Remembering

Today, I stopped. I realized I wanted to remember.

It's been snowing for days. It was good at first, but slowly I got weary of it. I complained about the inconveniences and the mountains on the ground. Icomplained about the gloominess and just prayed for it to end. In all that weariness, in that constant running for cover, I didn't notice.

Or maybe I did, but I am not sure if I noticed enough to commit it to memory.

So I could remember.

There is something special about the present, every present, that is very very easy to ignore. We often romanticize the past, however past is but an accumulation of presents. There's something unique, irresistible and irreplaceable about today - this place, this time, and this version of me.
I wanted to remember.

So I stopped walking, let my arms free and my eyes wander. I smelt, I felt and I tried hard for my mind to remember this moment. Later, I took a few pictures, but pictures preserve but a fraction of reality. I let the snow flakes fall freely all over me until my hair was white and my lips blue. I looked at the surroundings - both the legacy and the potential of this place I find myself at - and tried hard to fight the feeling of insignificance for my life. I lost the fight when I saw how each snowflake kissed the ground and melted away like it never mattered - it represented every moment of my life thus far, passing me by, not mattering.

It is hard to value every tiny little - but unique in its own right - individual snow flake when you stand in an ocean of five feet snow. But they have to matter because it is them - those individual snow flakes - that combine to form the ocean of snow. Every moment in our life matters, if only a little, because their corpses accumulate to become the person we become and the life we've lived.

At long, one tear escaped my cheek. I was trying so hard to remember, but I knew I was failing at it. But the tear froze, and soon became indistinguishable from the droplets freezing and falling all over me. That's when it hit me that my individual grief is trivial and indistinguishable.

If I want to matter, I need to move the snow.

Fair and square

I have spent a lot of time thinking, realizing, re-realizing over this weekend, how little so many things matter. Things that seem SUCH A BIG DEAL when they are happening, matter so little after some time. It is humiliating, almost, to remember how much time, thought and emotional investment went into those meaningless things. I was shocked, for example, to realize how little I remember certain events, several words and even some people that occupied so much of my consciousness only 8 or 9 years ago. I guess the lesson is I should not read old emails. 

But there's another lesson. My roommate says we pay so much attention to stuff to keep ourselves occupied, "to kill time" so to speak, because life would be too long for most of us if we didn't fuss over the small stuff. If we didn't give in to emotional response and rational over-thinking on most of what life serves us. She is probably right. But it is a little disturbing too.Does that mean life really has no meaning? Or, more likely, most of us never manage to find that meaning and just survive, deliberating over one issue or the other to "kill the time"? Is the point of life to just "kill the time" until time is up? That seems kinda disappointing, doesn't it? 

That almost makes me want to call time and stop living. What's the point, anyway?

Maybe it is the fast-approaching winter and the shortening days filled with chilly breeze and falling leaves, or maybe it is just the colossal amount of thinking B-School provokes me to do, but it feels more and more these days that "what matters most to you and why" is definitely the world's hardest question. There aren't that many things in the world that feel "worth mattering", these days.

Which leaves us with the ones that do seem that they "should matter".

Like morality, the sense of right and wrong, and the courage to do the right thing. It feels like that should be the most important component of the leadership of this world, more than "skills" and "fit". And yet, hardly ever do we screen CEOs, employees and politicians with it. Hell, I don't think we even know how to screen effectively those who are "just faking it". And yet, "intent" seems to matter somehow. That grey fuzzy area of intent, really does seem to matter more than words and often, even actions. 

The other close cousin of morality, honesty, seems to matter too. Honesty allows us to be human. To make mistakes, to forgive mistakes. Honesty allows intent to survive. Honesty allows us to work together, without agenda and conspiracy, and we can often solve problems better together than alone. Honesty allows affection and trust. But honesty is so Goddamn uncomfortable so often.

There's one fundamental thing that humans have an innate need for, and that is fairness. Humans may not behave fairly, but they always want to be treated fairly with those they consider their equals in that context. The absolutes itself do not seem to matter, fairness is relative and desired by everyone on all ends of the spectrum. People get upset over low salaries, but outraged if they get a salary hike just a little bit less than their peer. It is ironical, of course, that often we are ok with unfairness as long as we are perpetuating it on other, or as long as we are the beneficiary. Mostly though, we just choose to ignore unfairness on others until it starts affecting us. We know it instantly when we feel prejudiced, but we are blind to our own privilege and prejudice. But the noise aside, the bottom line is clear. People demand and deserve to be treated fairly. And honesty and the right intent can go a long way in removing unfairness from this world. Discrimination on caste, gender, race, sexuality, religion, profession etc is unfair and must go. Starvation of some while others waste resources is unfair and must be corrected. 

It is hard, but restoring fairness in this world seems like something that matters. Something worth thinking about and acting upon. 

Beats "killing time".

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.

Of roads not traveled and places not seen

Two in three people I know would say they love traveling if I asked them - or maybe more. I would too, of course, if you asked me. Traveling is really fun, exciting, adventurous. From ancient travelers who wrote tales about lands and regimes they passed through, to the modern-day backpackers and travelogue-writers, their choice of lifestyle has that enigma, that excitement worth being jealous of.

Of course, I am a consultant - it's one of a few jobs where traveling is a part of profile, a requirement. What, when, where, how much - all depends on how lucky or unlucky you are with staffing. :) But the why is always a constant, 99% is for work, 1% for official recreation, which is also work under disguise :)

One could argue that work related travel is hardly travel, and correctly so. Of course there's no fun in waking up insanely early for a morning flight, battle random traffic mess,airport queues, flight delays and train crowds to get somewhere, prim and proper to meet a client at about the same time you get to office on another day. And zip through roads, hotels, airports to work late till night because of all the travel time "lost", and brave yourself for an encore the following day. No complaints, it's part of the job!

But that's exactly what it is - part of the job. It isn't exactly traveling, is it. I have been in eight or nine cities in the last couple of weeks as part of the job. Short field phase. But that wasn't travel. What did I see of those cities? What do I remember of those sights and sounds and smells?

The boyfriend just returned from a nine day vacation to Sikkim. It reminds me the last trip I took to anywhere was a two day trip to Lansdowne - 250 kms from Delhi - almost a year ago. Excluding an overnight getaway to Alibaug near Mumbai few months back. And before that, I cant remember anything till the Sweden exchange except IITK.

It reminds me how little I have traveled in my entire life. It would shock most of you, but if I died tonight, I'd have never seen Jaipur, Jodhpur, Agra (I was 2 when I was taken there - doesn't count), Goa, Shimla, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune .......And then there's the list of places that work has taken me in the past year - all comprising of work-filled stays of one night or less, and therefore not counting as travelled either - Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Kochi, Lucknow, Kanpur (been to IITK once before for Antaragni). Hell, it would be shorter to count places I have been to.

I admit I'm a loser. I know you're going to say, take a week off, pick your bags and go somewhere, anywhere. I know I want to do that - have always wanted to. And still haven't. Till a year back I never had the money to do that. I was in college, I was supposed to study, have fun within the campus confines, and make my pocket money last the month. I also didn't have the friends, for the most part, for company. And what would I say at home? Where am I going - why, with whom. Now I can manage the money, but the other two is still a problem.

I know I need to get up, grab a backpack, and just leave. The complications would probably wait till I return. Someday.

Anyone wanna join?

Too serious? :)

It's a small world.

Life - I can't decide whether it's long or short, opinions flip flop on that one - but life is reasonably long to make us forget a large part of it, as it happens. We get over most of it easily.

Some, of course, we like to hold on to. In tinted, hazed versions. In pictures, boxes and words. In stories we remember every time it rains, or cry to in the darkness of nights.

But since it is a small world, and as I said, life is reasonably long on an average day, sometimes we run into figments of our own life that we had forgotten, lost or gotten over. Bang, they're right there in front of us. Those people, those places. Those pictures, boxes or words. Stories we half-remember. They tend to take us down nostalgic lanes, mostly hopping over things we have held on to, and sometimes revealing forgotten milestones that surprise us -pleasantly or unpleasantly.

I do not know if this ever happened to any of you.

"Hey I knew this person... I spent a good year sharing all my secrets with her, crying over her shoulder and hiding behind her to avoid getting caught for my pranks. What happened? Why don't I remember why we got over each other?"

"Ah! I don't remember ever drawing these things. God, how silly was I. Why did I ever stop?"

"This place looks familiar, and still doesn't. I know I spent years jumping around these halls, but.."

Of course, you move on. Things lose relevance quickly. That's relatively speaking. At that moment, the pace of time is slow enough to make it feel like the entire universe, or the biggest tragedy in the country upon a human being - as the case maybe. Things feel different when they happen to you, I guess. The funny part is, once time has passed, we get over them so quickly that it's easy to be distant and forgetful, even more than if it were to happen now to a stranger in front of us.

And of course, this holds for about 95% of the people we meet and 98% of the events we live through.

It's amusing how seriously we take life still!!

I wonder if this will happen to this blog, say, 10 yrs from now. Would I care so much? Would it exist? Would I remember? Who knows...

But the archives will always state that here, in the 600th published post on this page, I acknowledged that in the roller coaster of life - hopefully, not a long one - these archives would have their own special place. :)

Cheers!

I?

I like to take each moment as it arises, and yet, when I can, I like to have thought through the worst case scenarios, just to know I can survive it. Heisenberg is God, and uncertainty rules, for both its inevitability and its excitement, yet I need to believe that come what may, it will never be so bad it breaks me.

I hope the irony does not make me weak.

I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad...

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!

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.

"Man is a social animal"

...said my class two textbook. Is that why we struggle so hard to belong somewhere, to someone, to a certain group of people with certainty and love? Is that why, identity, the curious remarkable thing that defines itself by being defined by everything around it, is so important to us that we constantly seek to establish and hold on to it? Is that why no matter how used to you've grown to walking alone, sometimes you still crave for a companion? No matter how independent and self-sufficient you are, even you need someone to laugh and cry with, even you hate eating alone sometimes?

Why does a sense of security come with reaching out to someone, feeling close to someone? Why is the nothingness of hours, the silence of the wind, the coldness of 'friends' felt like this? Why do we seek escape into illusions where we have no time to realize how lonely we are?

Rehne do, I don't even wanna know. You wouldn't understand.

...and then it rained

The air was still. The heat didn't burn, but stifled with its humidity. I looked around. Everything seemed lifeless, inanimate. There was no movement, no noise. I began to walk.

Long walks have a cathartic quality; the mind races randomly in different directions, with different thoughts forming, colliding, bouncing, dying every instant. I like thinking nothing. After a while it put me in such a calm mood I began to hum a tune, an old favorite, as I walked. A cloud from nowhere drifted towards the sun's face.

And slowly I re-learnt several things I had forgotten, or overlooked. And slowly I realized, analyzed, rejected and accepted facts I should never have forgotten, or overlooked. A little breeze began to flow. A flight of pigeons were being noisy. Somehow, as I looked at them, the following lines came to mind: It's your problem. Above all, I just want to be happy now. I just want to fly free. I can survive, hopefully, so can you.

It was unconnected, I know. The breeze had turned into a wind. We are who we are, and where we are, because of the choices we make, and choose not to make, as we move along. I realized my choices, and understood they didn't match with all my expectations and needs, but they were consistent with the most important ones of those.

Some limits we don't set, because we can't. Some limits we never push away, because they keep us safe in bounds. And the rest of them, we just keep pushing at to test ourselves, and they keep shifting, we keep winning, we keep trying. I knew, if and when it gets difficult, I wouldn't quit. And you will fly. Finally, I smiled.

Some times, things trivial for most of the world are everything for somebody. With the thunder the things that meant the most to me shone at me in their apparent insignificance.

And then it rained. :-)

Options

Sometimes, no matter what the options and what the consequences, silence is the option it is your duty to choose. Sometimes, if you are lucky, silence is the only option you got. Often, after all, silence is the only way to say what you have to and still avoid being heard.

I don't like noise.

Low.

I'm feeling low, exactly low and nothing other than low, just in the way the word might have been first coined to precisely mean, I'm feeling low like that. And this feeling, the setting of almost everything in my life at the moment is almost exactly the same as a few years back. All that furore and I'm still just where I was, just as alone, just as disappointed, just as closed in my heart. I feel for a moment as if my heart has shrunk and shut and all the warmth and affection in it has evaporated. But I know better, for not all love can disappear. Yet I feel nothing good alive inside me and it's a dangerously dead feeling. I could be dead or alive and it would make no difference. I'm not hysterical or weepy, that's one bad habit I've largely managed to put under some serious check and I'm glad for it, but this peaceful blanket is unnerving for the sheer silence of it, for the sheer immunity it provides from everything around, and for myself.

I feel so terribly inadequate, and that insecurity does not arise externally, because I feel inadequate for myself. Yes, I feel cheated and angry and disappointed with a few people, a few things. Being ignored angers, but being ridiculed without deserving it makes you cry without a whimper. It's amazing how little you mean to anyone and anything, esp when you thought you should have meant something. It's amazing how easy it is for people to walk all over you even though you were there for their need not that long ago. It is a feeling that threatens to kill all kindness and all care inside you, which is a really really dangerous thing. IIT is a bad place; it teaches you all the bad thigs about the bad bad world, important as they are, in a really harsh way. That's probably why surviving IIT is an achievement, and IIM maybe more so, with everyone willing to sell everyone out. It hurts to deserve something and not get it, but it hurts a lot to deserve a little respect and get a lot of ridicule. After so much...God knows I'm tired of the brickbats, and no I don't want any bouquets.

The reason why today reminds me of those days, those times is that I absolutely do not feel I need someone to share all this with now.(A good rant is a different thing, and this post is getting so long hardly anybody would read it, so this is essentially about talking to myself, and I like it)Nobody feels close enough and right enough any more to open up to, and in a way that's a liberating feeling because the habit and expectation of being taken care of makes you postpone sanity and self-care a little longer, and because it hurts much more when nobody shows up when you need them. It's an awesome feeling to not need, to feel low and be okay with it and to remember to fend for yourself. I grew up like that and it's good to see I can still survive like that. The good thing about these days, these times is that everytime they seem unlike those days, those times, someone comes along to gently remind you that 'hey,it's your problem, don't bore me with your stories and just do what you want' or 'hey, you're supposed to fix my problem instead and understand what I need and walk off, thats your job'. It feels nice to have a place, after all, wherever it is. And just like those days, anybody could count the objective 'parameters' in my life and claim it's a good life, but nobody would want to be in it, nobody would want to be me. Except me, of course. I like being me, esp this illusion-shattered me who knows her problem is her chronic disease of investing trust everywhere, but wouldn't do a thing about it.

This semester is coming to a close, and everytime I begin to think about it, it completely overwhelms me. So much has happened in such little time that I don't even know what all has. Exams start monday, and God knows my acads are f***ed big time this sem, but my will to work, to study, to fight, to even try is awfully hard to find. I wish I could crib, "why me?", but I know better. In some instances, I wish I could also complain "why not me?" but I know the futility. You know, you could do so much and still fail at it, just like those times when you do only a little and luck helps you incredibly a lot.

This last year has been so so harsh. Such little good has come out of it. People have come and gone and come and gone etc, life also came and gone and came and gone and toyed with my spirit, my resilience till it got tired of the mochery. And now, at the end of it all, at the end of four years, I feel so empty, so numb, so...finished. And not even in a depressing sort of a way, just completely matter-of-fact empty. As if my job here is done. And although there's still one whole year which I have no clue how I will survive and my head goes into a frenzy trying to look for a point to it every single time, I don't feel I have it in me to live. I will survive, eventually, because there's no reason to just quit, but really, in life's journeys if you eventually come to the same point as you started, why do we even move? Why do we even try? No matter how much you do, how much you slog, how much you love, and how much of yourself you kill and sacrifice, how come it's never enough? Why should I go on?

PS I may be low, but I'm perfectly sane. I will take care of myself, thank you.

Strange, perhaps

Since the last few days, an eerie feeling resides in me. I feel a strange, powerful revulsion from everyone...in the sense that I'm really comfortable only when I'm all alone and silent, mostly. I'm happy! But with people, even with my closest of friends and most loved ones in the whole wide world, with anyone except for work, there is an inexplicable unreasonable aversion (okay, that sounds a bit too intense, I'd say mild repulsion/ urge to escape) which is stupid as well as embarassing. I have to fight an urge to run off, and while I can successfully do that and the existing affections are acknowledged and strong, something's just not comfortable. I don't feel like chatting, don't feel like talking much to anybody more or less, am very nasty, bitchy, rude, blunt to a lot of people these days ( and it's strangely pleasing too :D) shun arguments and just adore silence.
I know this has got to be temporary, and I hope I do not permanently offend many people, but what the heck, I am happy.

Something similar happened to me just when I came back from Sweden, and I put it down to months of solitary living. I don't know what to ascribe it to now. I don't even know if I want a cure. :)

28th March 2008

Retired, hurt.



Life happens. And then it's over.



:-)

Kidding is serious business!!

Have you seen the Dhara advertisement where the li'l kid says, "koi mujhse pyar nahi karta main ghar chhodke ja raha hoon." and is then lured by jalebis back home. I am so in that mode, except I can't say that line to anyone/go anywhere/nobody's gonna lure me back. All because they think that at 20, I'm not a kid.
Question 1, who the hell is they? Question 2, how the hell did they decide? And question 3, why can't I be a kid any more?

So you and you and they and all of they's friends can please go to hell, because the kiddo mode I'm living in for the last 2 hours is bound to stay some more. I LIKE being a kid. I LOVE being silly. What's anybody's problem in that?
Why can't you people see me happy? See I'm happy, [shows you a thumb], do what you want to do. (And I'm happy and I'm ranting, which proves you can rant when you are not sad. QED. Yey!)

The point is, the bade log of these world are all jerks. They just lovvvvvve complicating simple things and then complainign how tough life is. They can't answer a single question kids ask properly and completely (no aukat only!!) and still say they are the ones who know more stuff. Kids are good, they fight, but in that love now, slap after five minutes and kick throw bang boom cry complain smile again at ten. Adults fight stretchign stuff so long that nobody can possibly remember what the dispute was, and all they keep to themselves is big biggg words like discomfort and selfishness and adjustment and small biggg words like ego and sin. Huh!

Everything is actually so confusing...a few days back I was telling a friend.." So, your gf did this thing wrong, and though it hurt you then you can easily understand it was a small unintentional mistake and you already claim you'd forgive her if she comes to you and apologises. Right? So, tell me, why this if. If you can forgive her then, why wait or her to come and SAY sorry before forgiving her in your heart. Why stay bitter? Why prick a hole in both your hearts? Don't you even love her this much that you can forgive her without her actually physically asking for it?" And he was looking at me as if I just taught him rocket science!!! Double huh!!

Mujhe nahi rehna is bekar duniya mein aise....
People just invent reasons to be sad. You're "supposed" to grow up and act sane. Why the hell? You know what, if you wanna act all adult, then please go ahead and act adult by pampering me and jhelofying my excitements and tears and moods etc etc in that truly adult sort of way and derive the adultish post-pampering satisfaction out of it.
I'm cool with that. Instead, what you'd do is lecture me how I'm supposed to become as 'sensible' and 'sophisticated' and 'mature' as you!!!! Triple huh!!!

Just let me be ok. Kids are cuto ( kiddos are cuto-er). And everybody else is really really gandu.

And remember, it's ok if you don't understand me/like me/love me/like to pamper me/can't jhelofy me, it's OK. just lemme be. Lemme be silly because I like it. Just dont take stuff to heart. Just dont make me guilty.
Just dont make me cry. ForI've noone to lovingly wipe the tears.
Hope *you* got the point, honey!

Cheers to stupidity!! :D

:) :) :)

Schmooze, muse, views.

News headlines for the last week read I got schmoozed. No, that's not a African/Japanese/Bihari/Tollywood/Mayawati-christened/RSS-approved/Himesh-sung version of "smooch" (I'm wayy too hapless for even those corrupted incarnations). Apparently, this schmooze thing is about how well you traverse blogosphere and move, as Dreamcatcher who gave me this award puts, in sheets of conversations with other blogs. They move around blogosphere making friends, are not just limited to highly frequented blogs but they also keep there arms open to new ones and engage in meaningful conversation so they bug you more after saying hello …

Now I don't know who gave that definition, but it's interesting enough for me to pass the baton. Mr. Dreamcatcher himself is one of those, undoubtedly, but if I have to pick five more (which is very difficult, my list is TOO long)

(in alphabetical order)

Akshay... Cute, innocent, energetic. Writes well, charms better. Always hunting for blogs and bloggers, to read. His two cents are always the brighter perspective, even when he doesn't understand anything! :P

Arpana Crazy crazy crazy girl. Blabbers, cries, sings, does everything, and instantly make u like her...even her silliness. Very loving and a wonderous friend.

Keshi Vivacious, veteran, energetic girl totally in love with blogging and her blog-family :)

VibhavKnow him through blogs primarily, though we pass by too often in college not to talk. Still, his opinions, his warmth in this world, his invaluable observations and brilliant poetry make him a not-so-anonymous wonder :)

Vikram From poetry to frustaps, from life to death, from philosophy to humour, from encouraging comments to questioning ones, he has everything :)

There're at least a few more I must acknowledge...pRicky, Tapasya, Chitra, Jasmine, DC, Faith, Ady, Prude....

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Among other events, some of the questions raised in this post by me have invited responses even more thought provoking at times, and while I still reserve my own take, if any, on them, the one thing that gave me a strange pleasure to know was the question I thought was the trickiest for me also turned out to be the least answerable, for it concerned defining honesty, and judging people on that most important parameter. Invariably, all acceptable answers ran into the domain of intent, of "justified" lies, of morality...in short subjectivity. And thus intent remains for me the most important, most crucial concept and parameter, yet inaccurately known by its very nature. I've believed in concepts like...I don't care about whether you did it or not, I care about whether you wanted to/meant to.

And gladly, after all the thought, I still do. :)

*********************************************************

Request: One of my alter-egos, Madam as she is known for her strict bossy dictums and whims, has prevailed on me to command everyone to smile. So, for the sake of my job and health, please please please smile. :)

INSPITE OF...

...the foolishness...............do fall in love!
...the inevitability of defeat...do fight!
...the exams.....................don't be tense!
...the odds......................do play the game!
...the invincibility of death....do live!
...this..........................do remember THE ZEROTH COMMANDMENT!!

Smile. Come what may.


Somebody teach me how to smile, again...........