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.
TERP_CHAR
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
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.
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.
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