another vague attempt to stay in the loop

Seasons come and go. The books I carry everywhere in my bag more as a backup against an utmost state of idling than to deal with a sudden urge to read also change; though I should add that these past few months have been jinxed as I like to call it. On the Road has become more of a companion – one of the few constants keeping me warm – than a passing acquaintance which recedes and diffuses in the background as time flies by.

My mind log tells me that I’ve travelled with it seven times now and yet, I can’t really get to the last chapter. I think my demotivation also has something to do with the disappointment that’s coming along as I read further because despite the freshness that has been attached to the book for decades now, I can’t really feel it.

Back then, every new thing was so… new, for lack of a better word. Every statement became a movement and every song, an anthem. Now every thought seems like a banality and you struggle to come up with anything novel. And when you do, the ball doesn’t bounce back as smoothly as you’d like and you turn to look but it’s gone.

 

I guess that explains the fact that this has by far been the longest break I have taken from writing and I am not proud of it. Seems like I proved a few people right who showed faith in me and believed that I would break sooner or later.

What is it about routine that is so repulsive, yet all our life, in one way or the other, we continue to be its victim, hating it, being wary of it, knowing that it can get to us, watching it with all the prudence we can summon, but needing it at the same time.

As one thought gives way to another, I am forced to think about the quotidian matters in my existence but I’m not sure if I want to label anything as being one.

I did realize today that if I want to make something a habit, I become obsessed with thinking about it. I am not saying here that I become obsessed with practising it but ya, how much thought I am capable of putting into these things is amazing.

It has something to do with the fear that one forgets very easily and quickly.

 

 

I feel kinda bad because I left this interesting train of thought hanging and now despite all my attempts to catch the trail, I really can’t.

I guess its one of those things I don’t want to have much about in black and white. Maybe another time.

 

btw, the pun in the title is not intended but now that we are at it, maybe I should recommend this to you and at the same time thank P for it.

Pretty awesome stuff I have to say.

A lack of color, A waltz for life.

I “had” forgotten what magic music holds. Its quotidian existence in my life made me lose appreciation for it and just like I let most people existing in my mundane cosmos – mostly by default and not profound choice – fade away from my mind while maintaining their presence in body, I allowed music to do the same despite my warranted belief that I held it in higher esteem than anything mortal for if anything or anyone could, it would be music what might save me one day.

“From whom” you ask? Mostly from myself. You can destroy your life all at once or one day at a time. I, my friends, as you would agree am a rational being with all my sensibilities apparently intact would fall in the latter category since it would be ludicrous for my consciousness to do all the damage in one go. It wouldn’t go with the mature persona I exude now, would it?

So as I continue… I remember building it from scratch, tune by tune, hour by hour that I spent in the darkness of a disconsolate room refusing to apply myself in chores that would probably be of instant yet ephemeral consequence. The ceaseless idyll it evoked in me signified greater charm for my then nascent nous, my adolescent intellect.

I am an adolescent no more. I have grown with the sound but unfairly left its essence behind while I tried to keep up in the rat race.

“Its the price I have to pay”, you say? I am forced to concur… apparently, it seems so and I don’t have a resilient argument against it.

But then there is the deceptive “had” in the first line. For I have been revived and brought back to life. And it feels good to be awake again after an involuntary slumber that was chronic in its presence yet acute in the pain it caused.

“Who saved you then?” would be your next inquiry and rightfully so.

Like I said, if anything it would be the music.

 

what for..

I watched Grave of the Fireflies tonight. I don’t how else I can put it. Its been a week since I got to Baku from India and I’ve been feeling strangely peaceful unlike any of the last times I’ve come back from home. I’ve been sick for ten days now and even that couldn’t drag me to the ugly resort of self pity this time. But Grave of the Fireflies did. I cried a shit load of tears tonight and it wasn’t even like soft sobs with tears rolling down; it was the all out loud and ugly kind of crying. I’ve seen a lot more war movies than I’d like and I’ve cried a bit in some of them but none of that was personal. I can’t even remember any of them distinctly. But this one, I’ll never forget. I don’t know if it’s because of the kids in the movie but I haven’t felt so sad to the extent of depressed for the clichéd stuff – why do wars happen, why is there so much misery, why can’t I do anything about anything – for as long as I can remember. I think I always made it a point never to be one of “those” people who like to talk and talk about this kind of stuff. I felt more like- if I can’t do anything I have no right to crib about it. But its like the movie  turned me into a child again. I guess that’s the worst kind of emotion that can be brought out in me. Acting like a helpless child, having no one to run to, wondering why no one has found the answers to all these frightful things happening to people. Even writing this I am thinking how stupid it all sounds. Of course there ARE no answers when you think of the big picture. And that’s what we always do… we always look at the big picture when it comes to issues like this. Because that’s the sensible thing to do. But with those two kids struggling literally to stay alive in all that mess, it was really hard to worry or even wonder about the big picture.

Right now I wish I could bury myself in some kind of hole never to crawl out again. The whole thing just takes over you and everything else seems so petty. You hate yourself for being an ungrateful son of a bitch. I hate my existence right now and wonder what good could ever come from me to anyone or anything. I know I will not do anything tomorrow or the next day to change myself even one bit and that’s why I hope I could just cease to exist for some time, get rid of myself or atleast my consciousness. Its eating me up inside. On rare occasions like these, I feel like such a phony living a superficial life and I would like to believe that the fact that I’m atleast thinking about it in some way makes me fuller than those who are not, but that’s the phoniest part of it is. Even the mindfulness of it does nothing for me because with whatever I’ve got and to have this realization now, its still that hard to find some happiness in this life so I might as well forget about it.

coulda woulda shoulda

 

 

I wonder how long a day at work can feel like. You know its 8:03 but you still look at your watch when you enter the office, when you sit at your desk, when you go for the morning meeting, when the morning meeting ends, when you grab your first cup of coffee, when you finish it, when you receive your first ping of the day on gmail, when you stop chatting, when you put on your coveralls, when you remove your coveralls and its 10:03.

So this is the first two hours of the day passing by so excruciatingly slow you want to rip your eyes out and pray to God the next two are slightly better and then one fine day you realize, hmmm… the year is ending. Another 365 days of your life gone by. It makes you question the concept of time. Maybe its playing mind games with you?

You think about the awesome times.

Vacation in India – 21 days, vacation in New York - 9 days, vacation in India – 21 days. That’s about it.

You make a mental count of the moderately good days… most of them you ended up drunk and rambling on about nothing with your friends almost all night long.

You make a mental count of the excessively bad days… most of them you ended up drunk and throwing up over and around your friends almost all night long.

Then you think about the remaining 279 days. Must’ve accomplished something in all this time other than the miniscule contribution to your gigantic firm because that is a lot of days.

You made some good new friends. But then you lost touch with some old ones too.

You had some life enriching experiences. Did some weird things and you were even able to surprise yourself. But then you missed out, maybe even consciously, on so many opportunities that could’ve probably changed track of your current life massively.

You performed fairly well in your job, got a promotion et al. But then the curve of professional dissatisfaction was an exponential one as the year went by.

You wrote a few interesting posts here and there. People made sure they let you know how much they enjoyed them… may be even identified with them. But then you didn’t write even close to as many as you would’ve liked to.

You enjoyed your independence. One year of paying your bills, buying your groceries, getting the lights fixed etcetera etcetera. But then every day coming back to a sad apartment where you live alone does make you a tad less excited about the apparently over-rated freedom.

So it pretty much balanced out is what you would conclude. And it did; even if the sad kind.

But what differentiates 2008 from the past 22 years is that 2008 was the year of introspection. So just like the time curve is kind of screwed up, so is the learning curve. I learnt more in this one year than I could’ve hoped for, even though the way I learnt it could’ve been easier. But then easy is boring at the same time right. So in the recent past, I figured out some of the big questions in my life and about life in general. What I want. What I don’t want. How evasive happiness is. Where it could be found. The word I am looking for is consciousness I think. I wish I could say that this one thing has no flip side to it but then there is always a flip side isn’t there. Ignorance is a hobby. You play as long as you like it and when you’re bored, you move on. Consciousness, on the other hand, is a one way track. It changes you forever. You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.

 

the NOW and THEN

How life changes. You think you’ve got it all figured out but you haven’t. You convince yourself that all of life’s beauty is gone but then you read something so colourful, something so fresh happens that you wish you could share it with the whole world and make it easier for everyone else as well because you think they have the same problems that you do. Tell them life’s not so bad after all. There’s something in it for all of us. There is still hope for novelty. Lets not give up. But they seem oblivious. They don’t care about your epiphanies, unmindful of themselves and others around them they carry on with whatever they were carrying on with and then the world looks dismal again. It comes and goes in waves. One minute you care too much, you are so aware of your surroundings, noticing the tiniest details of words being thrown around and the next minute its gone. You become a part of someone else’s surroundings, giving someone else something to observe while you are lost in the background. Fused with the white noise.

You start to believe that something’s wrong with you because YOU are the one unable to fit in when it seems so easy. It used to be so easy too but you grew out of your ignorance. It never worked for you and never will. You start to understand the kind of life you are living and wonder. How does this happen? One minute your mind is enjoying WHAT it’s doing not because of the effect it might have but because it is what it is and then you are in this space where the end is the only drive. NOW means nothing to your brain. It creates the illusion of something that resembles happiness but you are never able to really feel it. You want to make most of the NOW, make the most of every contact because its so ephemeral and won’t last forever but the NOW is so unappealing. You just let it fly by.

Numbed by everything else, I want to enjoy YOU, not continue delving in me. I know all my stories and looking for novelty, I listen carefully a few times but eventually disappointment precedes hope. I have been surprised sometimes but for me statistics don’t lie. And even if you do somehow take me by surprise, transcend my expectations, I am reminded that its evanescent. I’ve tried to hold onto things in the past and I know it so hard and so out of my control. How then am I expected to be be bright in the morning when I live with the perpetual insecurity that what I have now may end any minute and what will be left, I cannot and will not appreciate.

People don’t know me but I hear them saying that I’ve changed. Doesn’t that need a reference point to begin with. How we throw judgements around without taking a moment before to think about it. And when I do, when I think about things, when I listen to people, I come back to square one. How am I able to justify something which is so essential to me and doesn’t have the same value whatsoever to my surroundings. It doesn’t fit. Since I can’t change anything but myself, I start to wish life were simpler. I were simpler. Which is not an impossibility. But then I know; change one thing, change everything and then I wouldn’t be what I am. If that happens, does anything else matter at all? So eventually I wonder what to wish for.

How it all ends.

Sometimes inspite of everything being ok, nothing seems fine. Life just drags on and there is no stopping it or speeding it up. How i would like to make a life changing decision for once in my life but I guess I am not creative enough. Everything new is cliched and everything fun is overrated. I guess my cynicism is having the better of me most of the times these days.

 

I talk to all these people around me and not one has something interesting to say, something that would make me stop and think. But a funny thing happened the other day. I started reading a book, Hack, in New York, which by the way gives a new high to my list of “pulp-ish” books and coincidentally its about a new york girl taxi driver. As I was reading it at the New York airport waiting for one of four flights to Baku, it made me so nostalgic and miss chinkaa so much I felt sick to my stomach. Reading about 3^rd and Lexington Avenue and reminiscing how I was living there a couple of hours ago and the next time I would be back may not be before a year… the feeling was painful… is painful.

 

Anyway I was reading the book in the bus on my way back home from schlumberger and this guy asked me what I was reading since the title was slightly striking – “Hack – how I stopped worrying about my life and started driving a yellow cab”. I told him what the book was about and how I hadn’t really bought it but picked it up from the reception of our apartment building in NY and was reading it just to know how it ended. He gave me an unexpected reply. “Do you read boks just to know the ending?” I became defensive and told him that it was the case only with this book since I had gotten hold of it by chance and I hadn’t chosen it like the other ones I read. He seemed satisfied by my reply but I wasn’t. I had barely talked to this guy much in the past but in that moment I wished we had or we could. I have my own big group in the company and in the past one odd year its been established who are the single serving friends, who are more than that and so on. This person actually said something that could’ve led to what would’ve been a very interesting conversation.

 

This got me thinking do I really read books just to know the ending. Do I watch movies and other series just coz I am curious about what happens at the end of every season? It was a sad enough thought already. This reminded me of what I saw in the movie Friends with money. An average movie on the whole, there is this woman in it who is a very famous Fashion designer but she wouldn’t even shampoo her hair coz it was so monotonous and then she says, “This is how its gonna be the rest of my life. Its like we are all waiting to die.” So are we really just reeling through life just to know what happens at the end? Isn’t the process supposed to be the essence of the whole thing? If so, then why aren’t we able to appreciate it as much as we should? Why can’t we enjoy what we already have or already know rather than waiting for the next big thing to be curious or excited about. Actually if you think about it, all these questions are kinda rhetorical coz if someone asked me this I would’ve come up with very precise slightly philosophical answers to each one of them. But I guess in this case, just introspecting and mulling over the whole thing is more interesting and seems more meaningful as compared to the answer or outcome for a change.

pain or no pain

Lately I’ve been thinking about pain. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been in a lot of pain the past few weeks with all the knee ligament inflammation and limping my heart out, pumping pills and being cranky all the time. Yes, I am talking about me and not House though all the similarities are a weirdly pleasing coincidence. For the record, this wasn’t some regular muscle pull et al but a gigantic pain in the ass…metaphorically. I couldn’t walk at all for days and whenever I attempted the pain was excruciating.

 

Anyway, I took the pain as a sign. I have this theory that says when everything is going on fine with you, you better watch out. Its true and its one of those axioms in math that apply no matter what. Not a theorem, an axiom. Those who know the difference between the two know it’s a big one. So in a way I was happy that I hurt my knee because it meant that I was paying for the teeny tiny good things that have happened to me lately and according to my tried and tested theory what went around had come around.

 

Then I wondered how fucked up the whole idea was that if something good happened, something bad has to happen. Its like the cycle of daily mundane life. But who’s to decide how much pain is enough pain. You see all these people hurt both physically or emotionally so badly that you feel sorry for them. So how do we judge where the regular knee pain ends and the oh-i-feel-so-sorry-for-her pain starts?

Not that I would ever want that kind of pity but the funny thing is that I did get it. From my roommates because it was my first day, first week in Kuwait… a new place etcetera. From my parents because…well they are my parents. And even from my sisters from who its actually hard to get pity. And that made me feel guilty. All day I would sit in bed and feel guilty. I would actually try to quantify how sick I felt to see if all the warmth and sympathy was deserved. But then there is no way to quantify it. So guilt it was. It’s one thing I think I feel the most often. One day off from work and I feel guilty. Not because of my workplace or that anyone couldn’t do without me or my work for one day in that big fucking oilfield ship but because of me.

 

All four years in college I bunked classes left and right but everytime I over slept, everytime I went to nescafe instead of the lecture, the guilt was there to ruin the sleep for me once I woke up. And even though there are no more lectures, the guilt still remains. It’s like one of those forces in life that keep you from being happy. Because the moment the right/left side of your brain makes you feel happy, automatically the left/right side of the brain guilts you.

 

And the funny thing is that you bring the happiness, you work for it, but the guilt, it comes as easily as it gets. No efforts needed there. I envy the people who can overcome this feeling and if they could tell me how I think I probably wouldn’t even understand because its been there as long as my conscious memory goes.

So ya, it can extend to the point of masochism where if the happy is not balanced by the sad you feel weird, your day feels incomplete and you wait till the sad does come along because otherwise its not normal and by then the happy has lost all its meaning. One might think that I’ve taken it too far and may be I have. But then everyone has their defenses up and this would be one of mine.

 

I cannot remember what thought process brought me to this point in the post. Honestly, it wasn’t the intent when I started writing when I started but its like a continuum where the start and the end points are so different from each other but the chain of thought still intricately linked. So I guess they’re right when they say that pain makes you do strange things.

Where were you while we were getting high

 

Ideas floating all around. The coffee is kicking in but in a fleeting moment all track of preceding thoughts is lost and the glass is empty again. After months of planning today I finally managed to drag my derriere out of the house have a coffee/lunch at a cafe on a Sunday, my idea of a perfect Sunday here, anywhere. So I woke up and looked at the watch, time for some father’s day wishes, yup I am the cliched don’t-forget-to-wish-papa-on-15th kinda person. Certain things are bigger than my strict non conformance to cliches

Rambling on, I packed some stuff including a lappy and the gun seller - I can’t believe its taken me this long to read it…how lazy I can get even about things I seem to be so fanatical about, this time the thing being Mr. Laurie. It’s amazing he hasn’t had even the slightest mention on my blog yet; I think I am gonna save him for a later post – and decided to walk to the city centre aka the CP of Baku.

Thirty minutes of chit-chatting with Dinkaa later in which I found out that that my parents have bought a fictitious dog just to humor Chinki far away in the big apple because she thinks it’ll help mom get over her daughters. In what messed up world can a dog be a replacement for not one not two but three (awesome) daughters?

I watched Dan in real life the other day. An ok movie which I mean as a compliment considering I’ve seen a million movies with the same theme as a kid and have hated them even as a kid but the guy’s a writer, is kinda philosophical et al and yours truly is almost always drawn to such wounded people who need to be mended again House being on top of the list. Juliette Binoche says in the movie that her perfect day would be a day in a country where no one knows her.. where she doesn’t speak the language.. where she’s completely out of her element. OK I couldn’t stop myself from empathising here for very obvious reasons. I don’t know if I am having a perfect day everyday here in this strange country but definitely anonimity is very valuable for me. After spending every day of the week talking to the same bunch of people about the same kinda shit and then going out in the evening with the same people again talking about the same kinda crap again none of which I enjoy at any time; I have started valuing the solitude of my apartment a lot more than I used to three months back and spending a Sunday afternoon in a café where noone knows me except for the waiters since I am a “regular” here is simply put, nice. Which reminds me of what I wrote approximately a year ago and it still makes so much sense /*proudly smiling*/. That’s the biggest drawback of working; each day is the same as the previous and the next one. Which brings me to the name of this page and it still makes so much sense if not more as it did last year /*proud smile extending*/. So I do agree with binoche a little though I can think of a lot of better things for my perfect day.

Just to expand the readers’ movie horizons (assuming there’s more than one), I did see Sex and the city, the movie and I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Nah, that’s not true…it could’ve done a lot worse considering the plot. When you follow a series for six years religiously, it stands up for something, means something and the movie totally killed its essense for me which is a lot of damage. But still I HAD to watch it even though I knew this would happen.

I guess its time to ask for the check and leave and to end this almost perfect day I think I’ll buy season two & three of House as a sort of return gift for P’s birthday! Believe it or not, its one of those very few series where the re-runs are almost as exciting as the first time. More on it in my next post, or the post after that.

 

belated wishes

Whoever thought someone who takes way too much pride in remembering the most trivial details about the most trivial things would forget something as significant as her first blog anniversary. April 9 it was. Not a bad year all in all… though my posts would tell a very different story

As I was going through some of the stuff I’ve written, it turns out in most cases the chain of comments is way more interesting than the actual posts! What can I say… thank you, humble reader(s) for keeping faith in yours truly. So lets hope we keep the writing & reading going this year again.

To Just Be, nothing more

And I am back again! I’ve been watching this serial, I like to call them serials n not TV series or whatever coz that’s so impersonal and anything related to the TV sounds dumb, anyway, its called In Treatment, its about this therapist and his sessions with four patients one everyday and then his session with his own therapist the fifth day every week. that’s it, nothing more, no frills attached, just two people in the scene, one sitting on a chair and one on a couch, talking. I like it a lot, and when i say a lot, I mean in the degree which normal people can never associate with a serial. So he analyses small things that his patients say and do etc. which is cool because it makes a lot of sense. So I started thinking while I was watching it and I realized that I like it because I like listening to people and their stories so much that I can enjoy such a plain, even boring setting if I may say so much more than a lot of other exciting things. So much so that its managed to suck a blog out of me after all this time when writing has been, let’s face it, rare. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that I miss having a real conversation with someone in person once in a while and the language barrier here is pretty bad. So I guess some kind of vicarious happiness is involved as well.

 

Anyway, as I was saying, it’s like what I do all day everyday. I try to notice why someone around me or someone I talked to, said or did something he or she did, all the time and try to find some relevance in it. Even in the big picture, I do that. Why this particular thing happened to me. What sense does it make in the big picture. Why I had this conversation with so n so, was it totally irrelevant, just some banalities to people exchanged or will it come back somewhere in the far future.

So this guy is really good at what he does, I mean therapy, you know, helping people become aware of themselves, analyzing why they are the way they are, what effect their past had on their present and of course I don’t have a therapist of my own to do that for me (though I would love to have one, even if it means spending a hundred dollars an hour) I start to shrink myself, figuratively. I do it most of the time unknowingly but this time I was very much aware of it.

The one thing that I came up with as a fact was that I am obsessed with guilt. It’s the one feeling that comes most naturally to me and everywhere, even in the smallest of my actions. In anything I do, I find one way or the other to make myself feel guilty of one thing or another. Even just being happy can trigger guilt in me…which considering the fact that I rarely am happy makes it all the worse. I mean I can’t relax, just be for an hour and not feel guilty for wasting time, talk about type A. Is that normal? Isn’t being happy the ultimate goal in life or is happiness just overrated. I’ve myself read it or heard it from people a million fucking times whenever someone asks them “what’s your aim in life?” and they answer, “To be truly happy…” “What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now?” and they answer in the same tone as before “something that gives me true happiness.” Ayn Rand would kill me on the spot if she could read my mind.

 

Also I had the strangest thought. Everyone discusses what their profession of choice is and I’ve never really had an answer to that. Not even hypothetically. Being an engineer is not really my thing and I am pretty sure of that if not anything else. So I thought that being a therapist would be what I would want to be, even though it sounds pretty far fetched, even a little patronizing but I mean it. Its something I would actually be interested in doing and not just for the heck of it. I have no idea how someone goes about becoming a therapist and if its even a recognized profession in India since anyone seeking any psychological help is labeled mental but its something I would like to try. P, I think you knew this about me even before me when you started calling me agony aunt. I took that as a compliment by the way.

 

This blog was partially written yesterday…a strange thing for me coz I prefer to write in one go, whenever I have an attack and I read it once or twice, make the necessary changes and post it then and there, and I am completing it now and I am wondering how I should conclude it. Should I state some more things I’ve noticed about me and the good old reader (If there are any left) wouldn’t have noticed in me but then I think…well that would be one big list and I don’t plan to disclose shit like that on a public forum as long as I am sane, not now, not ever plus the list would be quite long. So I guess I am going to close by recommending In treatment to anyone who is even in a small way in touch with himself (sorry but English is a sexist language and I find it dumb writing himself/herself all the time, feels like I am writing a formal letter in an English exam) and feel some interest in having a mature conversation once in a while. The show is kind of fucked up, but in an awesome way. And then there’s Gabriel Byrne who is one of those lucky people who no matter what age, look super sexy.

 

I am reading this book, Norwegian Wood (thanks P, you don’t know how good I feel to have read 2 good books successively, courtesy you, but then you can thank me later for A long way down), not that it has any relevance here but I wanted to make a note of one of the lines I liked in the book.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that.” (That’s how ass was spelled in the book and I wanna quote it verbatim).

I wanted to note it down coz that’s another one of those things I’ve noticed, I like to indulge in self pity once in a while, you know with all the living away from home, family, friends… bla bla, and it always gets messy so better stay away next time.