Me competing with myself:

A little while ago I was speaking to my sister (and I am usually fuck honest with her, and I can be weird in front of her without thinking about what am I doing), and she knows where I find my humor in life. I was laughing watching myself laughing in the mirror and I had told her it would be really funny if I die laughing, I slobbered even more after that, my blood pressure had dropped so low that I might have actually died (you find the funny, huh!!). Later as I was watching the news at 9, the reports of my death were grossly exaggerated, but I still had a good laugh at them too.

You go around walking down the road and start laughing, and then you have to can it, but you can’t, so you end up laughing more. You walk past the next lane, and you will see hoardings of “you don’t understand your woman anymore, enter here for speed dating tips”, as a man, you probably ignore that, and start walking further before your woman calls you and tells you that you really don’t understand her. You think twice about turning back, but then you laugh at yourself. Laughing at yourself, abbr. LAY, is probably rightly abbreviated, you just lay down and laugh at yourself, that is the only time people who think life is a female who won’t give you any—can see how we can sleep with ourselves; probably the definition of safest and tested sexual experience anyone can have.

Well if there weren’t any punctuation in the sentences, lots of people would have started writing insane books which would have given us a very distorted idea about what we’ve available (in choices). So I guess it is ok that we have drawn the line somewhere. It is interesting to know that witticism is lot of times confused with humor, and lots of people are moved by the former more than latter. Unless you’re thinking about making a career out of it, you would want to speak less to make people laugh. Speaking more can give away the “mystery” factor–which people would have laughed at anyway just to make you know that they understand you. Oh Yeah, welcome, humor works on basics, you have to spend it like you spend money, you know what happens otherwise. Either that or you have to be inherently flawed, and you were distilled improperly through the potion-of-god, which churns human beings with varied varieties of sense of humors—Stephen fry and Joseph Heller come to mind.

Fact is: humor is a psychological state when described as a subjective state or emotional folly where some affective empirical or logical properties of either the perceiver or the observer are ought or thought to be violated (oh fuck). So it isn’t simple to expect a life which throws a giggle-party every now and then. The comprehension difficulty and cognitive restructuring that has to take place (that really isn’t taking place here, so shut the fuck up). If you’re really fucked up, trying to create or even invent humor in your life, then you have to have a hyperactive brain, if you’re seeking an opposite who can make you laugh, trust me you’re going to run out of that “something ” and you’ll need humor gas supply very early. If you’re trying to be humorous, and you try hard, you’ll end up scribbling something that will amount to some un-asked-for lessons on humor like this one, and you will try to get away by throwing some humility like I did in the previous line (I think I should pursue self-deprecating humor seriously).

Humor stems from constancy; we are more likely to laugh at a painting where only the characters and things change, but the background remains the same. But then there are acquired tastes for humor and human states can stream different humors differently at different times. Do you think it is humorous that we are bored of constancy yet we strive for it? The kind of randomness, we can try to create, should attempt to go past mere family resemblances. It is amazing how we created boundaries around ourselves and then we created humor as source of something that can get us to sneak past those boundaries. Humor can be one of last things remaining where emotions speak more truth than any other times.

Life itself is incongruous with the occasions when we want to laugh.  Humor is foolish yet optimistic; thank god we evolved in a manner that we own this thing. If not for humor, we wouldn’t have been able to reconstruct situations to drive away our baseless fears. We always rise to reality, we always react—and humor is an emotional undertone that can always remind us that reality is still an illusion, in a way, actually disillusioning us and helping us to grieve past ourselves. So next time if you’re not sure, just turnaround again, don’t see the sign boards, just pick up the bricks and throw them at the hoardings, who knows you might just save a life, or see light perhaps.

I wish I could touch your hair, look into your eyes, hug you, embrace you, and hide you in my chest; this world doesn’t know that I wear you instead of my vest. I wish I could hear the sound of your voice, I wish I could hear your cold heart to lend you my tears. I know you live in a multicolored life, and Grammy awards don’t matter any more to you, but I wish I could know ‘what can I be to you?’ I’ll come away with you, no matter it’s sunrise or sunset—I just have faith, I have been told by Eva Cassidy, that all I need is just faith, and I will be one of the black lines in the your checkered dress that you look so beautiful in, in my dreams all these days. I feel overpowered by the thoughts of you, and I have given up writing this about two times because my hands feel disconnected from my brain.

Practically, I don’t even know if I will meet you in this life, but the moment my heart murmurs “Norah”, I drift into another aura, which cannot imagine how a feeling of love could be. Your shimmering voice makes me deaf, and my lurching soul zigzag’s ever so more. If there was anything in this world I could wish before the sixth beer, it would be a sixth sense—that can feel your reality with mine—that can combine my unreal-but-smug thoughts with yours that are so serene. Oh Norah, but I have to be practical, because you’re world starts where mine ends, because you breathe and you can take away mine, because you are gold and I am just a mere smear, because ‘because’ can’t be used many times to express reasons beyond our control, god knows—because even he can’t see my love.

What kind of real love is this where I can’t even see you but in my eyes, I can’t feel you if not for your voice? I wish this was not another fandom that sees the light in the sun because it cannot see the moon.

My imagery is molded into emotion with every passing second, but I control, because I cannot learn to control, and my situation is getting further from an eccentric disposition to near-suicidal despair, right now, betwixt between my meaningless existence and the need for your “speed”. Love is mysterious cruelty that most of the human beings have to experience; I want life to at least allow you to be cruel to me, cruel to the extent that my intense inwardness can engulf itself to the point of reproducing your love in every bone, and every drop of blood in my body.

The sun has seen another day today, but I am still waiting for the moon, because that is when I can hide my love for you in the dark, as some one said: to hope is to act, and to act is to hope. I cannot blame you, but I’m just expressing my last remains of truth left inside my mind. I am sorry if I am overboard; let me sink in again, for again, it will be the same, again…

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….

California west coast kind of makes me nostalgic (not retrofitting my friend), for the lack of all the quirky mathematics that usually accompanied whenever I have went out in search of peace—as it happened, Peace took a new meaning when the two naked women doing ballet inside my head jumped out of my head and fell in front of a beach that had no exclamations in its name. It was new flyer reading ‘Sex on the beach’, the one that wasn’t the cola we are usually served in the bars, neither was it related to weird animals rubbing away their friction-energy into the sand, it was really sex, as I used to label everything with when my vocabulary used to just feed on…(cut the shit man). It felt Rome, French and English all in one breath, the foul memories that tried to enter the present were rarefied by just the distant sounds of the waves, as if my thoughts somehow developed some kind of walls whiskered with the wind of the tall pine trees.

I was looking for freedom, and that is why I didn’t seem to care, I was running back, to that lost and buried feeling of sometime when I believe I wasn’t taking it to the limit, the limits that are defined and redefined these days. But beautiful places seem to center themselves as some peace award, with all those past moments suddenly clinging on like algae and weeds cling on the shores of the ocean. Ocean and Ocean waves are one thing that make me realize the greater truth that I lose among the smaller things in life, that greater doesn’t have to mean greater and smaller doesn’t have to be smaller just because they are words that mean something in any tone of human inventions.

Somewhere in Monterey, our abilities to think went left and right. We actually succumbed to the pressures of wine, we crumbled, and we gave it to the wine, but it wasn’t the wine. Just a reminder of the good feminine nature of wine—that it does everything {that a woman does in a relationship – a woman in a relationship does in a relationship}(not sure I used the right set of braackets). They are actually the signs of times, which can happen to few concentrated molecules called humans are caught between the earth, wind, fire and water, it is ok, excuse me?—Please go and melt some ass please.

I wonder if traveling is one of those instincts that we are hardwired with, like we don’t have to learn to reproduce, it is something that humans have been doing since ages, that is how we discovered unknown lands, we seek, we are always searching for something, and our search makes us travel, it just makes sense like peeing—-just is so simple, we have to pee when the time comes. Even our genes from the ancestors have been traveling, inside me and you, we just don’t know that we are the same, and some of us are not moving enough to create space for others to move freely, I guess that I how it works, I am not here to butt the fuck really—to question existence really.

But it is good to search, I search more often that I should, I search when I don’t know what to do, and I search when I know what to find. If we find something that we were searching, we reset our options and fill more parameters to search. I guess to search itself is a satisfaction by itself; we do not necessarily have to stop traveling because we have found something, and it is the process more than the results may be that we should value more. We can’t be satisfied, which is beauty of the truth, we don’t need to question that, we shouldn’t stop just because we didn’t get a ticket on the suborbital space flight, our rollercoaster’s are rolled out in front of us, we just need to fasten our seat belts.

I have been a Virgin many times, and I have been stripped out of it many times, this is one of those times.

It happens sometimes, when peace gives way, and we are left speechless as we would feel if we are endowed with the pleasures of marrying a bi-sexual woman, it can get pretty unbelievable. I actually started writing this to give a sleazy account of what happened when I (and my friends) decided to go gay, but I have instead started shredding some inconsequential wisdom (if I will call it).

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 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.

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…

As if we are not sure about the right grammar, so we assume that other is wrong. How much can we agree? For e.g. most of the women have complex emotions, not that men don’t have any, but women have more so. Our walls are thick, some easy and some not easily penetrated. But then you take a chance, you feel you can talk to this guy, doesn’t it happen that we just feel right when talking to someone? But are you ready to take that chance? Do you make them feel home to a level that they are not hesitant to borrow some money from you? But the levels can vary, some people build walls depending on the person that they are confronting with—I agree and don’t agree. There is always something to eat in the kitchen if you search for it hard enough; you just have to want to pamper your taste bud, that’s it. “It is more than satisfying the hunger”, you say, I agree, but, “have you?” I ask.

I guess the job is made easier if you have got lot of history. You can just put some assorted stuff on the plate and ask people to taste it. If the assortment is repelling, he/she would simply walk away from you, for the larger good I would say. Or, I think the good old fashioned ways might be the right thing—just stick to the circle instead of letting it get circular. “So you are saying not to keep an open mind?”

I always keep saying it—life is good in its own ways—it is sometimes better to not to have a choice! I try to act sagacious at times, right now–don’t you think I am sounding like one? Just something on my plate, would you care to taste it?

This might be very clear if you have tried your hand at any art, be it music, writing, painting, anything else. These days even arts is commercialized, we learn the rules first and then play the game afterwards rather than the other way around. If you are a musician, you would know how much people are obsessed with scales, time signatures and phrasing, pivoting sticks on index and middle fingers and thumbs even before they start to play something significant. As if these sheets will spring up emotions; you can’t really work your way through rules, can you? Yes, you may succeed at living at a perfectly bland and blissful-in-its-own-way kind of life. Or am I just extrapolating without sufficient evidence?

But aren’t you just telling me to lick my…?

When we agree, we might be risking our freedom, especially if we are going to hang out with some person for long. It is a fashion these days to agree. If we look around, persons who live with simple instincts don’t agree, to refute is natural, we definitely are skeptical before doing anything. But those around us who try to be smart (and succeed sometimes) are the ones who would show their ambiguity even when the situation doesn’t call for it. The Rajasthani Jalebi vendor near my house was furious the other day and had a debate with me when I told him I have been to Rajasthan long time back, and that I have had wonderful Jalebi’s there. He said he was using the exact same recipe here, “do you want Rajasthani weather here?” he asked me. After an extensive analysis, generally, if two people are at “similar” wavelengths, then chances are that the persons never really disagreed much, but we really won’t get time to call a blood spatter analyst every time you see a red spot in your wash basin, would you?

Can we simply say –Yes, I agree, Wikipedia is a stupid fuck! Lots of gurus around the web don’t like it. And we start building and building on top of that, one fine day, the same guy walks into your room and checks Wikipedia T-shirts lying on your bed.

Diplomatic, the buck stops there, we don’t want to lose, and lots of us want to finish their journey by keeping their feet on two boats at the same time. I doubt why people blame politicians, being politic is a skill acquired without spending energy these days. I have already talked about it, but then there are intuitive disagreements, and others are just plain straight. Intuitive ones are difficult to get around, we can’t possibly scratch somebody’s neck and know the degree of itching or the number of days he/she hasn’t washed himself/herself.  The plain straights ones also can get tricky sometimes, like I contracting Swine-flu have as much chance as Jennifer Lopez coming up with something better than “If you had my love”. The latter one is based on more evidence, I would say, but you would gather all the possible evidence and say that “you see? I have a theory; I have formulated results based on this and that”. But I say again, right and wrong has nothing to do with perspectives, ‘right’ is subjective to the results you want to achieve, but that has nothing to do with perspectives, isn’t it? Right still remains right for achieving particular result, right doesn’t become wrong, we cannot really solve the ‘wrongs’ by being at the same level of wrongness, can we?

My friend tells me I can earn money by blogging intelligently, what should I say to him? (Hell I am just over reacting I know)

Food for thought

Will you just stop being friends with somebody just because you vehemently disagree with him/her?

Sometimes we make a mistake by putting thoughts into others head. We put the thought we are experimenting with, the person too naïve to understand that, doesn’t give us a chance. You can’t reverse it, the person has taken the input, mixed it with his/her understanding of ‘how things work’ and you lose.

Experimenting is NOT allowed, from up here, the ground seems very far, I wish I could spot that left turn the SUV had taken, but it is just too hazy right now. But I have come across few who are extremely skeptical of everything. They simply can’t agree with anything they come across in life. Our group in college had a friend called Sudan. He simply won’t agree with anything that anybody has to say, exceptions were there, but what equations governed his decision making theory of ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ is not known to anybody. “Yeh toh kuch bhi Nahi hai” meaning “this is nothing”, and would pull out few rabbits out of his hat, mind you, he was the best programmer college has ever seen, and is a scientist in Adobe right now.  I was about to give another example, you know man I am talking about you, do you mind?

To teach is in our genes

Then why are we running away from learning? Are we spending way too much on self defense? We are the president and the finance minister here, we can take the call all by ourselves. Do our political systems need some revamping? May be more concentration on agriculture? More greenery please? Fresh air please? We understand that it is still, perhaps understandably, people imposing their experiences over us? We communicate for all kinds of reasons, we don’t have to know the story of everyone out there, but are we gathering just enough? Are you finding enough of them to find the right one to which you want to add more to? World would have died out long ago, if we didn’t like to teach, always wanting to teach other things we think are better, there isn’t anything wrong with it. Speech is only one of the instincts that have been genetically passed on to us, and for a good reason. If there is so much space for non-sensical speech, then why not for sensible ones? Are we afraid that we might teach something to somebody that we didn’t intend to? Competition, is that about it? You wanna feel safe, is that about it? I would have felt safe if alongside my new underwear, the piles of millions of other underwear’s and women’s pantyhose’s with the strange photo on the cover I would have been able to see my mother smiling at me with her thumb up.

There are instances when we tell ourselves that ‘detachment is the key’, but then, there are also moments when we crave for just those minutes of unbroken attention from someone. I still feel detachment is the key, but that should be an after-result, instead of a beginning. Our proximity is the key to finding a chance to expose ourselves to new fields of understanding, of ourselves and who we are. Don’t we all want to experience the impalpable, the sense of emotion to express and connect even though our minds speak different languages? Won’t you break those chains stifling you and let out the stale air inside you? Or would you still pretend, even after you have seen someone naked? I know it can make us cry and make our eyes unblinkable, but will you still raise your eyes and stare past the tears? For once, would you like to know that grass is so much greener on the other side?

I have been shifting between kitchen and my room while writing this, so what I have written so far might not make sense. I miss the Egg-Dosa (also the Chicken-Dosa, but I don’t eat meat now) from Bangalore, so I decided to give it a try since it is Sunday.

Do you see the relation?

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.

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?”