Category: Irony of life
The odd and odder realities of being an adult!
Three decades of life missed teaching me as well as never provided me a chance to learn that being tired can be a lifestyle. Yes that’s odd now! yet.
It reminds me that, life happens mostly through rare and regular oddities. Rare oddity is when you have a day that remotely resembles either simple peace or calm throughout the day with frequent intervals of little extended scenes of chaos.
Regular oddity is a day full of simple mishaps. It begins with a simple act of a messed up cup of morning (read milk) tea or a phone log with six seemingly lesser important missed calls before 10 AM at any given day. Blessed are the ones whose network comes to the rescue. Poor Mobile networks can either be a blessing or curse in a disguise. Like my otherwise feeble network gets me to calls, which I would happily skip.
But given a choice, I would be glad to skip some people, let me be honest. May be most people. It is not merely the reality of me, beginning to hate people, but compounded in astronomical proportions, that people are finding perfect ways to be incurably annoying in splendid ways.
At times, I cannot, but begin to wonder, about possibilities of becoming/turning Mowgli. Remember that long haired boy. What a blessed little chap he is, that he gets to live such a happy life.
Hey! Hey! I do know that like most other inane things, Happyness is significantly overrated, which reminds me of Woody Allen (don’t know why) the prophet/go-to advisor/modern day mundane-mentor of/to the mental malady called LOVE.
Thank God, we have marched past the month of Valentine’s. Gone are my days of being one! It is not that I am either sick of love or still love sick at my given peaceful and made-my-peace-with age of 34 (yes I am that many years, young now). Its just me, me the me, who fails to fathom the maddening mysterious ways of the tabooed futile four letter word.
In most ways, I still remain the dreamy eyed, also generously add the dreary eyed part too, and may be sprinkle a little cynicism and yes – there you get me! No. I am not against the romantic love, I am just aghast at its sheer cruelty. May be just tired of its monotonous, single, unending demand to act like you are in love and the need to come with a myriad less imaginative ways to prove it. NO. I am still talking about love, sorry not marriage, the most boring and another tiring institution. But nevertheless the holy and possibly life sustaining institution, for the most tired adults.
I guess, rather I started to believe that being tired all the time is the onset of adulthood. It is neo-coming of age. Like, one doesn’t necessarily come of age once in life, it happens at every considerable intervals in life- the first love, the first heartache, the death of a pet, the death of a parent, may be the first job. Or may be the few last times in life, when you made a promise and tried with an heartful truth to uphold it, may be the last time you prayed with a mighty desperation and a belief, that praying can set things right, may be the last time, you remembered well, when you smiled with your eyes and still believed in an innocence. Mostly the losses also announce this painful coming of age.
May be adulthood is not about being happy, its not about the loses, its not about being tired as well, its well knowing that you know only little so well. The rest, being the surprises that life throws at you – few times, menacingly and most times, mockingly.
Adulthood and being an adult can be paining, yet its promising.
For its a journey ahead.
A journey with a knowing burden. And that knowing can be unburdening.
To be Cared for,
Here I am back to my blogging life, interspersed with random thoughts, frequents cups of hot fluids, evading abstract memories of fading yesterdays and an impending finished PhD dissertation, nursing myself back to health, like an wounded animal in a battle for survival.
My mind chose this night to recount a few memories, draped in a moon-lit solitude and a flickering candle, I sit helplessly and sleeplessly ruminating over a few hundred moments of what could have been the point of breaking down. Writing could be a wonderful way to exorcise past and to confront the violent ugliness of reality. Its the point in time, when people see that lane of exit of the past, parallel to their actual days of life.
Most times, our lives are never about ourselves alone, it is so more about a few people who do become a part of you and your everydayness of life. It is strange when people decide to leave, all of a sudden. The silence, sullenness, the aloofness, the cold distance, the indifference and all of that together in a single look, word or a phrase, and to realise at a precise moment in time; to be left alone,
” I was certain he would turn my way. He would look at me. He would flatten his ears. He would growl. In some such way, he would conclude our relationship. He did nothing of the sort…
…. I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.. It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go, otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did and your heart is heavy with remorse, that bungled good-bye hurts me to this day.. But I hope you will remember me as a friend. I will never forget you, that is certain. You will always be with me in my heart…So Farewell, God be with you..”– Life of Pi- Yann Martel.
The adolescent longings of an unrequited love seems much more of a mirage in the scale of pain as one grows up to be an adult. Those winter evenings as I stay hidden on the sides of the wall, looking up on balcony for a sight of her. The exhilarating joys of a puppy love, the rush of hormones, the inevitable shyness even to look into your eyes as we speak. The innocence of then love held a promise of being cared for, with no apprehensiveness. Was it the age? was it the heart? Was it the mind?
Life then sucked too.
Yet.
The promise of a love and a faith in the togetherness of a tomorrow was quite reassuring.
I vividly remember a new years eve. Following a promise made to A, I began to read my first Classic, Of Human Bondage. Any plans for a celebration looked futile. I was half cursing and sulking at my room-mate who left earlier that evening. I took my pills, covered myself with two sheets of blankets and held a book on top of my chest. It was cold and difficult even to hold the book and worse it wasn’t a book that seemed to move forward as one reads. I remember this place in the book, where an unhappy orphan kid feeling far worse alone and painful as he couldn’t be consoled by his care taker, a barren elderly women who never had a kid. The kid shouts out his vengeance”I hate you, I wish you were dead”. The poor lady who never knew what it is to be mother breaks down at her failure. She breaks down and sobs as the kid reaches to kiss her. “She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer”. That was a moment of a sublimeness and I was overcome with such a spiritual feeling. I went off to sleep, closing the book and remember waking up far better in reality.
I knew very little of A’s own journey from her childhood. She married young and got divorced with a little boy even before she turned twenty five. Having lost her father at a young age, it was her mother who raised her; and life can be indeed cruel when you are violently brought back to square one. I knew somethings about her life as she told me, what she had to fight everyday and what follows her like the shadows of demons. I know our lives are not destined to be the same in our adulthood, yet I know, how I once felt close to her as how I would have for a sibling.
At times, life spins a tale, a far fetched joke, taking someone far away from everything they knew and they loved.
I remember writing once in my diary, “Love is an ability. An ability to be humane.” I have had known, what is when people leave, when they grow up and move on. Yet some times, when few memories catch you, so off-guard. A trembling moment of resonance as one sees, when things come crashing down. Stay put. Hold onto your ground. Look up as they soar high and smile, knowing deep down, they are not coming back.
May be. Sometimes they do.
Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
Cutting For Stone – Abraham Verghese
The meandering memory of love
Where could i possibly begin?
At an ending. May be an impending ending. That kept us Waiting.
i couldn’t possibly start counting the memories we are both bestowed with, And in great vain, i attempt to remember the mortal remains of memories of togetherness.
For Memory is a burden.
How do i remember thee? Let me uncount the ways
i remember thee to the depth and breadth and height
To the beginning of the warmth in your touch
i remember thee to the end of every next-day
Most quietly waiting by my g-talk for a message to pop up
Into the laziness of your day-ending as my day dawns to the sound of your voice
i shall wait, my time to serve with memories intact
To see you somewhere in all my griefs and faith.
i shall but remember thee Always
For i know no greater love than, of remembrance
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
A year that just slipped by, a year of grief; certainly,`The Year of Magical Thinking’ when a thousand things dawned onto the quiet mind basking in laziness. An urgent need to seize the slyly time that refuses to wait for any tides. A few memories, that needs exorcizing, if not will continue to haunt the remains of time. A happy memory of learning, loving and living together for a short worthwhile. As the year ends, a few deaths that scarred me remains untangled, in the web of memory. An haphazard need to bid adieu to a thousand things as the year nears its end.
At times, Waking up is a like a dream. A certain kind of feeling it evokes as one wakes up from/to a dream. She did remember this; a distant memory, a near-fading past- his feel of lips on her navel. She could only chuckle at the memory, his less than short of obsession with navels.
Next only to books, those unread, but buying books at every other day, the untidy linings of the books along the walls of every shelf. For only the beauty of Japanese language can find a word for book hoarding – Tsundoku.
To end the year with something that i recently read/lived through. Kafka on the shore is one of the strangest books i’ve read. A journey that stretches itself onto the realms of magic as the reader approaches it. The story is narrated from different perspectives of Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old boy who runs away from home to escape an oedipal prophecy and thereby making it true and then the story of Nakata, an old man who gained the ability to talk to cats after an incident in his childhood.
This entire book reads like a fine collage of intense vignettes of unrelated dreamy scenes and poignant conversations. A meandering dreamlike tone drives the entire reading experience. A surrealistic “Kafka-esque” thread runs all along the narrative tying the loose ends, before the book ends. At times, it takes a toll on the reader to make connections every now and then, that said, it ain’t an easy read.
One can sense an intentional ambiguity in the very narrative and the plot.
May be the book speaks to me in a way, as to the threshold, that had been pushed onto me.
“Listen, Kafka. What you’re experiencing now is the motif of many Greek tragedies. Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man. That’s the basic worldview of Greek drama.”
As often, i feel the lure of the unknown quite regularly. May be like everything else, “Kadhalum Kadandhu Pogum”
Then! What if; then, what?
There are certain questions, one should refrain from asking, especially when you happen to travel with someone who calls and considers him/her self a writer.
“What kind of a writer are you?”
Well. I never had a clue, all other times; it was either a warm or an I-don’t-encourage-such-questions smile. But that day, to the most unfortunate despair of the interrogator, I had this answer, spontaneously brimming up inside me.
“I just write, hence I’m a writer, but my writings and my being of a writer is multi-layered, rather a multi-staged process. I’m a reluctant writer and when I’m past my reluctance, I turn to this compulsive writer and keep writing, only to end up as a voluminous writer. I cannot help identifying the little things and people prefer to call this labeling. So I’m even a labelist-writer, in a way.
She had this what-wrong-did-I-ever-do-to-you look on her face. For the greater good, I excused myself, “It is quite sultry inside. I’ll just go, stand near the door for a while.” And I left my window seat.
Pre-script: This post can be lengthily lengthy! Read it at your own ease.
Then I did realize the importance rather the necessity to traverse in the depressing murky narrow lanes of human mind. I did make the journey. In a shorter while, I stood face to face with him. He was tall and nude. I glimpsed down at Him, sensing his faltering hesitation, I averted my glance. I found out, he was shy and got intimidated by my presence before his naked self. It looked pale. It didn’t bother me anyway; for I had a mother’s eye. I was not disgusted by his nudity. His sudden appearance brought out the rather dormant motherly instincts alive in me. I reached the door of his grief-stricken soul and gently knocked to wake him up. He understood my silent plea to unburden his sorrows on me. I still got a chance to identify my own self in him, overcoming all my possible short-comings and human weakness. I can hear his prayers. I prayed/wished there were fewer burdens and more people to help him with his yoke. For the first time, I looked at his eyes, to see the fear blooming away to a smile.
When any mind is dug, the depths are seen to be filled with the acid, frustration- the source of hatred ness, which gets accumulated due to the needless and endless rush to no-where. People don’t let the flow of base, literally and chemically i.e., assurance-the source of love, to neutralize this and so as to stop the mind ending up, thoroughly eroded and turns to a scathed monstrous inside spitting words of venom outside.
What could I possibly tell, to let him learn that nudity is sacred and so are every private secret. No god/human-made-god is sacred. Believing that thy gods are sacred is the absolute Blasphemy. Nothing is more sacred than/as sacred as Human spirit.
When you sow love in life, you reap only smiles in return, the other synonym of love, which is pure and blissful, like that of a baby, which arouses a desire in you to touch and caress in rejoice.
Ever patted someone’s cheek with love, when they smile? You will know.
Sitting on a beach, feeling the coarse texture of the sand against my skin, with the music, plugged in, either Savage Garden/Bob Marley, with Italo Calvino unveiling the secrets of the Invisible cities, sipping apple juice spiked with white Mischief to be lost in the magical orange hues of the evening sun.
How romantic! How rejuvenating! NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
Only, when you’re in Pondicherry, Marina, Marine Drive, Kovalam, Goa or Gokarhna.
Not when,
Sitting in the living room, awake at an unearthly hour, with four other souls deep asleep at the dead of night, I look out of my window and heave the usual sigh!
I found myself awake to the deserted sight of my bedroom. No clue! When I fall a prey to Insomnia. I get up all by my self, prepare the most-cherished-I-made-my-own-chai and sit at my dining for the morning my-alone-mono-conversation. Brother would have left to Bangalore, remembered seeing him at 7, when I tossed around. Heard dad’s voice and spotted him in his usual I-don’t-see-my-spectacles-anywhere look, when I blinked and adjusted to the morning light entering through the window. Listened to mom’s daily set of instructions, “Keep some milk for puppy, you have your breakfast soon, clean up the kitchen, put away the used dishes, keep the house tidy, pay the grocery bill”, when I got up to switch off my alarm and sleep again.
Watch Television, sit at the PC, listen to music, stare at an empty space, sit idly, read, pick up a novel and start umpteen times, sketch/scribble/cook. Mono/multi/juggle tasks. Do nothing/everything. A day is gone. I spend my whole day regretting not being early, missing the jog and curse for being lately late every night. And naturally you grow around the middle.
Vacation does this. No matter how well you plan to finish novels, jog/jinx/jingle everyday learn guitar/music/cooking, watch movies plan a thousand trips. Nothing happens. Believe me, been through it badly, madly and truly.
VACATE YOUR HOME DURING VACATION.
When you’re an adult
1) NEVER EVER holiday at home, you’re past the age of summer camps/cramps
2) Home is meant to be missed and not to SPEND vacations.
Orkut and face book even bores the hell out of you. And you turn the most perverted poet. G talk status – a testimony to this statement
With all this now going in for a more while. I plan to write books/scholarly articles on the following topics
1) The Ignored Psychology of the Blissful Boredom
2) Being the second born – boon or bane.
3) Ten sure and safe ways to seek instant attention
4) An Introduction to holidaying at home.
5) The Psycho-analysis of bored-minds: A socio-cultural approach
6) What not to do, when you’re Home Alone.
7) Understanding the problems of the Youngest Kid.
8) How to be a successful attention Seeker
9) The nuances of being a nuisance at home – A beginner’s theory
Efforts are been given at a full fledged pace and wish me all luck.
As Erma Bombeck quotes, “Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.”
And as JB ma’m puts it, “You’re home-sick, you reach home and soon, you grow sick of home.”
Yet, how I wish, I get up every morning to the beautiful sight of the snow-clad Alps Mountain on the meadows with that special dream-girl rather my-kind-of-girl cuddled up beside me.
No! No! NO! I’m a single, and not that desperate or waiting to mingle-single. It is just that I wish, to know what it is to get committed and to flash my COMMITTED status in Orkut and face book.
No Shrings! I’m still the committed single. Remember we can flirt, flirt and flirt, No worries, we’re still committed to our single hood status. We’re The Committed Singles.
And you T**** Now don’t call me a predictable pervert, you Pakistani *******U**. I miss my campus life, BIG time!!!!
I abstain form the temptations of running away, deserting my own self. I just cannot imagine my own self deserting the precious me.
The best way to overcome temptations is to yield into them – Oscar Wilde.
For I know, there are less and less worthy things in life to run after and more and more beautiful occasions and meaningful things to look forward. “Everything Waits”. As Samby puts it, “Nothing great has been achieved except by those who believe that something inside them is superior to circumstance.. And I continue to believe..”
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It happens in a cyber-cafe
Actually she was sitting right to me and three guys next to her was actually watching you-know-what. I felt a bit comfortable, even angry at how people can be inconsiderate. It was not even a separate cubicle or there were some barriers separating systems. Wouldn’t they think twice before actually watching such stuff openly or wouldn’t they even give a thought about the presence of a girl? I, after considerable thinking asked her to shift her side. She was all puzzled. I’ve a doubt till today. Did she really notice what those boys were doing? or is it that I happened to see that and asked her to change sides so that she wouldn’t see what’s happening? We left in an hour. And after that we never spoke about it! and now she is quite an online freak, if I can call her so. But guys just learn this. You will never know how a girl’s mind works!
I heard from my good friend, who happened to be her room-mate in their college days. She, (supposedly the girl with whom I went to the cybercafe) told her(my good friend) how during the process, I asked her to change her seat, so that I can actually check what those guys were browsing!
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Falling in Love….
The other time, the question was “Aren’t you tired of being single?” Does it work this way too? One becomes double or multiples of singles when one becomes ultra tired. Frankly speaking I now don’t have high hope(s) on this divinely feeling. Sorry!
Ultimate cynical or sarcastic comment will be “Experience Speaks?” Yup! Let it – Big Deal.
I remember quotes like.. “Love hurts too much”. but remember it hurts too much even when a dog bites. There is no big difference and please dont make a big hue and cry over this now!
Love happens only once, The rest is just life.I was ofcourse carried away by this statement. Till now I honestly dont understand this. Is love something that is larger than life? am yet to make sense out of it.
The other quote which fascinated me much is “Love is inane. It just needs inane reasons to happen and to fade away.” I rather found the complete meaning in this quote of Jayakanthan. To accept that love is inane, one need not be inane. Love is a good humour. Its rather depressing to see people getting structured in this social structure. I remember the words of my Professor of English, ” I ask my students to rise in love and not fall in love.” How true! people do fall but they dont try to rise up in love.
Is love a mere commitment? an oppurtunity or a responsiblity? why is it always blown out of proportion? what is that about love that makes all fuss about being in it! Again as She tells “you are rather in love with love than with the person.” but ultimately one has to live with the person and not with the projected or imagined image. I would definitely go for anyone who puts up with my weirdest of weird habits, all it matters is how one ends up living under one roof! for I honestly till now haven’t learned to share even my tooth paste (mind it, not tooth brush) with my room-mate.
Also I see people rushing into relationships, sit down and stretch back, one has all the time on earth to think about things, but why this mad rush into it? when life rushes you back, dear you cannot simply bear it! Is getting into a relationship as easy as getting into an unreserved compartment? Thankfully there are four doors to get out if necessary and more windows so that it doesn’t suffocate one. I talk about the space that this relationship gives. Honestly love is all about being more than one and less than two. When the We overtakes the I. Isn’t it wonderful then ? It takes a lot to be a somebody to someone and also being that someone to somebody too!
I am not against anyone’s feeling for who am I to judge on them? But for me love, like everything else has its own limits. I beleive in the finite love, there has to be a time when I should stop loving, a fine place where I let go the loved ones, and I know for sure that I can only love to an extent for I have other things in life which are equally worth every ounce of love.
Inspired by the a single statement recently read in a post. Its my humble opinion. Most welcome to defy and deny it.
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LITTLE HUMANITY LEFT SOMEWHERE
I remember losing it somewhere, but certainly I don’t remember where or when and am sure that I had it with me sometime ago. I know what I am talking about. Did I ever have it with me to lose it? Please help me. I am becoming inhumane day by day. Yes I left my little left humanity in me somewhere.
I recollect instances in my life where I felt I have been extremely inhumane. I know I sound stupid when I try to measure the intensity of it like mild or extreme or mildly extreme. As years went by, I grew up (I wish I never) but did I really? I feel I lost a part of me in the process, something that can never be recovered,
It was not a sudden loss, but it was not even a loss in instalments, it is/was an ongoing process. The way I become immune to the surroundings of sufferings around me. The self-construction of the protective wall called modernity helps me in being so. But now I look back and search longingly to get back my lost humanity!
Was it when I shout at people for no reasons just because they don’t listen to me at times. Did I lose my patience first and then humanity?
Was it when I didn’t stop to help an old woman crossing the road? I remember turning back and acting busy as I assumed that I was already late for a matinee show.
Was it when I saw a small child begging in the railway station? I gave him a coin when I know the best thing was to dial the ‘Child Helpline’ which I had conveniently saved in my mobile
Was it when I acted busy talking to my friend in my mobile when I should actually have been talking to my old neighbour who came all the way to meet me when I was back home for my vacation.
Was it when I cheered when an opponent missed a goal and got hurt himself during the match or when I fervently prayed all night for the teacher to fall ill so that the exam got cancelled (and of course she fell ill soon but still we’d the exam next day.)
Was it when I hurt a dog for the first time (and last time) but I couldn’t stand seeing the pain of the dog? I cried all night that day for being cruel and promised God that I would hurt never and not even intimidate anyone with threatening looks! Arrogance and violence are just the excess display of vulgarity to humanity.
Where did I leave you? I roam like a nomad searching you? I don’t want you to leave me and orphan me in my life.
I search longingly the long lost little humanity in me. Then I stopped searching and started being now. I understand these by learning through negotiations that humanity is more to than merely being human or acting humane. It is the wilful acceptance to be lovingly patient, a wishful listener, to lend a humble helping hand and an emphatic shoulder, to speak the right word at the right time, to respect the differences, to be grateful to little deeds and not expecting gratitude in reciprocation. As Ezekiel tells, “It is the loving acceptance and not charitable Tolerance.” It is when everyone is ready to let go off the various masks and starts feeling the spirit of humanity. I try everyday and fail miserably. But I know it is these little efforts of me that help me being me.
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Musings of a True Believer 