think 24 is late enough to get married) and the suitable boy has been chosen. A casual discussion led to some wondering and pondering, and a series of questions for the liberalised-yet-close-to-the-roots hybrid generation of ours. It so happens that she used to date this one guy in school , for about two years, then another for a year or so in college, and a third for about 2 yrs after college, which got a little serious, but broke off about 1.5-2 yrs ago as well. That, is the "past", nothing wrong with it, per se, for she is looking forward to life ahead with this guy. However, she still wonders about whether and how to clarify her and his past with him before marriage, just to start on a clean slate. Or whether it's best stored in the past?

Now while that is a personal matter and an individual choice, one still wonders how people do it/imagine that they should do it.

• So, were you getting married to someone other than a longtime sweetheart, would you or would you not offer to discuss the "past" of each other, to start afresh?
• If not, what if a few yrs later you come across your husband's ex-girlfriend/your wife's ex-lover now-good friend, would you take it in your stride since you yourself decided to avoid thr graveyard discussion?
• If yes, how much do you want to share/want to know? It maybe OK that your wife had a boyfriend 2 years back, but is it OK that she had a physical relationship with him as well? Or vice versa?

Weird questions I know. Bad timing, to say the least. I don't get any of this/not interested, but with some random bug in the air, way too many people have started getting/thinking about getting married around, and it's getting impossible to sustain conversations. If someone were to ask me though, I think I'd like to discuss and I'd like to know/share things honestly. I guess.

Phew!

That feeling...

I don't know how many would identify with or even comprehend what I mean when I talk about that feeling...the feeling when no matter how good or brilliant it is objectively speaking, especially to everyone else onlooking, all you feel is inadequacy, insufficiency and a huge sense of underachievement when it comes to yourself. You cannot voice it or share it, because of course you cannot explain/rationally reason out about it and there would be a huge list of things someone else could point out that you have got going for you. You cannot sulk, you cannot be sad, but all you feel is a feeling of frustration with yourself, for being too slow, too stupid, too inefficient, or not being where your peers are, whatever be the reason.

Voicing it out, however, will always sound stupid and almost unreasonable. So I will stop short.

That feeling is a lonely feeling.

In the business of news

Today is my last night at IIT. Last night of walking into a messy hostel room and crashing, for quite a while definitely. Tomorrow, I'll pack and move out. Still I don't really feel anything, yet.

Today was also my first day at HT, as an intern. The most dominant thought in my mind earlier in the afternoon sitting there waiting for my mentor for almost an hour was that all those girls we see on the streets of Delhi, in malls and multiplexes, but never in colleges and offices we frequent (and by we I mean girls and (especially) guys at IIT and similar places who occupy an artificially skewed nerdy environment most of the time) - all those girls don't disappear, they work here and places like these! There were guys, about 40%, but it was obvious the fairer sex is the smarter, dominant species in here.

Essentially I was excited about a stint like this primarily for meeting diverse, different people, and to do something different and exciting in itself. The first part does hold, but the work is fairly non-challenging and mechanical. I learnt I need to put in 3-4 hours a day late afternoons and evenings on editing and page-making at least for the next two weeks. Checking stories for spelling and grammar is hardly a value-addition, and I'm already bored and in two minds about continuing a work clearly unfruitful (and one that involves travelling in afternoon heat AND evening peak traffic). That said, I do get to read half of tomorrow's newspaper in advance for the next four weeks.
What's your take? Continue or quit?

A cooking experiment

When someone says love is inside them, how do they visualize it? How do you visualize it?

Try.

Do you see one solid whole thing somewhere inside, just like a heart or a kidney or a brain, one essential alive life-sustaining organ, or even the thing that fills up my heart, and will leave a deathly void if lost, one that makes your chest ache with heaviness and chokes every ounce of air from the lungs? Or, alternately, as an atomized/continuum omnipresence, existing in every single molecule all through you, almost like a plasma or a halo that bathes you, which will give the sensation of pricking needles everywhere in the body, every inch revolting in sheer pain?

Make a choice. Feel the pain. Now add the balm of time to the concoction. Let it burn. Add distance, add change, add solace, add fresh joy and fresh pain. The more adventurous should add fresh love too. Saute till fatigued. Sprinkle a mix of maturity, wisdom and pragmatism. Finally, add hope to taste.

Pick the spoon and sample the flavor. Careful, let the taste linger. Now, can you make out the residual void, in the core or in the tiny overused atoms of the little curry in your mouth?

If you can't, congratulations.
If you can, damn you and welcome to the club.

First love.

Waqt saalon ki dhund se nikal jaayega
Tera chehera nazar se pighal jaayega
Aankh band hogi to
neend aa jaayegi
Raat ye bhi guzar jaayegi....

PS Work of fiction. Rather, part of one. The ultimate conversation, but I can't find the words yet for the other part, hence the post. So don't go all awww on me, just help me find those words. :)

Approval

I have a question: Why do we, all of us, seek approval all the time from a certain finite intimate set of people? This need of approval and assurance, need for all our self-justification for every decision and choice to be backed by a chosen few, why is it so important? And the lack of it, so crippling. I suspect it is one of those things that keep us from becoming inhuman and cold-hearted stones, so it cannot be a bad thing per se. Yet it signifies the stranglehold of the emotional side on even the most non-sentimental of minds and throws open the question of whether we could ever stop caring, whether self-esteem is an entirely self-dependent entity.
The question floats in my mind also because how approval becomes more important when one has to struggle to get it, or when one is faced with a decision so important and life-changing that there is a need to muster up courage and self-belief (and backing from at least some of those we trust) and go ahead with something in the absence of approval (at least from some of those who matter). How do some people automatically gain the right to do this to us, without even knowing sometimes? Parents, friends, lovers, those we admire. Do they always care? We think they know better, we like them, that is why they are in that elite list, yet, are they always aware of how important they are? Do they even always know us reasonably well to make a sound judgment for us? Why do we not always reason this out? Why, for even the most pragmatic, rebellious, self-confident of minds, is "I know I'm right and I'll do it in any case" not nearly enough? Unless maybe, for one in a billion people. Unless maybe, it is a question of life and death. And even then, why is the ultimate satisfaction reached only when later, some of them finally come around and acknowledge the correctness of your choice and embrace you with pride for you, and until then you can't help being a little restless all the time?

Maybe it is not even about finding the answer to the shower of Whys above. Maybe that's just the way it is and will be and should be. Maybe all our "support group" is, is a projection of our internal conscience and value system on those we trust enough. But still, what about all the in-between times. When it's not a question of life or death, when it's not a choice so important that you need to rebel against the world, or when some of those you look up to approve and stand by you, and some do not. What about all those little everyday instances. When you continually strive hard so as to not let down this select group of people and be as good as they expect you to be, and when you fail? Or worse, when you succeed and look upto them to get that approval, that pat on the back, but all you get is indifference, or a reaction that falls far, far short, and then you can't stop yourself from facing the question, did I not do enough. And then, you can't stop yourself from trying even harder the next time and the time after that, and keep striving for that elusive approval.
Sometimes, the point comes when one feels "they", the trusted adored ones, do not really care, do not really notice, or do not really know who you are and what's important to you. The point comes when you try expressing your needs and your admiration to them, and draw a blank. When efforts at laying out your problems/points of view/convictions are met with either indifference, or misunderstanding, or a nonchalant manner that makes a joke about it till you know you're not being listened to: you're not interesting.
At that point, is it possible for one to stop trying, to rationalise and decide this person does not care and therefore should not be in this list for me, and this person's attitude does not matter? Or all one can do is stay in the vicious circle and try even harder, because afterall, those people in there, aren't they above judgement and questioning, weren't we convinced of their absolute brilliance and vitality to our lives before we put them there (sure some came by default, but still), isn't this lack of approval an indicator of our flaw and failure in reality?

Is it possible to reason out with things like emotional strongholds?

Phir bhi dil hai hindustani!

No adjective, opinion or judgment could ever be a honest summary for a billion plus people, but there are some characteristics nevertheless that unify the diversity of the people of my country to a large extent into that peculiar thing called Indian-ness. And if one just steps back and critically tries to observe oneself and the world around, one can't help chuckling with one part amusement, one part pride, a little shame and a lot of wonder, although I do agree that one thing we must learn quickly as a society is to laugh at ourselves more often, because until then we wouldn't quit being so defensive and often dismissive of our follies. I quite like the fact that we are mostly vociferous about feelings and sentiments, though a lot of our political class stands erect on just that specialization. We love our democracy like crazy, yet we want the biggest pie of it for ourselves. And of course, as a touchy post by Johann revealed, nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.

So we fight ourselves, kill each other, pull the neighbour down, but also magically manage to unite in face of external threat, perceived or otherwise, warfield or crickefield. Well, well. We are probably one of the most racist societies in the world, priding the brown skin over the black, and worshiping the white, while letting our own kind not touch our food, enter our homes etc. Eccentric. And we are so damn eager to claim ownership on what interests in. So Sonia Gandhi cannot be the Prime Minister of India because of her "foreign origin", but we celebrate the victory of Bobby Jindal or an Indian-origin PM in a little known country with the full pride of belonging. We weep for Kalpana Chawla, but someone living in our country wanting to render his sporting excellence for the service of India is disowned because of his birth documentation. Slumdog Millionaire is only slightly more an Indian film as Forrest Gump or one of those war movies was Vietnamese. Yet we rejoice and cry in happiness when a mostly mediocre film wins the Oscar, mostly due to lobbying. SM was an entertainer made for the American audiences, winning their awards. We never rejoiced so much when Traffic Signal or Chandni Bar showed the gruesome reality of India in a much more realistic fashion. It's almost as if both our pride in Bollywood, and the starkness of the truth of our poverty needs an approval from the West to really start meaning something for us.

Oh well, so long as India wins the upcoming cricket series against New Zealand, I'm proud of us.