so i played along.

Going fast, going slow,
a note above or a note below,
every now and then, going offbeat,
a song that had shades all complete...
life...was that song...
so i played along.

forgetting the lyrics in between,
filling in, with any crap, such a routine.
it gave me a melody, also a delirium,
kept me hanging,on a musical pendulum...
life...such a song...
so i played along.

did dance on it, improvised,
sometimes with full soul, at times downsized,
searching for a rhythm, for harmony,
switching genres, orchestra de irony.
life...just a song...
so i played along.

My Greatest fear...

My greatest fear is that, I am going to die... without knowing what I was living for..

Ya its still the same day, my mind still playing tricks...but instead of being blank, now it has started moving in some other direction, contrary to what I'm trying it to move it to i.e my Downstream Processing photostats..and i'm thinking that my whole life, am i just going to study things that i don't think i would ever remember after the exam is over...i probably should never drink so much tea in the night..

my mind playing tricks..

i have an exam tomorrow at 10:30 am...a lot of course left, but thats not the problem...that is kind of a routine thing, i'm very used to that...the problem is, i just had a glass full of tea(and not exaggerating), coz i thought i need to stay awake;which now i am...but somehow, my mind is half asleep; coz right now i'm like a really dumb person; who has to read a line four times to understand it...you would say, i should sleep; which i want to, but i can't coz my mind is also half-awake but blank...really blank...how else can i prove my state of mind, i'm writing a blog entry about complete nonsense at a very critical time..this feels so drunk..

Almost Bitten.

Today i had a close call with my street dog.. he was aiming for a cat, but i obviously thought it was my lucky day..anyways, so there was screaming and running and a lot of heart-throbbing.. not all in vain; since i came up with this..

जिन्दगी में कुछ ऐसे भी सफ़र आते हैं
जहाँ लोग खुद की परछाई से भी डर जाते हैं.

The simple truth...10

Having a bad day is like having an apparently empty toothpaste tube... you just have to squeeze harder, you'll be amazed how much toothpaste it had hidden..

Idiot and the idiot box.

In my earlier post, Addiction prone vs. addiction proof; i talked about how "other" people handle their addiction or the lack of it... Well, here i would like to confess, that once upon a time, i was addicted to the idiot box..

As my dad often narrates me the story, that as a child i was very hard-working and good girl (and by that he means always interested in doing any dead boring domestic task, as if it was my dream-job).. and tv was there in our home, but you see, i was too passionate about other things to ever pay attention to it.. and one day, my dad committed the gravest mistake; he saw me doing some work, and asked me to halt that and watch the tv with him... And that was a turning point in my life!!

It was love at first sight, i was bowled over by its grandeur, though what we had, was a shamelessly small set, 14 inches; black and white screen; and a very ugly shutter, and combined with the fact Doordarshan in those days was hideously dull... but i guess, love really is blind!!.. anyhow, it started to replace all my other activities, and thus was created my signature laziness and procrastination... i was so attracted to that thing, that i was found (many a times) actually moving towards it mesmerized, until there was a mere 20cm distance between us.. and this may seem like an exaggeration but my family can swear on it.. i don't remember much, what the hell i used to watch on it... mostly cartoons, chitrahaar, cricket and basically everything else..

So my condition wasn't good, but it was still under control, the final straw came when we got the cable... i was in 6th standard, i think.. and thats when my parents completely lost their sweet, obedient daughter... i became hysterical with so many channels to fill in my mind space.. i became the ultimate tv guide, before the cable guys even thought of coming out with it.. and im really not proud, of documenting this looserish fling that i had with my tv, if i'm giving that kind of vibes.. but i was just unstoppable... i always had to have the remote, like a divine right; so that meant war with my brother at almost all times.. i used to plead to my dad to let me watch the late night shows, to which he had just one answer, NO... and that used to make me so mad, that i would watch double the amount the next day, just to compensate.. would lie down like a corpse on the couch and stay there until someone would turn it off..

ya i know, it makes me sick too.. but i did get out of that addiction, more sooner than later.. owing to many factors; most important being, i wasn't enjoying myself.. it feels so much better to be in control of your life. After all its nothing but an idiot box.. ending with a quote, i don't remember from whom:

" Tv has proved that people would look at anything, rather than each other."

Thoughts on pot.

It is amazing how under-rated your pot-time is, in your life... Apart from the natural relief that it brings to you, your pot-time is the time when your mind experiences a flood of ideas and thoughts; if you'd only utilize it.

Examples say louder, so heres what i came up with in the morning:

वोह तहजीब वोह तकल्लुफ आपका
कितना बेशरम था हर एक उफ़ आपका

and this coming out of nowhere, when i don't even do or read shayari; made me rethink of this whole process as an untapped area to actually think about..
As a child, this used to be a good time to revise my lessons; or fabricate revenge plans; or regret the things to which i had witty replies, but just not at the right time; or sulk after having a fight with my brother/mother/father/all of them... but i think, as i became older this process became more and more like an unconscious one, so though my mind was constantly working, i stopped realizing the difference between the normal thoughts and the thoughts during the pot-time... and i don't know if that was a good thing or bad..

So anyways, what makes the pot-time so ideal to exercise your brains??.. i think its the fact, that you're absolutely alone within those four walls, no distractions whatsoever.. combined with the fact that you have nothing else to do; which makes it easier to bring out the latent stuff that is inside of you..and no pun intended!

The simple truth...9

Being impatient is like running through a ground filled with mines, good chances you'll blow up... but being too patient is like sitting on a mine, and waiting for the kaboom.

Puppet-talk

found the image on google... used ImageMagick to say, what these puppets might have wanted to..
"pull my strings,
entertain yourself,
i know no other way
and neither do you"

The Nightmare Countdown.

Generally, its very difficult to remember the nightmares; they mostly leave your memory space instantly. But certain nightmares are chilling enough to stay back; also if you talk about them to someone, there are greater chances of you locking them down in your memory.. here are some which have been locked inside my memories..

10. This is probably a very popular nightmare, many people have been through this.. so, I was looking down a cliff, and someone pushed me down and i fell and i fell.. and i remember i felt the thrust, that you'd feel during a free fall..
9. I was sleeping in my nightmare... and i heard voices.. and when i tried opening my eyes, i realized its the runway, and an airplane was coming.
8. This actually has a mention in movie "Salaam Namaste"... i had this when i was very very young, that i got on the school bus, very inappropriately dressed.
7. I faintly remember this, but here one of my friend and i am running through forest and he gets hit by something... and he starts bleeding; but his blood was green! and there were other things also which i don't remember..
6. I'm sitting for exams but i can't see the questions... i can see everything else, the people around, my pen, the desk, even the question paper; but i can't see the questions.
5. This happened when i was in 5th.. i forgot to bring atlas in Social studies class, and everyone was laughing hysterically at me... friends, classmates, teachers, the number keeps on increasing and i'm trying to explain how sorry i'm... but everyone is just enjoying too much to bother.
4. i wake up and go to the mirror... and everything starts sagging... the skin starts loosening out, hair keeps falling, the nails keep melting and other ugly things.. later, i had to check myself in the mirror first thing after i woke up.
3. This is about 4-5 years old, when we didn't have a car.. I saw the whole family dying in a car crash.. after that, i even asked my dad never to buy a car.
2. This is when, i used to talk a lot on phone... Since i used to keep my mobile close, its ringing used to increase my heartbeats when i was sleeping.. So, once in my nightmare, the mobile is ringing on the table and i'm lying on the sofa.. it started ringing harder and harder; the table starts vibrating, then the things around vibrate, then the ground, then everything... it keeps increasing until i come out of my sleep.
1. Mumma and i go to get the milk from the dhoodwala, his shed is full of cattle and the ghaas-phoos. One of the buffalow becomes aggressive and attacks mumma... i still remember how hard i shrieked, the whole family was scared shit.

Embarrassed!!

I think, i've had more embarrassments in my life than I've had common colds.. i've this unique self destructive capacity, that not only stays but also regenerates itself regularly.. not that i'm too dumb or anything, but i have this stock of evil gut feelings, from maybe my past life that keeps wrecking my each attempt to gain respect or love in this society..

Its either like, i want the right things, but at the wrong times; or the wrong things at the right times.. i don't know.. but theres something that i can't put my finger on, but that thing pricks down, every bubble i make.. despite my whole intention of, doing a right thing for a change, i end up flustered and yes, embarrassed..

i'm not going to cite any examples, my insanity hasn't reached that high a level.. though, i would mention that i've been noticing this eccentricity since childhood.. i was smarter as a kid, but still never too far from this E word.. however, as i grew older, i became more skilled, in hiding my accidental claims to fame, in using my face(made more innocent, used as a shield), in escaping from potential deadlock situations and then finally, in the art of laughing at myself, the ultimate panacea to all embarrassments.. but nothing works better than a bad memory.. my forgetfulness is the only reason, i'm still surviving some of my best endeavors to ruin myself..

Most of these E things trace their origins from my "carelessness", or how some of my polite friends say "carefreeness".. others can be spontaneity, ignorance, blah blah, blah blah blah.. i've gone through the whole process of identifying them, making a plan of how to fix them; and as usual doing the complete opposite.. so i'd say, the causes are not that important.. its what all this has taught me...

It taught me how to see my own imperfections before i see yours, i think i'm much more compassionate because of this; it gave me "uncertainty" the perfect punching-bag to put all the blames on; ya, just to re-iterate it made me stronger(to handle next ones better); made me a better judge of people(though i still have a long way to go); and it gave me a life in between.. a life which i can reminisce and not be proud of, but still be unregretful of... and since i'm not in my late 90s, this kind-of reminiscing doesn't suit me, so with a conclusion that "i've a chronic attraction to embarrassment", that would be all..

The simple truth...8

[The earlier quote reminded me of this weird movie "The United States of Leland", it had a lot of weird quotes...this is one of them)

The worst part is knowing that there is goodness in people. Mostly it stays deep down and buried. Maybe we don't have God because we're scared of the bad stuff. Maybe we're really scared of the good stuff. Because if there's no God, well, that means it's inside of us and we could be good all the time if we wanted. So when we do bad things, it'd be because we want to or because we have to. Or maybe we just need the bad stuff to remind us what the good stuff is in the first place.

The simple truth...7

Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the minute- the second- that you get what you want, you don't- you can't- want it anymore.
(from: The Life of David Gale, 2003)

The simple truth...6

You can't reason with an unreasonable person.

Life is one distraction after another...

Have you ever looked the other way, throughout the bus journey coz a creep was watching you... or maybe, went for a trip coz you were fed up with the work... or started singing coz you were nervous before the interview... or went to a really expensive place to shop n eat coz you were too depressed... or started a movie marathon, coz life was becoming way too real...

those and plenty plenty more, are some ways how people distract themselves... sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse but they do distract themselves of a lot of things happening around them... maybe because they don't want those things to get to them, or affect them in any way (say for example, work pressure or a thing of sadness or something annoying) or it may also be because they are scared to or can't face something (like a great loss or failure or a responsibility etc.)... there may be many more examples and many more reasons, but my point isn't to reiterate the many ways we can distract ourselves...

my point is... what if, life has become a series of those distractions... what if, what we do is result of one distraction(direct or indirect) after another... lets take a scenario :
you had a certain dream, you tried visualizing it, dint work; so now all you do is to move away from that dream, do a different job with a strange dedication; strange because its not because you like the work, its because you have to justify whatever you're doing now, to that part of you which dared to dream in the first place... distraction can give you the power to change the direction of your life, once, twice, many times... it basically says: try, if you fail rather than trying again, try something new... which is, though most people won't admit, is what we normally do...

if that is not the case, then two options remain: either you always work towards the fulfillment of your dream or you don't know your dream...

the first case requires an awesome amount of focus, leaving no scope of distractions; except maybe from distractions themselves... this is an ideal case; it's almost impossible to find such people.. what we generally get to see, are people with "apparent focus, inherent confusion"; those who have just picked one nice aim(which looks good enough to them and their family) and they are all set to achieve it... now, this is nothing but a greater distraction... the distraction from the natural truth... its like a serious person distracting himself away from the books, to join the fun gang, to appear more interesting than he actually is or vice versa... and its funny, how many of us complete our whole life distracting away from what we really are, just because we assumed no-one would understand or respect that or we were plain scared or we just wanted to get it done the easy way...

Now, for those who don't know their dreams... who don't know what they are living for... are passing their time, hopping from one distraction to another; so that they can forget that they are ignorant and equivalent to someone who has received the spare-parts to a Ferrari but not the instruction manual of how to assemble it... so they live, clueless, in a constant hit and trial mode, wishing they might put together a Ferrari someday...

So, might be, this wild idea that life is one distraction after another; isn't that wild at all... may be, we do need to actually think why we are doing certain things...

Sleeping thoughts...

Long long time ago, i used to fall asleep as soon as i hit the bed...then one day, i remember it clearly, when i was in 5th...i just couldn't sleep, these thoughts- random and futile and humungous in number and boring... just kept attacking me... its not as if, anything remarkable happened that day, not that i would remember after all these years... but i do remember how traumatized i was..

you see, my dad always had this plan of sleeping early, so the whole family used to sleep very early, by that i mean 9 o'clock... In fact, we used to have our dinner pretty early too, 7p.m... Till yet, im unaware of any family packing up so early in the night; anyhow i used to feel really happy about it in those days.. i loved to sleep 10 hours and wake up early to just smell the morning freshness.. but then, i got doomed to think...

I hated the continuous and indomitable nature of my thoughts back then...especially during the night... they came when they wanted to, stayed as long and in morphologies they desired... and they almost never left; just when i'd fall asleep they'd assault me with nightmares... it was a lost battle back then... i used to try not to think, but then i'd think that imnt going to think; and then i'd think that im still thinking about not thinking; and then everything would rush back ...imnt exaggerating when i say that i used to punch my pillow in desperation to sleep... i even used to wake up my dad, when everything else would fail, to say that i can't sleep in a tone that people use when they come to know they're dying... and then he'll do some magic, put his hand on my head and i used to fall asleep...

Yes my dad was my magician in those days... we used to live in DDA flats in Palam... there used to be nights without electricity, days without water... things weren't quite that good, money wasn't that good... he used to hand fan me and my brother throughout the night when power failures stayed the night; he never ate before we were done; he still doesn't, no matter what we say... even though there isn't much talking, i always felt that he knows whats going on with me.. he never says anything but the support he gives silently always makes the inside of my heart moist with gratitude and guilt... and i think, i went somewhere else; so coming back to the sleepless nights...(i don't think i'd ever be able to write without digressing)

I tried a lot of things to cure myself of that childhood insomnia...most ideas came from cartoons.. tried that counting sheep method, which was obviously too firang to be effective.. somewhere i heard good fragrance means sound sleep, so i used to steal jasmine flowers from a neighbour's gamla and keep it beside my pillow; however, my condition wasn't that simple and neighbour's gamla had limited flowers :( ..then, read a story about a king who couldn't sleep, so he wandered and met a farmer who always slept good; the king asked his secret to sleep; he said "You do my work for one day, and see how peacefully you'll sleep"... and that story hit my small brain and i did a lot of activities to get really tired before sleep... it worked for some time, before i recalled that i'm a lazy bum...

Slowly, i got used to these thoughts.. even, started manipulating them... channelized them to think about bigger things than how my dinner was getting digested or where would i sit in tomorrows class or should i have bath tomorrow or not or are my nails too big etc. etc... started writing stuff, thinking about events and people and the trance that life is... nightmares changed into dreams or fantasies or interesting nightmares... and i survived, somehow the stubbornness of my thoughts...

Though i still can't switch on/off my thoughts, though my sleep is still reckless and unruly and doesn't follow my commands, though i can still get insomniac at times...but i've learnt to co-exist with my thoughts, learnt to make use of my insomniac time in doing something productive rather than hitting poor pillow, and just realize sleep requirements vary person to person, so im safe as long as i don't have 3 sleepless nights in a row coz that might kill someone... verify the last fact, imnt too sure of that... and now im actually too sleepy to write another sentence, so The End.

The simple truth...5

Reading a person gives you much more than reading any book.

Things life has taught me...part 3(jaipur trip special)

13. Don't get scared of any weird old guy, who says he got a headache coz you were taking pictures.
14. When you're not winning a card game; blame the damn luck, and have fun loosing.
15. Tying your shoe-laces is a very private thing...avoid doing it in public.
16. Don't ever get sick before a free and unlimited and delicious dinner, you'll regret it throughout your life.
17. This one courtesy a friend...10 glasses chach+15 glasses jaljeera+lots of jalebi=stomach produces some thick syrup continuously.
18.Most important...don't take two bags to a three days trip when everyone else is taking one...for some reason, its very funny to some people.

The simple truth...4

Theres a little psychopath sitting in all of us... mostly, unleashed during our anger pangs...

The simple truth...3

For each philosophy, there exists an equal and opposite philosophy.