A mind that invaginates at the thought of thought

I have a pen and it has a mind of its own. It spends sleepless nights under moonlit skies wondering what it can generate. It thinks of writing a ballad, a sonnet, a novella or even a long email to someone on the other side of the world. But then it just settles for a blog post. It wants to paint another Mona Lisa but then settles just for making yet another cheap replica. I don't know why it does that. It is very annoying at times to sit with it and not get any results for very long. Why I really enjoy its company though is because when I confess to it with all my sins and all my actions, it jots down a beautiful letter filled with my idiosyncrasies and I take pleasure in reading that letter. I look at my own self with a sense of misplaced satisfaction in that letter. I like my pen that has a mind of its own. Because it takes me through hard times. It takes my despair and converts it into a comic to please me out of it. So what if it paints a cheap replica of Mona Lisa with its words? Not everyone is Davinci.

But there are times when I want my pen to do more than that. I want it to go beyond its limits. I want it to write stuff I haven't seen with my own eyes. I want it to compose a story that I haven't ever been a part of. Can it do so? I have my hopes pinned to it very badly. What do you think? Can it?

To tread the lands of unknown souls is very new to my pen. How do I ask it to go there when I myself haven't been there? Is it possible to create worlds unknown to me when I myself am incapable of doing so with the power of my imagination?

When you look into the history of literature of this world, you will find many stories and legends filled with the ideas of alternative versions of our actual human history that would shock Darwin out of his wits (assuming that all he ever knew was that the earth was created in 6 days and Adam and Eve just materialized into the garden of Eden). Right from the great Greek mythologies to present day series of Harry Potter.


"If you peep into it" my pen says, "you will see that all the alternatve versions of this world contain a common theme."

"What is it?", I ask.

"There is good which is often represented by strong characters like Gandalf the great, Albus Dumbledore always ready to sacrifice their lives for the benefit of a 'greater good' and also are good at taking others lives but know when/why to take them. Then there is evil , which also, has really strong character(s) representing it like Sauron and Voldemort. In the end, the good reigns over the evil and the story/legend/mythology ends."

I think about it and my pen seems right. Good, evil, love and triumph. It is easy to make a story with this formula. Just put new characters in the right spots and map out a plot, add some spicy details and that's it. You have a story. But not all stories pass off as great stories. It should come out at the right time in the right place. J.R.R.Tolkein's LOTR has a lot of history behind it. Wiki it out and you'll know that its occurrence was totally uncalled for but greatly welcomed. Imagine, when this world was passing through the worst phases ever, the II World War, Tolkein had come up with a fantasy like never before. I don't know if it gave hope to anyone. I personally think it shouldn't have given hope to anyone in particular. Why? Because there was no right or no wrong in that war. Japan, although looks like a skinny piece of land on the east, was actually raping the Chinese women by the dozens of hundres IN CHINA and killing its men and children. China never recuperated from these attacks and it eventually became on of the most uptight countries. Japan attacked America and poor America was devastated. It went over and nuked the shit out of the Japanese. The nuke attack was so bad that Japan still hasn't recovered from those attacks. Germany Blitzkrieg-ed the shit out of UK and UK broke Germany's spine later. Poland was attacked by Germany from one side and Russia from the other. America got annoyed by Russia and later started cold wars with it. Fucking Britain broke India and Pakistan up and there has never been even a moment of peace between them since then. So it is not the question of who won the war but who is good and who is evil. You can argue that America, Britain, France and China were just defending themselves. But every country had its own interests in this war. The world was in a huge confusion and even till today no average minded person knows which country is good and which is evil. Reality is so far from the fantasy worlds of great writers.

I hail their imagination, these writers'. The grey matter in their brain must be invaginating into itself all the time and expanding and making new space for more grey matter to form which later invaginates into itself and the process continues. I have hardest time figuring out the names half of my undergrad classmates. I supposedly refrigerated a box filled with turmeric powder and also left keys in there many times. Who am I kidding? I can't even write a good story about that time when Lapaki was picking his nose in front of the kids at Sphoorti and all the kids started imitating him.




My pen is not so talented itself. My pen even has a hard time getting its grammar correct half the fucking time and don't even get me started on the vocab. My pen is too raw for now to create great, captivating and wonderful new worlds that don't exist. My pen is too in-your-face and very frank. So frank, you would be afraid to ask its opinion if you knew it well.

But my pen thinks I am a writer. It urges me sometimes to write about freedom. Liberty as the west likes to call it. I just might write about freedom. Man understands the importance of freedom like no other creature in this world. Freedom is one thing even an infant bounded by his crib understands. I think it is easy to write about freedom and get away with it. I am not a guy who would take the road less traveled. Because the road that's less traveled these days is usually the road which use for nature calls. It would take great motivation for me to take a road like that and it has nothing to do with freedom.

See, I like my pen with a mind of its own for that. I love it for that. It makes me want to communicate so much more than my fancy iPhone or my landline at work. Pens are good. Pens are strong. Use them properly. (Note to self)

Shredded Cilantro and diluted yogurt

It is really very safe to say that my lame, dim-witted updates on social networks have disabled my ability to vent out my anger on my blog at large. And then there are those reports that the governments of some countries monitor your blogs and feeds I don't know for what weird reasons. Not to forget the desperate recruiters googling you up before/after they conduct your interview.

Fuck that. I am writing.

When me and Lapaki used to meet at bus stops in and around Mehdipatnam, we used to act like we didn't know each other. Don't ask me why. Apart from frigidly avoiding to look at his leaking nose or the dripping oil from his head, I hated the fact he ignored me right back. We all remember our tween years don't we? Well, I do. It was a really awkward period of life for me. If you hung out with Lapaki at bus stops in Mehdipatnam, you'd know what exactly I am talking about. But we shared similar interests. Like our love for Mustangs, Enfields and Emma Watson. You can't say no to a guy who comes talking to you about his dream of Emma Watson. And then we jammed to Roxanne in our living room watching VH1 while my parents were at work.


We screamed together,"PUT ON THE RED LIGHT! PUT ON THE RED LIGHT"

Although we both meant it in a completely different way.

We all are at some point in our lives, embarrassed of our friends. I for one, have only been embarrassed of Lapaki. He setup a standard of embarrassing me that none of the people I made friends with after that, have ever been remotely close to. And that is not a rhetoric. I will give you an example of what happened on a Saturday evening, while we were walking back from the bus stop to our homes. He saw a blind beggar near the signal post begging for money. He threw so much weight in his description of how blind beggars are ignored compared to other socially/physically challenged people and he said he always did his part for them. So boasting of his generosity, and completely ignoring the on coming vehicles at the busy Mehdipatnam signal post, he tried to put 25 paise into a blind beggar's palm when a speeding scooter cut through right in front of a passenger filled bus and the bus driver honked like it was the fucking apocalypse. Which ended up scaring Lapaki so badly out of his guts that he clenched his fists in the old man's open palm which already had some coins in it from earlier donors and scooped a fistful of coins out of it in an involuntary act and stumbled onto a nearby pavement.

The shock filled blind man, raised his voice in a hurried, siren like noise and started cursing and yelling in a language that my ancestors wouldn't recognize and the dumb person that Lapaki is, wouldn't go back and apologize, instead he starts running like the fucking Scotland Yard was chasing him. I am bewildered and am observing all this from a little distance. A bystander looks at Lapaki running away and turns back at me with this disgusting look that I would never, ever forget in my life! I excuse myself and act like I never have seen such a heinous crime myself and walk away from there.

Raging in anger, I am prepared to scream my fucking lungs out at Lapaki when I see him for leaving me in a situation like that. Making me feel like a complete criminal in front of strangers. I listen to some death metal songs and growl some pain away but still can't digest what had happened to me earlier that day. So I text Lapaki to meet up at our regular spot, Moon Rock cafe at Tolichowki.

I wait for him there while he roughly drives into the parking lot on his weathered Scooty and and comes into the cafe whistling like nothing ever happened. He seats himself and orders two tea. Still whistling and looking around the cafe. Then he turns his head towards me and notices me staring at him. He says, "Kya hua yaaron?". Normally, I would beat the shit out of him, but all that death metal jamming sobered me down and I just said, "Kuch nai re by.. accha parsoom Emma Watson neend me aayi, wohi khoobsurat chehra..."


That evening I realised, that there issues could stay issues and eat a little bit of you every moment or you could trivial them off like how Lapaki did. And not let them take control of you, instead you take control of them. Easier said than done but we all need to be reminded of these everyday fortune cookie moral lessons. It sobers us all down.

Inexactitude

If I wrote for a living, I would've been dead by now.

Today, it rained outside my workplace. It usually rains frequently where I live. By the bay of the Gulf of Mexico. But today,the rain was accompanied by beautiful, shimmering and bright, late-afternoon sun. I could feel the earth's warmth rising slowly from my feet till my chest and then till my chin and when the warmth reached my nostrils, it brought with it, a special fragrance. A fragrance that reminds you at the corners of your mind, that this was where you came from and this was where you would eventually be laid, the soil. Your toys, your paper pride called money and your vanity. They all would eventually turn into dust. This reckoning is a great reality check. Sticks your feet to the ground. And all of it, very subconsciously. Like the fucking secret agencies change the course of the world without letting the world know.



And then I traveled to do a personal chore from one city to an other with a friend of mine. I got on the freeway that connected both these cities. Distantly, I saw a grey curtain spread over half of the sky with the evening sun in the backdrop. Then I wondered, sitting in that car and gazing through that sunroof, "What the fuck am I doing here?". Then I kinda left that sudden usher of a fast train of thought, to be mulled upon later.

Right now, I am at the point of time called later. Sitting in a rocky chair and sipping some scotch and listening to "Sympathy for the devil". I am thinking, how did I ever get here? What should I have ever been? I am almost 25 and I don't remember much of my life to have been spectacular or mind blowing. Could I have chosen another field and excelled in it? How would that have been? Better or worse? Is it right that I am drinking and writing? Rather than just writing.

Many a times, men and women are compelled to do things they'd rather not do. Hormonal effects, drug side affects or whatever minuscule/magnanimous reasons/excuses they have had for loosing their usual self and slipping into profane acts are normally portrayed to you or whoever throws a listening ear. Why do we do that?

I sometimes think I ask too many questions. I think that I think it intrigues my readers to read a lot of questions. But it is a bad practice. I am less of a story teller and more of a question-thrower. Maybe I would've been a great investigative journo or I would've been a great Quiz show hos. And if someone like me would've been born a 1000 years ago, then apart from being a fossil buried some 6ft down in the earth, I would've been a great philosopher.

I feel like my nascent writing days coming back to me all over again. I used to jot down whatever came to my mind and I used to post it. After a couple of months when I would go back to read what I had written, I used to feel really awkward reading it. I think this post is not going to be any dissimilar from those posts. But I think all writing is good writing. Whatever you write is ok. I mean why not?

Let us think for a moment that you went swimming. How long do you think you can hold you breath? Maybe 2 minutes at tops. Then you swim a couple of laps and do some backstrokes and try to open your eyes in the pool and see what is in there. You come out of the pool, dry all the water on you, rub the towel under your arms profusely like all other Indians and fat people who sweat a lot and then you come take a shower or whatever and then take a fresh towel and rub profusely again under your arms and change your clothes and undergarments or you go commando. Then you sit back and relax on your couch while your instant food is microwaving and then you feel a tad bit different. You know why? Because you were in a different medium altogether for sometime than the medium you are in right now. Humans evolved from weird sea creatures but we are not so in touch with the medium of water anymore. We 'moved on' So much that there are lot of people who die because they do not know how to swim.

Writing is like that. It is a form of communication too but only, in a different method. A different "medium" if I may say. Just as swimming is good for your health, writing too, is good for your communication. Some people make a lot of money by swimming well and swimming in Olympics and shit and then a lot of people write and make money. See, they both are very similar. Aren't they?

Perspective is a good word. I would define the world with just that one word. Christians look at the world in the perspective of God creating the world in 6 days. Biologists, look at the same world and think we evolved from apes. Scientology preaches that an Alien created this earth. The little farm kid, helping his soon to commit suicide father in his drought struck paddy field by drinking a bottle of pesticide, doesn't give a shit about how this world was created but where is his family is going to get his next meal from.

Making your perspective, the perspective of the world is maybe the most ambitious task there could ever be. Maybe unattainable. Human beings do not realize this. And even if they do realize it, it is not quite easy to settle with it for our race. That is why we want to build a small domain where we can force our perspective on the entirety of that small domain. Thereby, satiating our human needs. Atleast just a little bit. And maybe this is how each religion was formed.


Oh wait, but this is just my perspective.


Thanks.

A wave

Today. I want to discuss about music. Again. I want to know what music leaves you with. Think of your favorite song and your favorite place. Imagine being present in that place listening to your favorite song. If that doesn't make you feel blissful, then you are listening to the wrong music. If you are as old as 18 and you aren't feeling blissful about this scenario then you need a new perspective. There is good music out there. Melodic metal or plain violin progressions. It is there. That music will make you want to live. Live longer and live better. You don't need to own a loft in a NYC downtown. All you need is good music. Bad music leaves a bad affect on your mind. Like how bad coffee you get at cheap gas stations leaves a depressing taste in your mouth. Even cough syrup tastes better than that shit right? That's exactly how bad music makes your mind. Life is too short to listen to bad music.

Even a ukulele can make you feel good when hit on the right notes. An idea can only be useful when it hits you at the right time in the right place. I still don't know what is that feeling I have when I listen to good music. It is the same kind of feeling when I was in love for the first time. Gives me the comfort I can only find in my friends' company. Just sitting back and relaxingly sipping beer. Its so awesome.


When I listen to really long guitar solos and/or any other instrumentals, slow waves uprise in my heart. Isn't that how good music is? Pt. Ravi Shankar's sitar and Dave Mustaine's guitar. Forget the tempo, remember the feeling. Isn't it like sitting in the sand and watching the waves? The high pitched notes and the bends and the hammers. They just are like the rising and falling of waves. Let me go grab my drink while Russia on Ice keeps playing on my laptop.

Ok, that took a while. Now its Santana's Oye Como Va bouncing off the walls in my room. God awesome 2.1 Altec Lansings.

So how are you all doing? All good in your pathetic lives? Oh no? Ah... Money issues huh? Darling, we all have them. Actually I don't. Cause I am awesome. No seriously, I am awesome.


Some bass hitting me hard, making me want to jam. So I am jamming. What the fuck are you upto again?