The kind of I was and I am, I always take risks, I am always enamored by the unknown (I guess we all are). When the leaves are on ground, and the sky is blue, I always wondered what it would be like in Cali—in contrast to the Indian subterranean lands where I’ve been raised—sp unexposed to the cultures of the world seven seas apart. As we know, life constitutes of people, no matter how romantic you can get with the nature around you, you are apprehensive, bound to fear the “natures” around you in a foreign land. It is quite different when you know that you aren’t going to be around the place for long—the very fact that I wanted to embrace California and its people always clicked inside my mind when I had decided that if there was only one foreign place I would like to experience completely in this life, then California A.K.A Cali would be the place I would pick.

The people in San Francisco were nice to the extent that made me believe that the people are pretending, and they are what they are because they don’t wanted to discreetly preserve the dark sides that we all are composed of. And now, as I was ready to breathe the first wave of the airs in San Diego shores, I wasn’t sure about which way the winds would blow in the shores.

I wanted to meet people, I wanted to meet guys, and I wanted to see how they laugh, I wanted to penetrate their thoughts. Not much would have been possible, if not for two wonderful blokes on the block—Andrew Merkle and Jordan. They have accepted me in a way a son separated from his mother for 15 years can accept her son. Be it, “Whad up shwady? You want a snap? What’s good? You’re feeling good? You’re sick? —everything has been good beyond what an average guy walking down the road of a foreign country can expect. You are possibly the sole reason I can go back to India and say United States rocks!! It’s important to me in many ways, no matter what people think about it, I wanted to be part of you, I wanted to feel home outside home, you have made me feel the home away from home.

Andrew: We can do, what we do, when we do in back of the Lac, I’m like I’m all up for that

Jordan:

Tic Tac, Tic Tic Tac

Doesn’t really matter cause you aint fat

We are doing that

Are you doing that?

You know what I am talking about right?

Peace….

I am not trying to retrofit few pieces that I found on the way, but I just happened to know that I am never able to retain “friends”; it always has been like that. I must admit, that it never occurred naturally to me, like it happens to others, I was arguing about the importance and meaning of friendship at the most important stages of life that I have lived so far, when I should have instead just let it be, when I should have just seen what happens. Other times, I was almost desperate to call somebody my friend, but I again failed miserably, I didn’t know the rules, it was not easy for me to play-along, it was almost as if life around me was questioning me about my needs, the basic needs, which had succumbed to modern needs.

But I try to reason myself out of this, this isn’t one of those self-deceiving kinds, which we usually do to convince ourselves that we are right, but this is a more genuine one. I find that it is a combination of intrinsic need, the need to be alone most of the time, plus few choices that I made down  the road, that has pushed me  in a corner where I can’t stop longing for that feeling, neither can I resist the need to know that feeling. And now that we think we are too wise, more and more people we meet fall outside the circle-of-our-norms. We think it is better to be choosy, but it is true, it is better not to go out and watch a Karan Johar (Hindi films director) flick just because we haven’t been social enough all this while. One thing was always clear to me from the beginning— not to have too many acquaintances. I just cannot keep answering to everyone’s phone calls and reply to their scraps on Orkut (the reason why I stay away from social networking sites). People think I am rude, selfish, self-obsessed, but aren’t I allowed to just be myself? If that is what friendship means, I better stay away from it. But, I am a social animal, I sometimes feel the need for connecting, exploring myself more, more than my near and dear ones can help me in doing so. I feel the need to do more than just talking to people and feeling good about exchanging few jokes. I am more conscious about this now more than ever. I think that is the reason I have always felt kind of safe in the company of women, they expose me to myself in a way almost nobody else can, but then I move on, still struggling to know whether I know the meaning of that which I am not able to understand, the thing which is so simple that world almost takes it for granted—the same feeling I have been wary of, almost like a person who is careful of driving a vehicle because of recent road accident—that feeling which my mind says is not as important as doing better and good things in life, “you can’t have everything in life”, it says to me, and I accept that with a softness like a dog who shows a muted contented-ness when his master comes back home late at night and pats on his head.

I do feel the need to connect, and I do connect, but the connection doesn’t last enough, the kicks just don’t last enough, just the way I am not able to connect with my thoughts lots of times, and the obviousness of the choice that I have to make, makes me choose the battle inside me instead of the one begging to brew outside. There were times when I tried to change the person outside me, accepting the differences, but trying to teach, but I suddenly realized that I was trying to do the impossible (almost). I am not biased asking for things to be “natural”, I know things have to be worked out, but I always get more and more evidences that “working out” won’t work too. Doesn’t it happen too many times that we feel good talking to a person for the first time or so, but we lose interest subsequently? But there are few people, whom you would like to know more, try to learn, and try to learn the art to connect. Sustained connection has to endure and last past the seemingly insuperable obstacles that inevitably come in any process. When we first begin to study something, like piano, we start with a wave of enthusiasm and interest and we work at it. But, after that, comes a point in every [perceivable] process, where [the enthusiasm] runs down. We say to ourselves, “maybe I don’t want to play the piano”, “maybe I want to play the flute”, or maybe I want to sing. Often we get a whole new burst of energy when we start something else. That running down of the initial feeling of passion seems to be natural. It’s not because of any problem I (we) have. It happens in every situation and if you’re really going to be a pianist, you going to have to keep working when the automatic desire to work is no longer there.

So, after knowing that, people like me still seem to have trouble finding the right instrument, we loathe the fact of ending up being a bad musician only because the instrument was never going to produce that sound we were looking for—“I could have instead spent my time programming”, we say to ourselves. So, I think this is what works for me, why can’t I just do the “better”, instead of worrying about the unknown, which might leave a bad taste in my mouth in the end?–Heartless? Yes? I think the definitions are ‘suit-yourself’ anyways, I am not doing anything different—I enter myself, you enter you, I leave myself, you too leave yourself.

The intrinsic need for loneliness is as strong as the need for having company, which is why I feel I have overcompensated sometimes, and ended up with company that I could disengage myself with easily. “Am I your friend?”—I have been asked many times, that I have groped for just some words, so that I could escape the situation, and ask that question again to myself. I look around, I try to see the definitions of friendship that people tend to assume, but I feel I am complicating it too much, “I cannot possibly weigh the values standing outside, I just need to sit straight and there will be no back pains”—I again overcompensate by making it far more simpler. Neither can I resign myself to the obscurity in a whirlpool of strangers all around me. Ironically, I seem to need that element of “strangeness”, kind of acquaintanceship that doesn’t necessarily culminate into something that is held higher either in language or real sense. It would be something (if I can have it), which has that third corner, where we both can reside once in a while when we are bored of ourselves (huh?). Being estranged to ones self, and still being able to connect, now that would be some kick.

And then I move on, not feeling, winnowing emotions from utilities, killing that human element of life when we behave outside what is good and what is bad. I feel a pang of unsaid tense air inside me when I think that I don’t have that guy, that woman, who I want to talk to right now, but I can’t. It isn’t that easy, as human brain doesn’t unallocate the memories that happen to it, but I seem to be doing okay, still holding few, and trying to hold on to new. This time I am going to do things differently I have vowed to myself, I need them; my loneliness has given me the permission, it tells me I would still do fine, you are you and I am I.

I read that it all started when “man” felt the need to exchange goods—really, now you want me to buy that Bengalis don’t eat fish, or that fishes don’t eat fish?
Shopping –etymology…  akin ‘not similar to reading’ A.K.A ‘making women happy’. As if ‘ing’ is another language combined, just to say the same thing with extra syllables. One of the words, which I think, came into existence on the lines of reading, dancing, drumming, walking, and running, and so on, and hence shopping.

I wonder sometimes if so many people really shop at the same time, and that lots of them are just shills exchanging looks. But shopping is a really good place to observe the culture, see what the “middle” classers are up to.  I love to eavesdrop on lot of conversations. There was a time (a short period) when I loved going out for shopping with family since you can act as if you just came here on being insisted and then you try to flirt with women (please don’t take it as advice, it’s a bad idea). But I have had my disasters, I have been asked out by stranger men, yes!! I don’t know what part of my beautiful sculpture triggered those men to think that I am a gay or bisexual—I had even asked this to one of the them, and he walked away like a strange woman whom I had asked “you look familiar”–”give me break”, an unsaid voice rebounds when men fall for such cheap tricks.

In many ways, going out for shopping has boosted my patience levels as good as anything (waiting for constipation to ease a close 2nd). Patience is virtue, about a year ago; I practically had none of it, but now, I have patience to be patient, and shopping is one of those tools that can refine the art of some-kind-of-laity.

So:

You enter the shopping mall, really positive, looks promising, it isn’t that crowded, you lie to yourself

You very enthusiastically move around the floor as if you own the floor (knowing that it will own you in sometime), what a cute doll there, you smile with a mouth open like a round plate (almost not knowing that you are faking that one)

Your woman (whatever the relation might be) asks for opinion—and again—you do it again, you advice her with intent as if she really is seeking your advice.

Now you start feeling little bit queasy as you see that floor is  filled up with people left and right, so many, that you can barely walk 2 meters without worrying about smelling sweat or rubbing someone’s ass.

Now enough of romanticism! You start thinking about reasons why people are here. You look around, watching, scanning people’s clothes, looking for signs of threadbare-ness on fagged bodies, but your intelligence is insulted again, as always.

You slowly start showing the feeling by talking to the salesman, the billing guy at the counter, trying to provoke them, skillfully, trying to entice them into a verbal banter, so that you can vent your entire frustration on the poor but chosen guy. But sadly, everybody in the mall is just too nice; nobody says anything, even when you call them motherfucker son of a bitch (yes, at least here in India).

–

Shopping for self is even trickier; we cannot waffle out of the scene. It is damn tiring, especially for people like me who have to try everything that the woman accompanying hands over, if not for that, we would take the left turn to the nearest pub instead of landing in a shopping hub. I am usually frog-marched around at gunpoint; otherwise I would never agree to watch the life-size lady dummies without bras. I sometimes get ideas for mission-shuffling, where, my army would spread across the world’s shopping malls, and shuffle across haphazardly from one item on to another to confuse people who are inside the shopping centers. First rule of shuffle-club would be: you shuffle; second rule of shuffle-club would be: you are still shuffling, and third rule: you are just too dumb, you better do shopping.

—
I wonder what all these people are thinking, are they just thinking about buying the next article, or are they equally frustrated like me about being there. Worst part is that most of the shopping sails happen on Sunday, that’s my fun day. I wake up really early on Sundays (at 5 or so) and I savor each and every second of the morning, the morning, which doesn’t know that it’s going to be handcuffed by afternoon and raped by an evening.

—

I wonder how women can glide effortlessly through the clumsy blocks of clothes that all appear to be same unless you’re a woman. My legs become unyielding in rows made by grotesque things on either side, I stumble way too often, of course all that in the mind, if I had my way in the shopping malls, my photo would be stuck outside all the major shopping centers.

Worst part: you might scan the entire mall for an Ex with whom you had bad breakup. It isn’t that bad, but still, you don’t want to think about all that in the mall, watching different people in front you, you possibly bump into someone while doing that (imagine if it turns out to be you Ex!). Already intrigued at the amount of choice presented, totally contrasts life—really? I guess that is the whole point why women shop, beautiful women know they don’t have much choice with lousy and ugly men like me, with whom they anyways have to adjust, so they like to choose, feel good– I can certainly feel how they feel after entering such huge buildings filled with choices!! It may be one of the ways to feel less insecure, feeling the warm air that comes out of the closet full of clothes begging to be put on, and shoes crying to be rubbed into the ground.

It is difficult to explain the guys about what I am are looking for. They always assume, they are looking to sell, and it is very difficult to sell things to people like me. I see the happiness on the faces of the helpers who feel they have done a good job, they are happy like a dog who thinks he staved clear a person who was going to attempt to rob his masters house, but dogs do not know that people can just take a walk outside in the night.

I become really paranoic sometimes, the mannequin’s kept on the stores, they always stare at me, I don’t know why I feel that they can see through me; they know shopping is not my thing. And sometimes I fear that some dead body will pop out from the pile of clothes and say “April fool” to dead body (as a result of the heart attack caused by the shock). But one thing’s for sure, they do know the secret, they just don’t speak, every time I cut a corner, I again watch intently, feeling like almost talking to one of them, thinking they will respond, but they won’t, I realize and I move on.

But it isn’t fair, on us men, when we go and accompany women on every shopping adventure–we should be at least be sought a customary word when women shop for lingerie, we should be allowed to enter the shop and allowed to have a peek. In fact, most of the lingerie shops here in India are attended by men, would you believe it? If that happens, I would set myself up with a six blade knife (for stress testing of the bras in the stores)—I would feel victorious, like a king in women’s world? I would conquer the satiny bras, the lacy bras, as wells as the lightly lined, and I would get lost in the wilderness of the bras with 36 (and a fourth way through the alphabets, repeated) written all over my face.

I usually buy when I don’t intend to buy, it doesn’t mean I buy food when I am not hungry, or when I think I will not be hungry for the next one month, or say I don’t shop for condoms when I know that I am not going to be laid for the next month (but how can one know about that? Women might be shopping out there!). Shopping is something I don’t want to get good at, but a percent of a life is still, very much, given. The other day, the screen on the wall behind the billing counter had animals running around in the discovery channel. I suddenly wished it was night, so that I could make a wish, wish to be animal in this one sense, the sense of need to lack that feeling, the feeling to….

I have learnt one thing in a short life span so far: I can have differences when it comes to women: I can disagree about the existence of god, I might even talk them into not having kids for five years after marriage (again, really, I am optimistic that some one will marry me, ok, I admit, chances of that happening are really thin), I might even trick them into believing in a erogenous zone that doesn’t exist, but I have learned never ever to argue about one thing, yeah, you got it.

——

Notes:

Although for the simplicity of the post I have retained the tone as if only women love shopping, I know men (who according to me are becoming more and more feminine (at least back here)) who love to shop to these days (yeah, kind of insulting)

Also, I re-read the post, and the way it started (with etymology and stuff), it promised to present the truth, the real existence of life beyond everything, the truth that we all long to know (something beyond evolution), but I am sorry that I couldn’t deliver.

Yeah, there are other kinds of shopping, but clothes are the only thing I could deal with here.

The chocolate levels in my body are soaring right now, enough to make somebody a chocolate undead revenant if I was a Vampire. I smiled to everybody as usual at work and even got chocolates for everybody around me (I think I did it so that nobody touches mine). I was my usual social self; chirrupy on the face, silent while working and full of thoughts as I always am. I knew what was going in the background, something was terribly upsetting me, I lied that it was the stomach, as if to kill the present and postpone the problem to the next, but I failed. Even I, could feel my empty smiles which were coming to an abrupt end—almost without a warning which would make me look like a mad man in front of the people around me. I needed to talk, talk about it with somebody, not speak, but I wanted to hear somebody saying what I was feeling, yes, without me saying it!!— Person-from-a-developed-country dream, I know. But I felt lonelier by the minute as I was surrounded by more and more people. “Lets go to dinner”, but I instead helped myself to more chocolate, the shopkeeper had already seen me twice buying loads of chocolates, and he grinned at me wanting to say something, but he instead resisted like a good businessman. This was more difficult for me because I am not the old me anymore in some ways. An older me would have been sitting in the bar, or would have indulged in something that would have totally taken my mind of what I had to instead experience in my not so excited senses. My colleague was bothered since two hours, “is it about a woman?” I asked him. “Yes”, startled, was his reply. “Is she asking for money?” I asked again. He looked around as if he was trying to find some familiar person in the crowd who had just exposed his life story to me. “Don’t be surprised”, I said.  Most men usually have two problems– Money and Women, you combine both, and it was just as simple as that. So, again, I went in front of my computer and started writing about “Medical records software”, did the doctors have all the records available with them? May be the tests would have been wrong, weren’t they? Can EMR save lives? I thought about writing something on this topic, but it came back as an absurd idea to me.

I reached back home, while washing my hands, the extra hand-wash liquid created lot of foam that took 10 minutes of clearing off. I tried to smoke but my body repelled, I tried to watch TV but couldn’t make myself sit through more than 5 minutes, I finally decided to eat more and watch a movie, but I was no good at pursuing that activity too. I went to the balcony and thought about it again, ‘the disease debilitates the body progressively, legs, arms, muscles, joints, tongue, in any order that it likes to play the game and eat away an entire full blooded human body’. My friend retained extraordinary amount of poise while telling that to us—“I still would like to live, even if it is only the mind that I would be left with, my ability to reason would still won’t be hampered”—the bright spots in all that was happening in his life, and he could muster up courage to see them!! The chugging sound of the train from the near by railway line got louder and then receded, but I could hear it go away, just like my friend is going to see his life move away further and further, day by day.

I sat down and typed ‘Google’ and I already started feeling more social. The friend I am talking about is one of the folks I have met on the web, and the news came to me two days ago. I created more company for myself by pouring myself a glass of water kept next to me. Unforced socializing, I thought to myself. The guy was not upbeat, but his mannerisms were marked by a blithe unconcern, or may be that is the way he wanted to project himself to the outside world. Apart from other life, this is the only place where I and people like him come together and we feel a sense of connectedness, but I couldn’t imagine him not being able to move the mouse or not being able to type on the keyboard after few months. In my own optimized world there are options of exchanging life-years with each other, if I had been living in my world, I would have given him some of mine, but I can’t do that here. In these terrible moments of sanity, I wish I could recalibrate my sense of scale of the problems as they are and the way I think them to be, but I know, first it will be consumed by what surrounds me, the earth and its gravity that always bring me down.

The evil inside my brain woke up—“So what are you going to, Ha? Save the world, from poverty? From nuclear wars? Eventual supernova explosion? Ha ha, you can’t do anything”. I couldn’t get furious, the evil was right, he really was. Will I be able to speak to my will and tell myself to live if something like that happens to me? The best thing I would think to do is getting myself mummified so that I can return to this world and continue my life again when there are “better” cures for everything, yes, everything. But really, how would it be to use only mind, and not having the strength to even inflate you lungs!! “How does it feel? I’ll give you a pass, why don’t you go Carmo Convent and speak to someone there” the evil snapped again.

I don’t know why I was sad. Time and again I think it is the fear of death, fear of experiencing such a condition, fear of seeing such a promising life ended by natural sequence of events in this huge galaxy, that is how I should approach it, my mind tried to reason with me all along. The juxtaposition of feelings with the contrasting feelings that were striking me from outside created an unforeseen sea of sorrow around me. I feel empty many times, more than I should most of the times, but the emptiness just broke through my vexed mind as if trying to stir it just a little bit, just trying to make me forget about what I was (am) experiencing. An air of unexplained-feeling ripped across me and teleported in the form of stark darkness that I was staring at. I didn’t have enough rationality left inside me to decide if I was running through these emotions because of what I felt for my friend or for myself, “it’s all about self” — JD Krishnamurthy inside my mind snapped. I had never felt so weak for few months until that time, yes, and my eyes were fucking wet yesterday night. I looked outside and wished it had been raining, so that I can put in on the weather this time, but it wasn’t to be so, the clouds had already done there share of crying in the past week—a streak of bland white smoke in sky told me that. I wish I could do something, anything. I wanted to believe someone and something, believe that someone could do some magic, I have already given up on God—“I am sure there are angles up above, she would come, and I will even sleep with roses in my hand”, but I know I was dreaming with a broken heart.

I just can’t go on…

Prior to this life I used to live somewhere in Netherlands, don’t remember it not because of bad memory, but because nomenclature isn’t primeval, it is only now that Google Maps exists to quickly disillusion us on Washington and Washington DC. Back in those times, I used to breath light, people used to believe that light is essential for a living—not only believing in knowing-sense of today’s life, but we used to believe that life is not possible without light. So thousands of people born in the daylight were exposed to extreme lighting (fire basically) in the night. The carbon formed due to the fire, in turn, killed many people. Lot of people actually dared to step outside in the night, other ones thought that some power out there was calling them and that those people were fodder for the “powers” in the jungle. After sometime, people started sacrificing few for the powers. I didn’t believe that that is what was happening—it was the only sensible thing that I was exposed to. When I think back now, I think most of the people who dared to go outside and other people who were sacrificed, probably got lost in the thick forest, and some might just have served food to the predators. The faintest memory tells me that that is how I got disconnected from my tribe and got transported into another one.

I felt different, every time I used to get away few hundred miles, to another place, eating anything that looked good on the trees. To my surprise, I always found people operating in societies. Learning one, giving up another and learning one again, quietly, I used to absorb everything that seemed to have been thrown at me, rather than me choosing anything. I did not even know that we can “choose”. Under-development of brain? Nah, Hippy possibly? Or a self less vagabond perhaps? Not sure about selflessness either, but I remember that the only time I and people around me were bothered was when there used to be a change in paradigm related to things that we had to fear. First it was the sunrays, it became rain after sometime, then the snow, lightning, and all other things, which we now know from science as natural phenomena’s. In that life, in Netherlands, it wasn’t easy, to understand whether life was doing something to us or we were adding something to life.

It is far more difficult, to adjust, when you wake up from a dream, finding yourself in war, with a gun in your hand and dust in your mouth. It happens suddenly, like it happened to my friend (who also remembers everything, unlike others) who was fishing with his dad, somewhere in a lake in Alaska, the next moment he realized that he was facing Pakistani soldiers, the realization and the connectedness was sudden, a snapshot really, that happens when some prehistoric chicken eggs hatch into ducks. A constant, but random alternation between consternation and reality, switching so fast in front of the eyes, that me and my friend think about switching roles, just to see if we can fool reality, or illusion perhaps, something, perhaps, that we do not know about, really, no?

In every life, sadly, we were told that we are going to move to another life just when we thought we had it all figured out. In one of them, I had just invented a potion that would allow me to live forever. I don’t remember when that was, somewhere in Nicaragua, I was 24 then, I am 24 here in this life too, when I was about to drink that untested potion, when a snake bit me and I realized what happened after 20 years in Netherlands. The tune-distorters don’t come into play that quickly, they come to being, when hopeful become hopeless: when rules become laws: when existence gives away to survival, when, let me tell you—“I am the only person who was affected by Korean War” becomes true.

Right now, in this life, nobody except me empathizes with me. Nobody knows how much I have experienced, people are hinged on a small single lifetime—the now. Nobody thinks I can remember what I remember, just because they can’t, I am not allowed to? There was a friend who told me that he had got orders to shift to another life, just the memory is what remains, but I didn’t believe him. I had explained him what I felt, but he had never approved of what I said, now, I felt that he thought that I was making fun of him. But after some days, he started crying that nobody including I, who he thought would understand him, didn’t. It is funny, it is circular, we feel exactly what others feel, but still don’t think that we understand each other, as if we all have been through different lives, and not a single one—that we are going through now, funny.

But the recurrent images make more sense in this life, as we know from everybody who we see around us—“It’s evolution, what is there to know about it? That’s life my friend, it works in mysterious ways. It can suck you one moment, allow you to suck sometimes, and allow you to feel as if you are controlling the entire sucking process”. I suddenly woke up into a technological world from an ancient one. I have been lucky that I have lived the industrial revolution started by the Brits, and I have seen a part of Silicon Valley revolution, so being thrown in front of Google browser wasn’t that difficult for me. Back in Bolshoy Lyakhovsky, we foraged into so many places for food, but we have evolved I say to myself now, now, whenever I want to eat, I first search for the items on the Internet—which makes me believe that people from different worlds do similar things differently. Comparing things in different worlds, strange–that I see that I can do the same in this life alone, without needing other lives for doing so—there just too many places here, where I do the same.

Greedy as we are wired to behave, we would have wanted the best things from all the lives, overcoming the shortcomings from each of them. If we had given been chart explaining the list of lives that we will be living, and then the project would have been complete by now. If it happens now, may be we can, then, exchange lives (on the list) with each other, suited to our needs, because we want the best from all the worlds. Say if you are jazz drumbeater, then you will want to live a life from the early 50s and 60s; so, you would want to exchange that with somebody who wants a life from 2269–where people no longer wear clothes—because somebody always thinks about living such a life where electrical generators do not exist, because all the electricity is produced from burning everything that is possible—so the explanation for not wearing clothes, you see? Again, we cannot just throw it on evolution, can we? Or can we? May be evolution is leaking into our nature, like excess water from a badly done roof, but we adjust, we put a cloth directly under the affected roof, and use extract the water from the cloth for feeding the plants, it all seems, well, very, very purposeful.

In a strange turnaround of events, it happens that I got a mail from Alpha yesterday, asking for change recommendation in the existing system of letting-humans-live. I recommended him the concept of time-travel– lot of times, I feel like going back to that life in Netherlands. “But you always wanted to overcome the constraints, live freely, more so at least, isn’t it?” asked Alpha. I am not cocksure, but I didn’t know that reincarnation will come with its own cactus, its own thorns, and its own fucking what you like to call– “the evolution”. I had wished for a stinger, without the poison, without the sack to store that, without the teeth, but look what you and I have got.

Before this life, I don’t remember having the power to comprehend what I can do now. My emotions, my feelings never went under the scanner of intelligence, or so do I assume at least. If experience is the only incentive I get, I would instead like to have an AI to manage these reincarnations. May be, then, I can forget multiple lives that I have to lead and think about a single life and single death. What do we do then? Still go back to Netherlands? A pervert like me surely will—there is clear evidence that we averaged more than 20 minutes a day of sex back then as compared to less than a minute a day in this life. Or would you still like to remain here like a rootless tree tied to a memory?

This life has given me lot, without asking most of the times–that is how it works in this life—as I said it’s about evolution. But I am not getting the best, which is what I am arm-pitting about. There is no cease, no matter how many lives we live, we always will have qualms about living one than another and rightly so, what’s the point otherwise? Most of it, it seems like isn’t even what I intended for, neither do I know if that is what people are also looking for, but from a distance, I always look back, thinking about all the lives that I have lived so far, only to understand every single moment that this is what I have—I live here.

So if some Alpha gives you 80% chance of living the rest of your life in a state of your current happiness multiplied by 10^10. But, says there is a 20% chance that you will die right now if you happen to fail the 80% chance, which is decided by a totally fair random experiment.

Then about your preferences—what if I say there are 1000 more people that can be saved but you have to give up your resources? Or say, there is a perfectly happy set of people living on a planet, and somebody wants to add few more people (who will definitely decrease the happiness quotient of earth) to earth, would you agree?

Why is death sacred? It should be contemptible according to me. I don’t know why there are so many rituals attached to death. People will celebrate death. “You take me for granted, isn’t it? That is why I like to be sudden; I usually don’t tell you when I am going to happen to you. But that is not fair, you should. Why not, you never give me any value, you loathe me in fact”.

In a surreptitious world from where deaths on earth are evaluated, Death King has forces spread across all over the world– the health department, the murder department, the terrorism department, who are doing really well. There are crazy deaths departments, for e.g. when people just die while watching some good comedy, while having washing clothes, while pooping, while watching a high tense sport, etc.

A  General, biennial meeting concluded that health is a major cause of concern:

“President Obama is not doing well”.

“And what about this new health reform crap? We always banked on immigrants to make up for end of season profits”

“Yes, he aint of any help,

“Government backed insurance!! Can you believe it?

“These people have invented something called computers, and they keep staring at it all the time in the night, murder department is in really bad shape”

How many of the beautiful compositions of Bach and those ephemeral yet immortal paintings of Michael Angelo were bi-products; requiems and tears squirted randomly over canvass?

Walking into the graveyard at 2AM in the night, I don’t know if I should believe scientology or not, I can tell you one thing, at that particular moment, I wish that nobody would be alive and I could walk back home confirming that I have confirmed science for myself, and inside me, I know I have avoided what would have been a endless confrontation with myself. But I was out there to seek something new, wasn’t I?

There is an option here, we can reason death to leave us alone for sometime, and death-master sets no rules for why and when he can/will delay the death of a certain person.

Death: So why not today?

“I just don’t feel this is the right time”

Death: How about Monday after a nice weekend?

“Is Tuesday fine? I usually drink on Monday mornings”

Death: Sounds reasonable, granted!!

I wish death would haunt us every now and then, scare us and remind us that we are not going to live that long; are you still looking for reasons to live life while it is still yours?

Death believes that bodies should be burnt or buried so that insects can feed upon them, it somehow got people to perform such things, and it chose the actions in such a way that people wouldn’t have any problem in believing what they are choosing; well only 39 percent of people, still, believe that Charles Darwin is right, so it might not have been too difficult for death to even trade with people by offering them heaven slots.

Death comes by working on a priority based list, so we have to acquire skills which would take us outside the death circle, but what do you do about things like beauty? Or art, death has an affinity for such people, he is going to get you, sorry for the gender bias, women are too sweet to kill anyone, aren’t they?

I aint one of those who believe there is beauty in everything. What happens to the soul, like they all say, does it really live forever?– who is in charge of collecting those “things”? I remember people crying, willowing Grrr, sniff, argh, Chronicle, what is the news man, I can’t believe my eyes, I am finally going to get a promotion and the paper says that I am about to die next month, Damn I wish it had been delayed by a day.

I was staring at Gmail Inbox(1), looking for something, trying to CC a death letter to somebody, I wish Jim Morrison had done that, I don’t believe in the letter that they are circulating. Deliver earth’s angels to heaven? Not a good acronym sorry, I know you hate them, but you have failed the “death-in-your-bed” test.

Why not? What is good about life anyway, you seem to be waiting for me to happen?

Sometimes I am in a mood to just climb down the stairs; I wish the steps don’t last forever for me to step down. I kind of feel sad that they are getting over; I feel I am approaching the end. So, what gives?

Death, if it hadn’t been such a simple process—simple? Had there been some heavy drama attached to the process, epilogue of the drama, which takes a new turn every living moment, just to signal the end of what is really neither a drama which was neither scripted nor a chance— what would have happened then? Just knowing the end, does it make death any better? Would I be fascinated by the sight of it, what does it look like? Really a person, a higher commission that I was referring to or something that itself has experienced death and is now called soulless soul? That is exactly what Alpha is asking you, what are you going to choose my child? Too many questions left unanswered, so do you want some more time? Or would you still pursue life imagining it to be a platform for showing (death, when it arrives) the creative endeavors of life? Would our garden variety fears give way to enthusiastic, rational, lowbrow, voices of your Snake brain? Death seems to be a design redundancy, a circular discussion, something that the creators (of and not of Darwin) decided to let it hang out with life. Like we expect things from life, why don’t we expect at least few things from death—oh, yes, I forgot, we all want a lame, as lame as it can get, a shameful and painless one, an event, which should not deserve anything for what it has waited for all this life?

I still remember you death, even though I never pondered you over like the way I have should. When I had seen you that day, when you came to me, out there, smiling over the porch swing, I didn’t feel like you are out there to take me with you, I still remember those last moments of life—ecstasy—because I knew that they were the last, the last moments of cold mist in a long night, the moments that would just become water over a flower, a flower, which doesn’t need much water because it has got spines.

And I whiffed passed another speed breaker; I swayed like a pro-biker, sneaking at my death bed all the time, feeling really sleepy, just waiting to bike through the extra mile. And so I saw it—“Why do you take so much time? It was just around the corner, it is round the corner for every one of you, I don’t understand why you make it so much hard when it is so simple. All you had to do was ride in the middle of the road, but all you damn you all, you always want to keep left or right”. I am not dreaming, not dreaming inside a dream, not dreaming inside a dream inside a dream, not even dreaming inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream—No really, I really must make this clear, I am not dreaming inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream.

Although most of us like to dwell in the past and the future, I guess nobody would appreciate a definitive window for death; we don’t like full stops.

So, the Alpha asks again—“What about 99 % chance of living as…..and in turn just 1% chance of death?” What about your preferences? Would you accommodate more?

Death in a way is a kind entity. Even though we don’t stop by at its place, it does that for us. Even though I am not alive now, death still has allowed me to write this draft and allowed me to use the special Wi-fi built for communicating from here to earth. Even though people reading this will feel I am alive, but I am not, they just don’t know that that death is kind, just enough. I had put-pocketed a note into a friend, I told him not to disclose my non-existence to anyone. So he agreed, death worked out a deal, my friend is continuing my life, taking care of life for me.

So the Alpha follows me here—“would you trade life for death? 99.9% chance that you will remain a soul, just 1% chance that you will become soul-less again”

I asked him, “is there any other death waiting for me?”

Yesterday evening, it was a regular morning– I mean evening was evening, but I am just clarifying that it was a fine and regular morning and a very good night before that. It is not really end of the universe kind of breaking news, I know, but I just told you so, so what? Ok, I’ll try again—It was a really good night before the morning after which was regular, kind of morning, when, I looked at the sun, and thought this is not the last time sun is going to shine above me, and yesterday evening, I was all washed-up, had half a glass of wine that was gifted to be by my sister a week back. I was all ready to go to my weekend salsa lessons. My partner there is a 10th grade girl. We try to play caroms without touching the board, we do touch “the board”—when we are dancing, because there won’t be any game otherwise, but other than that, we realize that I am 24 and she is 14. So we did an odd-meter salsa move on a 4-4 Macarena song. I know that we are at least 10000 life years away from each other inside the mind (not a good thing to say I know), so we have no problem in staving off the odd occasion of sexual tension that we feel between us. Well I don’t blame her age for the “gap”, the 25 and 24 year olds that I have been with haven’t often given me any signs that I am getting any younger. At the end of all of it, I get the same answer—“I don’t think I know you”.

After the class, I casually checked out her bag which she was carrying (yes I am a maniac who likes to peek and poke into everything, stay away from me). It had a book, I opened it, and in front of me were five questions, which is why I am writing this today, not really, I keep raising these things in mind, but now I had to write about it because I opened a 10th grade textbook, which asked the following questions in “Hindi”:

–How would be a human life without death?
–Is death necessary for a human, or not?
–what would be the basic human values in a life without death?

So the basic question that almost got me speechless outside and tumultuous inside was:
“What would happen if humans don’t die?” “What is the gift that we are going to defy?” (A single question)

At first, I thought, how come such questions are asked of 10th grade kids? Then I referred to the poem that was written on top of the questions, I found out that the most of the questions could be answered by just looking up the poem. I am not going to discuss the existential risks that might accouter the terms immortality or long-life—The answer in the book was “If humans won’t die, then humans all around the world will cry”.

If you ask me the meaning of chabietzer, in such a world, I would say that it is the name of another planet I had been to last month. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to go there right now at 11.15 at night when I am already quite settled in the bed, enjoying the food and daily dose of comedy. The technical civilization that I am part of right now is just a mere coincidence, and that I am writing this and you are reading this is happening in spite of infinitesimal chance calculated by a thing called Mathematics invented on this planet.

Just to put into perspective—what are we trying to accomplish right now? And what would this planet try to accomplish if the creatures inside it would live forever? Would the people from chabietze still send some better advertisements signals to us? I doubt they still would, in the similar way people here would talk and “feel” about the situation of poor but won’t do anything to de-poor them (put that on my poor English please).

If God is still watching, scratching his nose, flailing his beard, and getting ready to get into bed with next 5 Victoria secret angels in his part of the universe called heaven, he would just squint at one of the screens broadcasting events on earth and say—“It still ain’t that bad, is it honey? Come here”.

“And what is that you are going to do, you dickhead? (I ask myself) Always keep pussy-mouthing about wanting to live for 500 years!

Why are you mad at me? “I ain’t, just the fucking way I express”

Oh, it’s fine then

“Don’t you think you will be fed up with happiness and tired of sadness after 60 odd years?” Yeah, I guess, but that is not the point

“Then what is it?” I am going to survive the test of evolution, I’m going to test the machine called as “can make you god, might kill you”. I will be one of the most adaptable creatures in the history of civilizations that have and will exist in this galaxy.

“Hmm…Not for nothing, sounds good”.

Yes, then in a fit of inexplicable phantasm, I will use my machine and blow away the solar system.

“I thought you would do better”

Don’t worry; we will have a super computer which can produce a copy of everything that has lived so far. That machine will be found by some ape-like creatures in some damn system, and so life will find its way—no fillips and caveats there please!

Back to the question, first of all, syntactically, gods will be offended if humans really discover ambrosia-like stuff, “that is why we are gods”—they would yell. Heavens will enter an abysmal recession and people there will start in-sourcing, but to no use. Hell would be overcrowded because people can’t live such long-lives without committing any sins. After a while, bored of watching phlegm coming out of each others noses, they would request Satan to go for a merger, as it can only be good for the milky-way economy. Of course, economists and freaks like me on the earth would have predicted this thing long time ago, but after all, god is god, and why would he listen to anybody, as I said elsewhere on the blog that evolution happens really, really slowly.

Scientific research will take new turn; researchers will now instead try to dig out medicines that give painless death. People, who were making a living by setting up social foundations against “euthanasia” and the like, would now be making money by switching their course work towards Anti-cryonics, of course, they will be spending most of their times in the jails. Jails, which will become more like shot-term marriage-experienced houses, will undergo a strategic change as a part of move ordered due to unreasonableness found in the studies about life imprisonment. In a way, people too would realize that crime ain’t of any rewarding benefit; crime-rate might go down to the fear of law-makers and law-protectors.

Because lot of us don’t mind anything “trying-once”, so we can be “Not a very good thing to say” in Broken arrow, “It was nice to win the match” in the world up 11003, “I am sorry but he is no more” in the local hospital, “you are just good for nothing, aren’t you?” in the office, and anything else one might possibly think of. All the so called CEO’s and leader’s of the world who have made millions (and name) by masking chance with hard work, will no longer do it, because nobody would care. These so called leaders would be shocked, because they will suddenly realize that they are not good for anything except bossing around, that too that they could boss around because people did not know what to do, and there was no time to disagree with the bosses. There will be days when we will walk into an office for interview and say “Can I take a vacation of 100 years once after every 200 years? Ok, that will be fine, will be the answer coming from behind the desk.

Divorce rates would be sky-high, everybody would give marriage a shot instead of dating first and working towards marriage. Marriages would see unprecedented levels of understanding. There won’t be any “I will spend rest of my life with you” vows. It will be understood between the husband and wife that there are bound to be differences over such a long period of time. So let’s be together while we can indifferently bear our differences. So I now understand a bit about how Hindu god Krishna had had a million wives.

So to cut the long story short, there are enormous possibilities. It is ridiculous to say the least, that we grope for the right kind of combination for about 50 years (depends actually), and when we are at our wisest possible self, we have to die. What do I know, I might not become the next whatever, but I certainly would not want to die after just experiencing few love affairs, a bit of rat-racing, and lot of doing-things-which-do-not-make-sense.

But how we control population you ask—simple- A simple FIFO system will take care of itself; world population will be kept in check with a count. As soon as the population level exceeds a certain limit of growth rate, the older ones will be relieved of their services to mankind.

Unless we are invaded by aliens, we will run out of ideas to do anything in a different way. Everything from air-football, alien-animal-human-combination movies, burning self-help books and laughing in front of the burning pyres, to going back in time and behaving like chimps—everything that we can possibly think of will exhaust sometime. We will grovel in the past for few thousand years and then I’ll destroy the solar system?.

Today, it is Sunday, when I had picked up that book yesterday; I thought whether I would remember thinking about immortality after few earth years. Because then, there would be nothing called as immortality. Not only will we act stranger to lots of people we know and we will know, but if we forget to watch ourselves in the mirror everyday, we might freak out if we decide to do otherwise after a gap of few hundred years. I empathize with poet who had written the prose that was attached to the questions in the book, but I think even he knows that poems are emotional states, 90 percent of the times rhyming is on top of the agenda, than making sense, of course because it rhymes, so it does make sense.

So I danced to one my favorite Hindi tracks Ai Zindagi gale laga le – meaning “Hey life embrace me”. I usually dance in the front of the mirror when I want to make sure that I look weird, practice it really. I still couldn’t expunge those lines that I had read from the book, from my damn brain, and then this song talking about life, everything just seemed intergalactic for a moment. It felt like I had been living this life for few hundred years, and this is 12000th year of my life, in that context, but then again when I stopped dancing, I was back to normal, and couldn’t help penning down this thing.

May be we have got it wrong, I feel, may be if we had devised a system where everyday was called a year; may be, we are already living a long life, may be we don’t value every waking hour and every waking second, may be we live in the future, in the past, in everything else except the present, which seems to be passing like a bus that has no number and never seems to be on time, never mind, time will see another day.

I don’t know if such a thing (living forever) would be a mistake or not, but even if it is a mistake, I would rather like people to err on life’s side.

I have been dreaming a lot lately, I mean really dreaming. Now I don’t keep a pen a notebook ready besides my bed to record what I dreamt last, but I do try to remember hard about the dream after I wake up. Being stung by rationality bee, trying to wake up in to a reason is not a bad dream at all, but sometimes, the dreams are really, really irrational.

Lots of the dreams are to do with what we experience during the previous day, previous days, and some previous events, we all know that from various studies and experiences. And then there are really crazy dreams like making out with wildebeest, dreaming inside a dream, being stuck in a new planet, so on…I had

Ok, don’t believe it, but I am writing this inside a dream. I have got up, I don’t know that I am dreaming (because you don’t realize till you get up), but I know that this is not written in the real, because I am going find out the same (that this is written in a dream) first thing when I wake up; self-delusion of a dog who suddenly has to stop screwing right away, because he was doing it in the middle of the road (of course, I think dogs are really happy creatures).

… Still dreaming

“This is outright lie, how can you write something inside a dream, still remember that you are dreaming, and then also remember the dream inside a dream that you dreamt?”

So I decided to create a dreaming-or-not-reasoning test for myself, still inside the dream.

“How do you operate a scissor with one handle broken?” I would hold it with one hand

“Are you into creative writing?” “No I just say that because saying “I write” is to seek more explanations

“Do you save a cigarette for the morning-pooping?” I save two

“What is tequila made of?” extracted from skin of an animal from Africa

“North Indian or south Indian?” I don’t like spicy food.

“Lying to yourself or lying to others?” I get a kick from both

“Status or life” it doesn’t matter.

So it turns out that I passed the exam created by me inside the dream inside a dream.

I was looking for really irrational answers, and I got them, irrationality won and by a large margin. So is choosing irrationality for winning a kind of rational decision-making?

Not really, killing fear of a snake might cancel out overestimation of one’s dodging abilities, insensible decision making will win you battles where you got to be insensible, yes, nowhere else.

I thought to myself, I thought this is going to be the end of the dream, I am going to wake up, and…you still don’t believe that I am writing this inside the dream, do you? Or now you think I am high? Common man it is 6 in the morning, and it is the highest REM hour, and I know that I am inside a dream, how can I be inebriated inside a dream?

So I am out of the first second one now, I quickly tested myself by asking “Krittika or Vartika?” “I love you Avantika”. I was taken aback, I don’t even know Avantika, but yes, I got the answer, I was out of the second dream, I had already found lots of reasons for that.

“So what is your point dude?” –I think insensibility has nothing to do with being sensible.

At this point I have convinced myself in the dream that I am dreaming as I write this. I don’t remember much of reality as I write this, because the world out here is very different, I mean this instance is really different, there is nothing here to feel, there is a dark room, a computer and a chair in front on which I am sitting. I don’t even have memory, experiences, and influences, just free for nothing so to say. My memory is so fleeting that I cannot remember the next thought when it comes and previous thoughts are deleted as soon as I think them. So if you feel that whatever I am typing is disconnected, –It’s ok, because it has to be so in this state of mine.

Right now if a female genie comes in front of me and offers unlimited grants (I know what you’re thinking), I don’t know what I’ll ask from her. I can remember glimpses of reality, which is how I know that this is inside the reality, but not reality, or is it? I thought to myself in the dream. May be I have summoned up this computer and table in the dream and asked the dream not to disturb me. May be, after all this is the world that I always used to dream about in “reality”. Do you find these thoughts to be counterfactual? Even I had an inner voice saying, “You need to define the boundaries between reality and dream.” In an attempt to find do so, I tied an electromagnetic arm-band around my hand, I thought there should be some difference in the readings of the meters when I am switching between the states, but there were no reading-differences. A bit of change in grammar, “I can’t see any differences right now”. No, this isn’t a case of self-delusion either, I need more references to evaluate the differences, but right now I am in a perfect world, and here there aren’t any references. So I thought I’d summon up someone close I know –my sister, I miss her here. In a strange realization of events, I found out that I couldn’t summon her here; anybody who can make me understand the difference between the boundaries of the world would not be allowed here. That has compounded my troubles, and in a way also eased my quest to find the truth, because I don’t have to feel obliged, even under the influence of some external source, I can just watch the difference, and that is enough right now—I can just assume this is real, because this is all I have.

Worst part is that I know that I am going to come out of this state, even though I cannot make sense right now, and know the difference between the states, I know that this world is going to cough me away reacting to a sudden absorption of smoke into its lungs.

There are times when I don’t like to defend myself and there are times I defend myself passively. Someone would say I am desperate in my search for truth, by whatever means and reasons I would show it to be “truth”. In contrast, I think this dream was always waiting there to be dreamt, as if it knew, that I would need it at some point of time in life, this was how I discovered the difference, between reality and real and unreal (the dream).

I started out to seek something exactly opposite, I sought the perfect and I found the real one, the paradoxical result, now, as I am smoking the saved cigarette, I realize that I cannot inhabit that dream any longer, it is not as much a disappointment as it is a rendezvous with the inner most voices, that keep ringing in my head when I go to sleep day in and day out