Reality Dawns

Reality is a strange thing. It leaves a weird sensation after it hits - sometimes good but mostly not good. It's weird because till reality hits us our expectation is the only form of reality to us. Sometimes the ignorance or lack of any expectation makes it less weird - may be that's one more reason in support of "ignorance is bliss". 

I see 2019 as the year of renunciation of life in US. About a decade ago it was easy for me to comfortably move on with the fact that few of my friends have moved to an another country or a distant place. May be I had a lot of friends back then or may be I had my sight set on something promising or exciting in my own life, the fact is I was distracted enough to live with the reality. When one of my very close friend moved back to India I was mostly very happy for him but also to some extent I felt a bit sad and lonely. This week another friend of mine is moving out of US and it felt very strange to imagine the future without him or his family being around when I meet up with the other remaining friends. It's not like I meet these friends very frequently but the few times I meet them are the only times I meet people in my frequency range. The older I grow I realize that I'm growing emotionally lonelier. 

Career, hobbies, fantasies sometimes cloud the reality of life. We can't escape when the reality shines strong and long like the days around the summer solstice. It feels weird to experience such moments under the bright shine which refuses to cease till late into the evenings. As always I naively hope that time is the panacea of all such pains.  

Quote Unquote

“I run because if I didn’t, I’d be sluggish and glum and spend too much time on the sofa. I run to breathe the fresh air. I run to explore. I run to escape the ordinary. I run…to savor the trip along the way. Life becomes a little more vibrant, a little more intense. I like that.” 
- Dean Karnazes

This quote presents the state of mind of many runners in a succinct and simple style. I loved it instantly and didn't want to lose it. 

P.S: Discovered and learned from my friend Nitish a.k.a Chingi's Facebook post

Empathy

Relationships of any nature need this indelible quality called Empathy. In simple words it means to understand the perspective of other person. It is Empathy that enables us to be less judgmental of other people. It is also explained as "the nature of seeing the world through gentler eyes". 

We all have relationships - with family members, friends, colleagues, society in general and the world in large. Most of them are sustained based on this particular quality. The fact that we are able to sustain some such relationships in our life means that we are all Empathetic to some extent. We are all humans, so we also tend to lose it few times and that explains the reason for volatility in some of our relationships. 

We need it the most when a conflict of opinion rises in a relationship. A conflict need not be some sort of an ugly war and a conflict need not be between a good person and a bad person or between a good intention and a bad intention. Conflict only means a difference of opinion. In this world smart, well-intention-ed, good nature people have conflict with each other. One person need not have ill intent, or be evil or crazy to have a conflict. Good people have conflicts with good people. What helps us reconcile those conflicts, what allows us to have better relationships at all levels – with society or in a family is Empathy. 

In such conflicts what matters the most is how much we understand the people on the other side. It might be a scenario where the other person might seem to have a fundamentally different opinion but that doesn't mean they are crazy or bad or out to get us. It only means that they had seen the world in a fundamentally different way through their upbringing and experiences. When we fail to look beyond the people we know or the patterns we had seen in our past that is when we fail to understand the other person. 

It might not be specific to a generation or a person, but rather to a context or certain personality that causes us to NOT understand the lack of empathy in us while being in a relationship. Especially when we deal with people who are emotionally very close to us we tend to lose our sense of empathy. It happens unconsciously and it becomes difficult to realize this. When we begin our conversations we usually start on a balanced tone with an intention to share our perspective, make a good point and simultaneously try to understand the other person's point of view. Then things begin to spiral out of control. Sometimes we end the conversation with anger and lack of any patience or any desire to understand  the reasons for anger in us/other person. We fail to realize that things we said in such anger might not be the right things to say in such moments. We also fail to put any further efforts to understand why the other person sees the world so differently than we do.

Why do we tend to act like that? 

I learned that we tend to easily lose our sense of empathy when we deal with two kinds of people - those we like and those we hate. It is easy to see that we don't try to understand the people we hate. In case of people we like the most we typically lose our empathy and it causes us to sometimes behave the worst with the people we care the most about. This happens because we feel the pain when the people closest to us fail to understand us. It doesn't hurt when a stranger misunderstands us because we don't care for such opinions. When somebody close to us doesn't understand us, seems to be judging us then our defenses go up very high. It makes us emotional about it and could at times hurt us. In such a state of mind it is not easy to take a step back, think and try to take the perspective of the other person. 

Another reason for such behavior is our approach in dealing with people in such close relationships. Mostly we fail to see the other person changing in a relationship. People who care about the other person grow in a relationship. They grow to be more empathetic, more compatible and more caring. It is such changes that we fail to notice. We fail to notice such changes because we unconsciously get into a certain routine in any relationship - like with your brother or sister or friends or colleagues. Such a routine makes us to think in a certain pattern. As a result we don't update ourselves often enough as the other person is changing themselves from who they were to begin with. As an example - your sister or brother would seem the same kind of person to you but if you ask them whether they are the same person that they were 5 or 10 years ago in this relationship with you then the answer would be different. They would've grown more concerned (or may be less concerned about you), become more matured in understanding you and things like that. We don't see such changes in other people. We judge them as they previously were. We have to get better at updating and notice that when other people are trying to evolve, change and trying to be better we need to stop using the same arguments that we used with them in the past. We cannot use the same judgments and same reasons as this person is now evolved in life and relationship. 

Not that I am an expert but I learned these reasons and clearly observed the patterns of such behavior in a relationship. These concepts are simple but simple doesn't make them easy. Such qualities are easily developed through experience and an intention to understand people better. 

Old diary posts

These are some of the clippings from the diary I'd during one of those not so memorable years of my life. I didn't want to lose them, so I wanted to make them immortal by posting on my blog. 

2012 June 14

It has been more than 10 weeks since I'd touched my Math. Feels like a vegetable. 

2012 June 21

I talk to myself in a convoluted and complicated way. Ease out man, ease out. Nobody is taping your daily actions. 

You don't conquer with a single act. You need a series of committed acts. Don't wait to realize such a moment as it strikes you out of blue. When it strikes you cannot fail to notice it. 

Now back to business boy. 

2012 July 13

13/7: A mini replication of 26/11. One of the most wounded metropolis is struck again. People of Mumbai are once again forced to witness serial blasts, tensions and uncertainty. I am seeing all in real time now. As the news of the bomb blasts flashed across the news channels I was shockingly impervious. I was not expecting any casualties. I'd unconsciously assumed it would be a failed attempt at best. As the events unfolded the casualties revealed themselves. People scrambling over mobile phones, land-lines and emails to let their dear ones know about their safety situation. Our organization's newly appointed CEO ordered everyone to stay within office premises at least till the system is taken under control by the police. As the exits were shut people who lived through 26/11 recalled those times. The recollections had the tone of anecdotes though I could sense the underlying horror.

"The Maximum City" book walked me through 1992 riots. The stories I read about the police officers of Mumbai kept coming back in my head. I thought about how they would've had reacted to this. Especially the cop I adore the most, Rakesh Maria. When I saw him on the news channel, addressing fervid journalists on behalf of ATS, I was bowled over by his responses and patience with which he was repeating his answers to various forms of similar questions. He asked everyone to trust his team as they'd never left any case related to terrorism unsolved. 

Trust is what drives the people of this city. Trust in their hopes and hopes that their trust wouldn't be taken for granted. For ordinary people it is the interplay between these two emotions and for the rest of us it is the independence of these two. 

2012 July 31
Indian Railways - It's a vibrant organism. Colonies of people helping, adjusting, relaxing, cribbing, quareling and travelling. 

People are courteous enough to offer lover level of seats to women who couldn't climb up to higher sleeping berths. 

Sample Group: A young lady, not so well kept but has the confidence to carry herself through this world using her taking power. Her mother, not very different from the lady, accompanying her is more rustic in looks and behavior. 

People in regular sleeping coaches are not pretentious. 

Young Lady: "Bhaiyya neeche vaala seat de dona, sone ke liye"
Generous Passenger: Le lo na
Young Lady: Smiles. "Shukriya". 

This generous passenger was earlier allowed to stretch his feet on to another passenger's seat whose feet in turn were resting on another's seat. It's an interplay of intrusion, courteousness and comfort. 

The two women ask the men around if they finished their supper. Men answered yes. Then women then unabashedly took ethnic postures and gleefully talked about their good luck in having had the upgrade to an air conditioned compartment of the train. 


2012 August 29
People sometimes are unapologetic, loud, intruding, discourteous and presumptuous. 

Hollow parties; Hollower greetings and hollowest facades that grace such events. I was one of them though. 

New England, Jhumpa Lahiri and an Old Spark :-)

Don't judge my naming sensibilities through this post's title. I know the difference between "labels"/"tags" and "title", it's just a new design I am trying out and hope it wouldn't seem like a literary faux-pas when I read this again in future. Now there goes yet another deviated start.

This weekend's drive to New England region brought back my memories of the lives, I'd imagined, of characters from stories of Jhumpa Lahiri. It's the Boston city that rekindled my memories and further strengthened by the walk through MIT while gusty winds blew over the Charles after an unexpected downpour in the evening. The silent and sparsely populated campus along the river, the vibrant Boston city with it's curvy and tiled roads through it's downtown, ubiquitous evening chillness in early October, people running along the Charles through the drizzle and cold - all of them occur, if not together, in stories of Jhumpa Lahiri. As I looked around Boston and it's people through my own lens I felt as if I knew about a part of their lives. As I try to form an imaginary connection with the city I feel a dull pain deep down my heart. It's like the pain of loneliness but only stranger and hard to completely decipher to myself. Probably because the city Boston itself feels like a prototype of something bigger like probably NYC but it's not there yet and it doesn't want to be NYC. It wants to be bigger and more importantly a better one in a different way or rather in it's own way. The people don't know how it's going to be and thus there is a hope to see it every day as one wakes up. 

The next destination in the road trip was Nashua. I was bowled by the hospitality of the friends of my parents. Now they are my friends too. The families with it's daily chores, the funny Americanized-Indian kids who are inquisitive about anything Indian and new,  the youngsters-turned-extremely-patient parents, their combined struggles and joys. That was a welcome change to my life in NYC that seems too fast to stop and think about even the mere existence of life in the form I experienced on this trip for a day.  I realized that it's not like a hard to sell option to my life as I used to imagine earlier. It's the kind of selfless sacrifice one makes to create something bigger, with deeper meaning and satisfaction that only comes through doing it rather than prematurely, and foolishly, imagining about it esp in the wrong way. Such acts might be the sources of peace for people stepping into the "real" life as that had been the way of life for major section of successful people for all these generations and probably stands true for next generations. I am largely the product of such a sacrifice by my parents and it is the quality ingrained by most Indians.
Hitting on the last section of my post, rather my intimate one, about the spark that always burned in my heart. I realized at an young age that it's the spark that kept me hopeful, sane, peaceful, selfless, balanced and pretty much everything that one needs to be happy and satisfied. That spark was rekindled when I met a very distant cousin. I was meeting this person after about 15 years. Despite this long time I have vivid memories of the way this cousin's mom used to make me feel. She had this calming effect on the people around her which was driven through her balanced personality. I came across very few people with such personality. My grandmother and her mom, one of my aunt and this distant-cousin's mom, handful in over 25 years of life. The thing that sweetly bowled me over was that today my cousin was an exact replica of her mom. Her words, actions and personality as a whole had this striking calming effect. That's the effect I feel when I am in the company of my grandmother, aunt, parents and friends in Hyd. I never miss that spark as that's the one which ignites my hope and real-self and most importantly the satisfied-self. All the running towards my phantom goals took me farther from this aspect of life and that in turn made me cherish and long for such moments of this spark. As much as I fantasize that I find someone with who would make me feel that spark I fear that I may not come across such a person in my life and drift along longing for one. 

P.S: This post was surprisingly struck in the draft mode for almost an year and now I don't remember what content I planned to add to this. As I said earlier I love running but am physically lazy to run and I love writing but mentally lazy to elucidate my thoughts into words. I found this post lying dead after a casual talk about my blog made me come back to it. Content's original date was Oct 8th 2012. 

Love story

I am addicted to coffee and she is allergic to coffee, and that's our love story. 

Conquer the world

On the terrace with the burning mate for soulful I feel I can conquer the world,
on the last sip of gourmet coffee I feel I can talk my mind out with the person I wish to,
on the terrace with the city lights under my feet I am fearless and free spirited.

Coincidences Galore

This is not a rant but a debrief of an observation that sometimes makes me wonder and at most times makes me want to scream. It is bound to happen to me as I consider "others" choices as my obligations. "Others" doesn't mean everyone and mentioning it in quotes would suffice for this post. 

Let me put forward two scenarios. 

Scenario 1: 

I am talking to this person over some form of a chat. The conversation flows with the usual mutual well-wisher style Q&A followed by sharing the stand-out moments in an interesting style from the latest escapades with every stroke of the keypad attempting a catchy one liner that tries to make an impression or in other words consciously putting the best foot forward. After a few lines I ask the person if it's possible to catch up for a movie after work or a brunch on the weekend or a coffee or anything for the sake of meeting. Ta da there comes the long pause in the conversation. 

The person on the other side has been responding without any perceivable delay till the moment I ask for some form of meeting up. Coincidentally there is a long pause right then.  Every time. Thus the coincidence. Hello I am waiting here. Looking at my phone. Like an idiot. Till then I was working towards building my own formula for spending the hours that I aspired to spend (and thus sacrificed) for this meeting. I stopped building plans for myself and contemplated on the chances of meeting up. It's the fault of the "pause". The "pause" then makes me squirm, twitch and twinge. Makes me feel like that stupid teenage character in the teen pop songs.  

The tumultuous "pause" doesn't stop here but rather begins here. From the point where I send an offer to it's execution the "pause" could appear in many forms bringing upon it's own format of torment and torture. It torments and tortures me because I oblige too early into these forms of tentative bids. I structure my work and plans to accommodate these meetings. God forbid if I had to pull out from such meeting I call, and justify my actions. As I said I always feel more obligated in these scenarios. 

Isn't this pattern of pauses obvious to the other person? This makes me wonder. Isn't this person in the same level of emotion? This makes me scream. 

Scenario 2:

Oh god I seriously forgot what was scenario 2. I had it in mind as I started out writing this post and then in the middle of the this other person started talking to me. Look at me. I forgot everything. Now I am not forcing my memory to remind me the scenario 2 and wrapping up this post to meet this other person. God save you Jointy. 

Reclaim my voice

This new interface for Blogger somehow makes me feel old. New technology tends to scare old people the most so I use this as a test for aging. The new interfaces by Google had in-fact ruffled the feathers of many of its young-nerdy-loyal fans but that's a whole another subject to be blogged about. 

Blogging or just plain writing about anything helps my creative juices to be in a state of motion. They tend to freeze otherwise. I also find the blogging (or any form of writing) as both mentally tiring and liberating. A perfect analogy for me would be long distance running. I love to do both these activities extensively in my life but the tiredness, mental and physical, as a causal effect puts me off. Actually it's mental sluggishness to not overcome the feelings that are as elementary as prospective-tiredness. I still pull myself into these activities for the love of their aftereffects. 

During my recent conversations with my family I had been asked about things I do in my daily life. Now that I have some job to look forward to I tend to do nothing. I can't tell my parents that I do nothing. I feel ashamed by myself even when I consciously realize that I do nothing in life. It's not like I had achieved the utmost success that relieved me of any further labor in my life but it's plain sluggishness in my mind. 

Again all this isn't easy. Doing nothing is supremely difficult. Your mind tends to wander. I tried time and again to do nothing but failed big time. I end up watching mediocre movies, crappy videos on YouTube, stupid shit-loads of porn, read mindless gossip and other things that make me fluctuate through highness and frustration, mostly frustration though. Not having a Facebook saves me from one more painful activity but it is not helpful considering the complete picture. All these intellectually impeding actions make your mind  go bonkers. 

Your intellect brings up all the abstract thoughts that end up questioning your current state of inertia and existentialism. Essentially you tend to think up shit which further causes you to do something thus taking you away from doing nothing. I had initially planned to take on a life of nothingness for about six months but fortunately my fate had other better plans. Now that I had been convinced about the difficulty of leading a life of nothingness I plan to reclaim a few things in life. 

One of my friends planted in me a thought about blogging again. It's only then I'd realized that I had essentially lost my voice. All the thinking about my life, my career, my family, my future and my other-fucking-boring-stuff had buried my voice under meaningless fears.  Also all this talking with myself had been very depressing. The only times I don't talk to myself is when I talk to my buddies and sometimes to my family members. Buddies are hard to find and I realized it after my undergrad. Well I will have all new post about why people are fucking boring, frustrating and irritating. It is liberating when you don't have expectations from people. Have fun and get out.

Though I write for myself I need to lesser clutter and firmer inner voice. I will claim my fucking voice back and blow the people's minds. 

What is life?

Remember the song where Jim Carrey & co try what not by singing out what is life?

It keeps hitting me what is life and where is life? From the perspective of a vantage point, I am at a worst point in life to ponder about things as abstract as life but I say fuck the vantage point funda. I want to get this thing out my system. One way I had found is throw up all the thoughts or lines that flash in my mind. So here I puke:

• I am a good guy, bad guy, asshole, clever, dumb ass, awesome dude to various people
• Does losing myself to nature help me finding more inner peace? This is what I had felt after watching few videos of BBC Human Planet.
• Then I continue some more time on Youtube only to land on some sweet & cute college couple romancing all their way in life. I am unconsciously making romance in life as the most conspicuous thing in life.
• Is internship really not a big thing because I failed to get it?
• I never made the right moves with a girl only because I never knew if the moves were right. I am afraid that I might be abusing their trust in me, but khaas main dartha nahin?!
• What are the fucking right moves and why are they not fucking documented when millions of young-men spend time, money, thought in trying to figure this divine secret?
• Is it the Darwin's rule- "survival of the fittest", in play when you try to get a job, build a career, get a girl, have a stable relationship in life?
• Why not make it survival of everyone? It could be unsustainable! Fucking sustainability.
• I am only asking the question on my life. My life with all the things that happened with me, things that I had created, people I had shared my experiences with, people I like to spend time with, what is all this? Is there something to it or does it not fucking matter irrespective of I give a rat's ass to it?
• What am I supposed to do? What did I dream to do? What was I destined to do? What do I like doing? And what am I doing?
• Does my life has any color left?
• I am afraid of arranged marriage. What is this new fucking fear?
• This life with dual personality sucks. My perceptions differ so much from my family's ideas on life, and I am afraid of the clash.
• I may be wrong but I am adamant to accept their point of view without failing to have tried my idea.
• Now that I don't have serious responsibility my mind is fucking around all the shit in the world. Once I have a family and commitments to oblige then my spirit shall get nailed.
• Oh god that is what I am afraid of. Afraid that I perceive my spirit as being nailed by obligations and then drift along indefinitely with this baggage.
• I seriously need someone strong, stable and coherent with me in life.
• I hate issues in life.
• What crap was all that?

Dummies Guide to Get Rid of Facebook Addiction

1. Open a Notepad editor
2. Now close your eyes and key-in random alpha-numeric jabber
3. Keeping your eyes closed or looking at your keyboard only - first hit Ctrl+A (to select the random alpha-numeric jabber text), then Ctrl+C (to copy the random alpha-numeric jabber text) and Win+D (to minimize the windows to hide the random alpha-numeric jabber text from your evil eyes) at the end
4. Log in to your Facebook; Click on Account, Account Settings and then click the Change link against your Password
5. Type-in your existing password in the old password field
6. With the cursor in the New Password field hit Ctrl+V. Repeat this for the Confirm Password field and click on Change password button.
7. Log out of Facebook and close the browser tab/window

Hurray you are one step closer to getting rid of addiction. Now you could succumb to your urge to check the Facebook updates by using the forgot password utility but as I said at the beginning that this technique is for Dummies.

Happy Browsing-sans-Facebooking!!

People are strange ...

.. because they have strange personalities. I was introduced to a a motley of personalities when I stepped into the gates of my undergraduate institution and even more after I walked out of those gates. The good thing about undergrad life is you pick a douche and tell to him/her about their weirdnesses on their face but outside the college walls everything needs to be packed in foils of diplomacy.

Hate those bad self learned guitarists who relentlessly practice on a cheap guitar with a flat learning curve. And if the person is an introvert to the extent that you cannot predict the response to harsh (but true) reviews like these then you are facing an ugly social quandary. First the the rate at which the strings are pulled is so low that between the notes Christopher Nolan could have create some breathtaking action sequences at just 2nd or 3rd levels of inception. Next every piece that is played has only 2 to 3 notes which are put into a seemingly infinite loop. Is he trying to run a Monte Carlo simulation of some lame guitar notes?? There may be more notes from his perspective but trust me they all sound the same - pathetic. Sometimes he mixes these sounds with his terrible vocals, only to add fuel to the unwished fire.

Years of evolution doesn't bring a rational sensibility that is assumed to prevail in human actions. What do we call those people who walk away silently from requests to group formations? It is hard to say a 'no' but silently walking away makes the who scene more awkward for everyone. People tend to unconsciously become over-picky on such small things only to make themselves weirdos.

All the advancements in technology in every breadth of social-life is making people more active on virtual social-networks but leaving them socially-challenged on the real ones.

When boys had fun

Spare me for the use of sloppy creativity to name this post though the events I recount here undeniably conform to it. As a student of an interdisciplinary program at my university I was denied the regular fall-term break as the business and the engineering schools had them on different dates and this was one reason for my overt eagerness to have a blasting time in the Thanksgiving break. Unlike my earlier vacations this did not undergo any bloated planning which might be the magical reason for being lucky enough to have had good fun for three days.

The lump that I had developed in my throat is slowly melting away as I begin to enjoy the aspects this new place, people, its customs and moods. The break also gave an opportunity for Sarath to break the virtual shackles that held him in Penn State and explore new avenues (i.e. Ann Arbor, exaggeration alert!). After the expected arrival and departure of my cousin's family I had three full days to waste. Sarath's suggestions to bring in some old partners in crime (I know not many understand this) to enhance the utility function provided by this break were unabashedly declined by me. The fun, though, was not reduced a bit as we had alcohol in many of its forms pouring in the living rooms, back-home style foods to devour,many under-valued-girls who had surprisingly turned out to be valuable-assets to gossip about (who said engineers don't do cheesy-gossiping?!), propose plausible reasons for such a mutation in girls, envy about friends with hot girlfriends, rue about our decision to/not-to form some past relationships and look into the seemingly-obscure future. After a very long time (actually it had been about 7 months or a little more but seemed like it was in my previous-birth) I had spent my time in things like this with an old-buddy so it bought back the fun side of my personality. It was also the melancholy tone of my daily schedule that made such obvious boy-group-fun seemed lot-of-fun.

Running behind dreams

I was unconsciously aware always that there is dissatisfaction hidden inside me. The daily rush, chores and chaos keep it hidden. But what is inside me cannot go unnoticed. Sometimes I face it and feel very very awkward to have faced it. I eschew the moments like this but as I said I can't avoid them every time. Recently I came across a quote by Emanuel Derman and it read as "Ambition is a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the present". This seems so true but should be taken very positively. It doesn't mean that the path to satisfaction is lack of ambitions. My understanding of it was that dissatisfaction cannot be minimized to zero as humans, in general, cannot be completely non-ambitious. But this dissatisfaction should not be allowed to encompass all the mind which leads to it taking over the peace and harmony of one's life. That said I realize there is a lot of dissatisfaction in me. I can see both the problem and the solution through myself but can't find the path from one to the other. I don't talk about it with people. When I am in such a soup I call many of my friends but never talk it out. Not that I am an extreme introvert but I find it hard to explain it to anyone. In my quest for answers to questions of my life life without questions I come across many solutions every day but most of them show that the previous ones were not right.

This hasn't stopped me from looking for a life like that. On this journey of my life I had moved from India to USA to pursue my graduate studies in Financial Engineering. This was not a small step for me as I had thought it was back in India. May be it is because of little time that had passed since I arrived in USA that the nostalgia of times spent in India hit me hard. May be because I haven't made friends as close as the ones in India that I feel very lonely here. May be because I always dreamed good about life in USA that I don't dream about my future in USA anymore. I never gave so many serious thoughts - so many times a day about my future as I do it here in USA. It makes me uneasy to depend on my family for my expenses and the fact that I am not financially independent even for my basic expenses makes me very uncomfortable. It is hard for me to live with the fact that I don't and will not have my own money for a definite foreseeable future. All this has been very tiring activity which I am unable to control it from affecting me.

After I stepped out of my flight I was not deterred by jet lag but I was wide eyed to capture every aspect of USA though there was this fear of lonely life lurking inside me. It was a huge relief to meet two of my friends in New York airport. My close friend helped me a lot to cushion a huge blow a deserted place can give to a new comer like me. I don't know what I would have done in case he did not pick me up from Detroit. As soon as he left me I descended into a state of loneliness. The awareness about the distance and time gap from people close to me had made it worse. I lived with a lump in my throat that threatened to overwhelm me. Memories of times merrily spent in Chennai and Hyderabad with friends and family gave a heart burn.

I am waiting for things to get back to normal with myself. All this for running behind my dreams.

Never miss a shocker

For the first time in my life I regret for not having a dairy. I know that I am in the age of blogs, micro-blogs but I somehow can't beat the concept of a personal dairy that is etched in my mind. It could be a fixation but I am helpless.
Few things always happen in my life with a definite pattern. The pattern is that whenever I dream of enjoying a good/service/place/whatever in a perceivable near future then ka boom it turns out to be a very big spoiler. Then it turns out that I stand in a position of remotest probability of savouring it.
A 'small' example would desribe it better. While I was planning my trip to US I had this offer of having an iPhone 4 from my chaddi-buddy. Who wouldn't want one especially if it is in the first couple of weeks of its launch? As obvious it is I had placed an order for one. I merrily announced this small wow-moment of life. The first hurdle was that AT&T refused to ship it to an address other than that of the current subscriber. So it happenned to be destined to my friend's place, Urbana IL. Fate had it that my friend moved to Dallas TX in pursuit of a job. When the iPhone arrived at my friend's home in Urbana, an intelligent Indian was asked the favor of shipping it to me. Now comes the street smart guy who sends this packet to me through USPS without a tracking number. A tracking number doesn't cost more than a dollar over the shipping cost. One level is having a service where people can send across boxes without giving out a tracking number in this day-and-age and the next level of insanity is my fate finding the guy who uses this service to mail a fucking $400 phone. What are the odds of finding oneself in such situations??!!
As the pattern dictates the phone hasn't arrived at my address even after 2 weeks of it being shipped. USPS ships them "ususally" in 2-3 days and yeah without a tracking number where the hell would one know where it is lying. Waiting for it without any information feels like shit.

One night ...

Till then it seemed like any other night I had been through after reluctantly getting stoned. I always wanted to say it to her but my inherent fears loomed large over my thoughts.

Fear of losing her as a friend or more worse is the loss of her trust in me as a friend. I always felt uncomfortable to decide my stance in a relationship. Being in some sort of relationship for some time doesn’t generate clues to quantize it into any particular kind so that it would be easier to take this relationship ahead to next level.

I waited impatiently many a moment as such to express myself to her. I had decided that night that I shall not let myself suffer this anguish because of my inability to speak out to her. I picked up my phone and dialed her number from my contacts. I chose then to sit at my favorite slant roof of our balcony to avoid any letdowns by people around me. My heartbeat sounded much clearer as my phone was trying to connect to hers and the rate peaked once her phone began to ring. It rang for more than 10 times without any response meanwhile I was contemplating her lack of interest to speak to me at that moment of time. After the initial expected number of rings each further ring was chipping off a part of my confidence. I had closed my eyes as a wave of such thoughts splashed all over my mind. Suddenly I heard her voice and it broke all those unsubstantial thoughts hanging in my mind. The voice seemed much sweeter to listen to especially after spending an entire day in the vocalizations of men devoid of romance. Surprisingly she sounded more enthusiastic than I expected and I sensed energy in her voice if not impatience. I always found it hard to visualize pretty women in real life getting impatient to talk to me. The conversation started off with either of us picking up the most expected ones from our questionnaires. But I was always in touch with my inner self and was determined to make it happen this night.

I changed gears and asked her one of my most intriguing queries. I could sense that she felt it all of a sudden out of blues but wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I wanted to ask you something that I had been thinking of sometime and you need to be frank with me.” There was this longer than usual gap before she said, “Go ahead, but do you really want to do it now?” I said “Yes. It had been weighing heavy on my mind so I thought I shall get my answers today.” “Fine with me” she said immediately.

Me: What do you think of me?

She: Hmm…what do I think, nice friend. You used to quite naughty in school but you seem more matured now.

Me: Ohkay. Let me tell you something. I had spent a considerable amount of time and thought about you since the time I had first met you. You were more than a friend to me. Your voice or your every message evokes in me a longing for you. You are one of those persons who created this impression very early in my life and had been creating it now. Recollecting you brings back the way you talk, smile, cheer, the way you start and end a conversation, virtually everything I had known and observed about you.

There were a couple of “Hmm”’s from her side as I revealed her all that I had in my mind. As I continued saying to her:

Me: I felt it wasn’t completely right to continue thinking about you and not letting you know all that is happening with me regarding you. I could have kept all this to myself and might forget it with time but in the end it would be unfair for the trust either one of us have in other.It had been quite difficult for me to keep thinking about it all by myself as it was becoming more uneasy for me.

She: Hey ravi … you sound quite heavy and serious.

Me: Yeah. Hehe. I hate making it so heavy for both of us. So I will straight away ask you, do you have any similar thoughts regarding me? Have you experienced any feeling as I had just said to you?

As I was feeling this pinch on my toes, I think it was due to the rough surface underneath me.

She:[in a rough voice]…arey ee domalu enti ehhe. (Why the hell are these mosquitoes here?)

It was Rapi who was moaning after an army of mosquitoes attacked his open back.

The intensity of the pinch increased and it was a mosquito bite that woke me up.

I opened my eyes with a haze to find the open back of Rapi lying next to me. He was squatting mosquitoes as the fan and the repellent got turned off due to power cut. I immediately closed by eyes in a fit of anger towards the stark reality I was in and adjusted my bed sheet to cover my feet from mosquitoes. When I opened my eyes after a couple of seconds to find what time it was I found my phone navigated to the position of her name in the contacts page.

I hit the call button and after a few incessant rings she answered sleepily: Hey ravi… what made you call in this middle of the night? What happened…are you fine?

She asked me these with her yawns terminating each of those questions. I reluctantly said, “If you are in a deep sleep continue, I will call you tomorrow evening.”

She cut the call and I too went to sleep after some initial uneasiness.

PS: Though the above story has a few real mappings to my real life this is the author's first take at a fictional story with a catchy-realistic-could-be-found-on-the-street type romance as the underlying theme. My inspiration for building this are my conversations with a co-IITian, ask her about how many lines I spoke to her had been used in the conversations written in the above post.

Events and Tags

• Trauma
  
  • Working, read it as being forced to work, till late Saturday and Sunday and being ashamed to say what I had been doing at work.
  • Not being able to garner memories of seemingly good work despite starting off with expectations of opportunity of commendable work and starting off nearly 8 months earlier.
  • Incapable of making any kind of constructive development either personally or professionally in spite of investing heavily in terms of time, money and thought.
    
  • Falling back on promises, plans and savings though showing off as meticulous in my journey to higher aspirations in life.
  • Superficially desperate but subconsciously not happy enough to try making new friends, read it as checking out anonymous girls.
    
  • Digging newer depths as more questions on my accomplishments keep hitting me, but only when I sleep and wake up sober.
• Cheer
  
  • Found a new reason to hate my work and move around carelessly ignoring the tasks.
  • Hope that I shall be moved out of my current role.
  • Hope that I will be less frustrating to myself and more charming to others.
  • I can't just live on hope but without hope it would not be possible to live.
  • I am more successful in building up a conversation with a fairer sex after getting stoned. Things are changing, though late, and the chemistry in my mind is spanking me up to not talk to boys at some moments.
  • Zen Estilo, oh I don't even remember its registration number. I am surprised that I haven't bothered to even look at its registration number though I praised its jazzy number plate and though I often look for patterns in others numbers.
  • Got back in touch with some old friends. Recently starting talking back to my way back school friend Divya after maintaining silence for over two years. Ego problems(?), whatever it may be, but they are all based on flimsy opinions.
    
  • Growing to be more rational with people. People recently have been quite open in commenting on my way of dealing with people. I unconsciously trivialize others opinions and many weaker hearts find it painful. I am not a baddie by intentions but I keep getting pulled off the ground and thus I do and talk weird.
    

These are the only two tags I could remember in life. Yeah I agree that most of it is black and white though it can't be. It's just that the gray just does not stick in my mind, it's just very volatile.

Deconstructing myself

I had decided that this shall be a long and ever continuing post, differentiated only by the names but not the underlying philosophy. But why should I be doing this here? Bluntly speaking I had seen many doing so out in the open spaces of the web, but I also have this gut feeling of this being therapeutic. Well I had grown up to not become embarrassed for citing such assumed, non-empirical and non-quantitative reasons for doing things in life.

And other important thing is I am writing this using Windows Live Writer. I was pleased to be swept off my its clean and easy to use interface, its WYSIWYG structure and the crispness it offers to the entire blogging process. I highly recommend this desktop tool for all those blog enthusiasts.

Lately I had experienced some major (I mean it literally) in my attitude towards various things in life. Not that this is something very unique happening with only my life, but the disturbing factor had been my inability to pin down the causes as bullet points. From being a lover of freelancing with my time for constructive things in life to being a restless clichéd employer, I see it all turning upside down for me. Hardly an year back I was quietly aspiring to take up a PhD, at least a master’s degree in my earlier love Electrical Engineering. After some brain washing, probably brain flushing, discussions with my mentor at Avaya, friends from insti, seniors and the world on the whole, it resulted in convincing me to being more monetarily oriented in the fast pace or short term while concurrently warning me that down-the-line these decision boundaries shall be blurred. Then I was riding high on bagging a job that pays lot, is finance related, where I could apply all the Math I had planned to learn for my elec courses and importantly that which doesn’t let me think which way I am heading in life. The few parameters I could tinker with in the last few months were only the courses that were offered and the BTP (the B.Tech Project). I was largely successful in bagging everything I wished for and from a birds eye view things were quite smooth and seemed to be on the right track. I was also hoping on the truth of a statement I read in a book that says if we ever wanted something wholeheartedly the whole world conspires to make it happen. The very fact that I am writing this tells that none of what I had planned had turned out to be concrete.

As with the courses and the BTP, I slowly learned it the hard way that it was all what I wanted to be rather than what I wanted to do. Not that I know what I wanted to do but I love thinking that this was what I wanted to do. What is it with this what that follows the other wants? The thing is courses and the project seemed dull, dry and did not showing me how to connect the dots to my future plans. Slowly the events I went through transformed me from an ace player to someone who struggled till the last minute to avoid getting flunked. In this struggle for survival in one of the courses I had to spend a sleepless night during the placements which had, I believe strongly, repercussions lasting till now. I had attended this interview where my dislike for its industry and location of the company was blurred by the money that was offered and the mental laxity caused by sleeplessness. Uneventfully it then took me to a place where all my silent fears came true blazing into my life.

The other kindred effects that seeped through my personality were being a bit too cautious regarding future monetary related activities, like earning to pay for my college, over-cautious about my life in general, like driving too slow, observing too deep into things around me and this compulsive desire to be as diversely talented as possible. All this in an attempt to find what really went wrong with me that made me feel like failing since a long time.

With the flow of things I had started working in a place where I have no one whom I could look up as an ideal in my interests. This place is too localized to even honor itself as international on paper, the things conducive for a satisfying work never seem to be in or out of my control and I am cribbing too much in life. There are many things that I hate about what I do daily but I don’t want to make it a hate blog against my workplace. I also have yet another silent fear that such seemingly normal causes and effects in life could transform me into something very unusual, say like the life of the protagonist in the movie Taxi Driver. I also think a lot about events shown in movies of such kind probably happening with me and my life, especially Scorsese, Tarantino style. To counter this effect I consciously spend a lot of energy to let positive energy flow ( energy is a potential and does potential flow?) into my life through my patient ear towards yoga, philosophy, my family and other such generally accepted peaceful activities.

Everyday I wake up to with a hope that things change miraculously overnight but find the same old stuff churning my mind. When will I like me, my life, stay in peace with what I am am and minimize the deviation from I want to be? Am I thinking about it too much? Am I asking for too much? Did this whole session of writing have any therapeutic effect on me? Yes, I can at least answer this precisely. But did it show me how to connect the dots to my future? No and I didn’t expected it do solve this mystery so easily.

Good for me, so should be good for all

I never expected myself taking in intravenous fluids like salines, electrolytes, iv antibiotics and stuff like that. As a child I assured myself that I shall not be lying there on that hospital bed gazing at the drops of these fluids like some helpless sick head, nothing insulting towards all those patients I had visited but I consider lying on a hospital bed quite insulting to myself. To some extent I am glad that I was still under the effect of anesthesia when this 2 inch long piped needle, that was a bit jazzy with blue and red stripes over a white backdrop, was pierced into one of my nerves. I dreaded it more consciously when it was removed from me.

Though I consider myself fearless for many adventures in life, people who know me certify so mind it I am not flaunting any wrong picture here, but injections and hospitals still send chilling signals down my spine. Even here in the hospital yesterday I was largely on my own once the formalities were finished. I managed myself after the surgery with cleaning my mouth that was embarrassingly oozing with blood, saliva and phlegm. I handled it to the extent of paying off the bills and discharging myself when most were asking if my parents were around. Well here comes the actual issue that I kept the details of the surgery under wraps as my parents would unreasonably feel too concerned about me and come down to my place where they could hardly contribute for my recovery. Yeah I understand that they can add a lot to uplift my morale but they would be straining themselves more in a city like Chennai and moreover I was physically fit as you would have had understood by now from the above mentioned chronicle of events.

It was also the effort by Krishna who had his unique part to add comfort to this entire procedure.

After the surgery I had to orally remain dry for about 10 hours and I had to plead the nurses to allow me get some water into my mouth and despite being laid off by the unnecessarily powerful anesthesia I was undergoing torture unconsciously. It was then that I imagined the plight of men in the conditions of war, remember the movies like Behind The Enemy Lines, Saving Private Ryan and you could add to this list now. Living on a liquid diet is also equally painful and this being the second time I am able to grapple it with more ease. I am anxiously waiting for a couple of my roomies b'days, that are gonna hit next couple of weeks, to thulp myself with the solid foods.

Yet another thing that was frigging me was the cold and this common cold had haunted me for a large part of my life. It was to an extent that I was never complete without a handkerchief. I could have been a little more calculative by not skipping the gym over the last week and avoiding things that were chilled but anyway it helped me learn how to prepare for a surgery. If the surgery I went through, which could easily be written off as a minor one, had to be planned to some level then imagine the planning that goes into undergoing a bypass heart surgery, liver transplants, the brain surgeries. I feel dreaded as I think about them and imagining someone close to me having to undergo such a thing shoots up my blood pressure.

Spending a day or two in any hospital clearly makes one understand how difficult would it be for family members if one among them had to undergo anything medically major , though one could write it off completely as just care, concern and probably their responsibility towards you. We cannot be completely irresponsible with our lives as our lives has a part that is our family, so it would be morally incorrect to consciously inflict them pain by us being careless.

So for all the folks out there be careful with your health, be it by driving carefully, eating healthy, maintaining a healthy lifestyle or whatever it takes. I could be going a little over the board here but realize that our lives revolve around doing things that ultimately makes the lives of our family and friends happy. We cannot stop the unforeseeable events but can definitely be cautious about things under our control.

Happy New Year and have a great life.

Right time, Wrong decision

There wasn't a time when a real time sound judgment was required and I end up botching up the scene, only to regret later about the better ways in which things could have been executed. The culprit in the most cases was my impatience and its derivatives like fickleness, short-sightedness and largely stupidity. The irritating phrase 'common sense is not so common' hits me to add more fuel to my burning ego.
I get conned by a clever beggar pretending to have lost the baggage on his pilgrimage bound tour to southern India and joining him are his hungry looking kids and females, together forming a family ready to con any gullible willing to lend his/her ear to their woes. I forgot to mention an uncontrollable factor called Fate, which I believe drives me head-on into these situations only to pull my feet down when life seems to be raising me with praises. I can't say what stopped me from helping them by taking them to the respective authorities or buying them the general tickets rather than paying them money. It is a feeling with huge guilt when I fail on things as simple as these as my career ambitions unsympathetically punish such faulty decisions.
Today when Ashwin drove into a bike which was parked at a wrong place, I pushed for paying entirely for the biker's repair charges. The point of contention is not monetary rather about paying for the faults. As we had paid entirely for the repair, which was not huge, it gives a picture where the fault is entirely ours while it was not. I could have fined the biker some amount for him to realize his share of mistake in the accident. This could have been the ethical conclusion but my impatience driven by the feeling that the amount was not as huge as expected, led me to yet another faulty decision.
The more I dissect these incidents various things pop to warn me. Respect my hardwork, only then I can respect the money I earned and spend it consciously. Patience - my mistake till now is that I tried impatiently various means to gain this. I first have to take the right path with a deep breath. Finally remember to knock the doors of my reasoning at such times.