Spirals

Listening to your heart is never a crime. There is a common misconception about the whole matter though. All your life you are taught about being honest to yourself. But when the key turns in your life arrive, you find far easier solutions in lies. And to your surprise, the same people who taught you otherwise encourage you.

Listening to your heart is being honest to yourself. And these days there aren't many who dig deeper into what their heart has to say. We all keep talking about integrity and honesty and the likes but what really exists,is an idea. A false lead, a lie that you have planted n your own head. One of these gives rise to every other until you are wrapped up in a cocoon of lies extending over years which you cannot rollback even if you wanted to.

A little but of self control is always good to be exercised. Lies surround this one heavily. Take cigarettes for example. Every addict says he/she is not addicted to it. Yes, a few may be telling the truth. But no matter what they say, ask them to quit. And there are bound to be days when the cigarette count is way ahead of what they constrained on themselves. A lie is all it takes to fool the mind which is the most intelligent machine and the dumbest one that ever exists at the same time.  Or take the foodies,trying to cut down. The french fries and the pastries are never to be eaten. But yeah certain days do make for exceptions. Except that they never do. A lie is all it takes to tell yourself, "its just one day" . And the day never comes.

Old friends make for the best times. Life isn't a movie alas! Any place is the start of a new journey, new friends and new people. And hardly anything from the old life accompanies you. All you can do is reminisce and smile. With the distance, time takes the upperhand slowly and then there's nothing to talk about. Two different tangents and none close enough to each other to get an inkling of what the other is all about. Slowly and steadily, you recognize the new life as your own because of the new sense of familiarity and accept every aspect about it till it makes you smile whole-heartedly. Your laugh changes with people and soon enough it sounds the same as the old one. That's when you've blended in.

People

How our lives are all entwined. In every walk of life we meet people who are not even remotely related to us. But yet somehow somewhere I feel they are just the same once you get to know them. Whether they hail from Bahrain or Trinidad or even from some other part of your own country, there definitely are cultural differences but if we get to know them properly, we'll know they go through the same things we do. Schooling, colleges, bunking, movies, music, hanging out with friends, coffee, chocolates, working, companies, families, babies in the household, siblings etc are never much of a different scenario. It's just how we perceive them.
Starting work in my life was an apprehensive moment. I arrived in Pune city, all alone and put up at dad's friend's place. Such nice people. The city is just so small. It'll take a maximum of an hour and half by car from one end of the city to another. Transportation is horrible and oh-so-expensive. But I made friends at work and people are really nice. I have always wanted a n eclectc mix of cultures to work with and now I have that. I have colleagues from every corner in India and one from the center even. Everyone's pretty cool and the interaction level is just amazing. Out of the 25 in my batch, half of them are from my college so no difficulties there although I do wish things might have been shuffled and mixed a bit more. The other half include the West, North, South and the one from central India.
Getting to know them slowly, I found how we are all just the same with same responsibilities, lives, ways of doing things, but each with a different dream. Maybe these dreams are not very clear to me as of yet on the 3 weeks I have spent with them, but it is clear that everyone is looking for something, looking to climb higher, looking for their dreams to realise. We've all had similar setbacks, downfalls and our own shares of bad luck; but at the end of everything we are now all together at Tech Mahindra. Seems like a sign, does it?
With the start of office, writing s just gone outta the window, as is songwriting and playing guitar..... People keep telling me about my gifts and talent but I have no idea about where to put them to good use. Work life is a boon and a vice at the same time. On one hand its that independence, the financial independence, the freedom that we are supposed to enjoy. On the other hand we lose everything dear to us, everything we loved or had wished to continue, especially the hobbies.

Little Bird

It's been along time since I last wrote anything. Will probably be my last while in Calcutta. Next week I leave the City of Joy to start work at Pune. And if all goes well and I don't get kicked out, Tech Mahindra shall be my way of life for at least three four years. I'd prefer less though.

Life in Calcutta is abuzz right now. Lunches, dinners, friends, family, with the home training thrown in, all in a muddled up mess. Amidst everything, I found this little sparrow which sleeps right outside my window behind a pipe. Everyday its there, sleeping peacefully as the Havell's stand fan whirrs incessantly in my room through the night. Nothing to worry about except for food and water. But it manages somehow. But yeah, just two of them compared to the thousands of issues I have, face and have to think about? Nothing I guess. To me,it's just free.

A new start to life is around the corner. What I have always wanted. A restart button, a fresh city, fresh people, fresh experiences. But I don't feel excited at the prospect of it anymore somehow. Somewhere I seem to have aged and come to live for others but keep saying that I only live for myself. Life's taught lessons in these 23 years. Some wonderful and some not. I wish to learn from the ones that are not. And I find myself staring at this guy who is somehow 23 and doesn't want to be. Living for myself was this idea when I was young. That I'd have an awesome time, awesome friends, awesome everything. But that's hogwash, brainwash.Now that I know a little of the world and the kind of people it holds, I know all of that is just in the movies, the books and the celebrities. But the fantasy hasn't died out yet. I have taken life's decisions holding family in regard always and I have found at the end of the day, I am happy that way.I have worked hard to have good friends, to be liked and be there for all I care about. But being a sober, decent, nice person hasn't really paid off. That's exactly what keeps that old fantasy alive even though I know its not possible.

I hope Pune bears luck in the guise of mental satisfaction for me. That's one thing the last few years of 23 didn't feel like giving me. Made me feel hopeless, helpless, hapless, pointless, worthless and all the "less"'s there could ever be.

Stuck is what you are when you are scared of heights but keep looking down from the overbridge.

So I was standing there. Looking down at the cars whizzing past below and enjoying the pleasant dancing wind in the middle of the sultry evening. With a cigarette in my hand. This overbridge is five minutes from my house where I come over to stare at the lights and the cars and the people rushing about in pandemonium. Gives me a feeling of "elevated-ness", supreme to all those below me in a mad rush. Sure, there are others spending time like I am on the same bridge. But who cares? My imaginarium after all. 

So anyway, I am scared of heights and this is one of them which should not be entertained one bit by people such as me. First of all there is the damn elevation, add the thundering cars and buses below it that shake the bridge every now and then.Makes for a Frightful thought. But somehow I feel like standing there, exactly at that place where I am supposed to feel scared. I guess all of us go through stuff like this everyday, doing things that we are scared of, sometimes out of stubbornness, sometimes out of  no choice, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes out of anger, but rarely because we want to. I go through a combination of stubbornness and want regarding the overbridge situation. 

I like the place, I like looking at the lights surrounding me, I like thinking about my life standing there and smoking away, I like the chaos beneath me, I like the fact that I am separated from it, I like the fact that I am part of all that chaos, I like the fact that I can escape from it by climbing a few steps, but I hate the fact that I have to keep going back to it. Like us, like everything else, like 1230AM,1st May, the little bit of  freedom is temporary.

I am stuck. badly. All my life, I have wanted a life that would be my own, where I would be king of me. I wanted to move out, see the world, know new people, learn different cultures. I don't know if my time has come yet, but I sure feel it has and that it's slipping by. Once I start my corporate career, a bit of financial independence would make life a little more easier than what it is now(hopefully). But it never seems to start. The joining date gets delayed and delayed. Plus, my share of luck hasn't been working hard at getting through other jobs even. It's  become a dreary, sludgy process, dragging it out day by day with nothingness attached and more of it to look forward to the next day. And the heat seems to bum it all the more. Calcutta is soon going to be very uninhabitable.

I don't know why I keep going to the overbridge. I think it gives me a little more hope so that I can pull through and face another day of uneasiness, fright and joblessness. And anytime it gets a little too claustrophobic, I know I can always find my freedom by those railings.

One more chance

Hear when the bee flies its last course on its road

Hear when the clouds stop gliding in their silent boats.

Hear when the oceans trickle the last drop onto the shore.

Hear when the wind howls the last time it sweeps around the globe.

See where the pearl moon beams dance on their way in the night

See where you have stopped still when anything had gone right.

See the broken masts of the ships that you had made to fly

Nowhere could you ever go, consumed by your selfish sight.

 

Come when the earth has eaten away at every one of us,

nothing left of the life that had created such a fuss.

Come when the morning star disappears gently into the cold

nowhere to go but the blackness where our story began to unfold.

Come where the last of the candles flickers out its light

from thereon you shall see the way through the darkness of the night.

Come where the rain pounds its many drops, wet upon the floor

there u shall wash away all your desires evermore. 

Transitions

I realize the changes in me sometimes. The realizations sometimes comes out of self-introspection but most of the time, I realize the changes because of what people say about me. The latest one is a dangerous one. Very recently, quite a number of people have told me that I seem more robust and talkative over chat and other media. But I don't talk much when I have met them. Meaning, I have started to accept the Internet as my media to open up and be myself and not actually be myself in front of people. My virtual self has started to take over me. Which shouldn't be the case.

Change,anyone?

I think we are all the same, yearning for childhood the same way sloths yearn to sleep. Sometimes its almost overpowering. Almost scary later on. Makes us rebellious in some ways I think. We get stuck in loops,never wanting to change certain things. It's almost comical from a certain angle. I saw this elderly man while on the bus, still wearing the same huge glasses that were in fashion during the 70's, wearing worn out leather shoes, carrying a small sling bag that women used to carry when we were kids, wearing his trousers way up, stretching his legs one by one at intervals.

Looking at him, I had a funny thought: if this man and some others like him are stuck where they were in their younger days, what will some of us from this generation look like when older? Imagine old people wearing trousers all the way down from their buttocks, wearing bracelets, playboy bunny earrings and bandanas, converse shoes, and glasses that cover every color possible. Its funny to think about.

But the point is, we're constantly yearning. Some of us express it, some of us don't. We all like certain things and wish they existed forever. And we try to hold on to them however much the world around us changes. I shall keep watching episodes of FullHouse and FRIENDS because there will never be shows like them on television, because television isn't the same anymore,because they remind me of the simplicity that childhood was, because I could relate my life to the characters on the shows, because I learned a lot about life from them. I still love reading Enid Blyton because of the way she wove her words,so intricate and beautiful yet so simple and easy to grasp. These are things to cherish forever and I would never want to change these. But reality is, we hardly get time to go back these days. We always want to move fast, have friends all over, stay connected via social networking sites etc. That's the priority now.

How do we accept change when we aren't ready to do it? Its just something we have to force upon ourselves. And most of us hate having stuff forced on us. But there isn't a way out is there? Cuz once we're out there, we're trapped before we can say "Shit! Boobytrap!!"