Time of your life..

Today was the start of possibly the last year of my formal education. I don't know whether it was this overarching thought, or the effort of sitting in different classes to still figure out what classes I wanted to take or the nagging thought that the 'what-where next in life' question will stare back stronger with each passing day that made me slightly less at ease. I could sense a certain pressure in the air..
Once in a while you live through one such days, when you feel a little overwhelmed and insecure (at least I do). And this is what I do- I go about life doing the things that I am suppose to do while keeping a ear out for 'my song'. I don't dig into my song collection and try to decide which song would help me sail through the day, I simply tune into a radio station in the hope that something will come right by my alley. I have this weird theory that if randomly I come across the song that sounds just right then there is someone playing out music just for me. And yes there is someone who is watching out for me. Physiologically speaking my decision to not put the effort to search for the song and instead wait for it to play places me in a category of people who cannot claim to be truly action or result oriented. However I cannot feign happiness to prove or qualify as someone else..
I let myself be content with the sudden wind fall of a good song that played out just for me..
So today Pandora genome project picked up the following song for me as I sat down to figure out my classes, my resume, my winter travel plans..And I knew that this was 'my song'

"Another turning point a fork stuck in the road 

Time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go 
So make the best of this test and don't ask why 
It's not a question but a lesson learned in time 

[Chorus]
It's something unpredictable but in the end 
It's right I hope you've had the time of your life 

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind 
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time 
Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial 
For what it's worth it was worth all the while.."

I guess this will be the theme song for the year that starts today...

Beyond Reason..

"In a life lived long enough, there are strange symmetries that we recognize only later, if we recognize them at all- moments when an experience or a perception has a parallel moment in another time, a balancing echo, years in the future, or perhaps years in the past, a moment when it feels as if a circle is closing, encompassing and completing something infinitely precious.

Often this circle begins or ends, or sometimes begins anew with a slight disturbance in the world of the senses- a sound, a smell, a glimpse of something, an inkling vibrating just below the level of our conscious thought. This is a world we civilized people have been taught to dismiss. When the French philosopher Rene Descartes wrote "Cogito ergo sum" in 1637, those three words in Latin- 'I think, therefore I am' ushered in an era historians call the Enlightenment. In a sense, we still live in it today; it is a world in which the mind is elevated above the senses, where rational thought is judged superior to feelings. And yet, and yet.. things happen in our lives that challenge this conceit: slight shifts occur in the firmament of everyday existence, the turning world hesitates imperceptibly, the known constellations of experience inexplicably blink-- and everything is changed.

These are the moments that do not lend themselves to rational thought; they are entirely unusual.."

This is again a piece that stayed with me from some Sunday news paper reading in Kolkata. It stayed with me because I believe in it and I am a hoarder, everything that resonates with me goes into my collection.

But honestly some days are just too queer to explain. You cannot explain how certain things play out in a certain way. 

Then when you close your eyes at the end of the day, the fading ripples of the day slowly conjure some familiar patterns, and you can sense a certain clarity below the surface, as if 'a circle is finally closing' in front of your tired eyes..

Photo credits:sr

One Thing..

In life all we need to know is 'one thing', as simple as it may sound it is the most honest realization that I have ever had. I cannot claim to have explored an exceptionally wide array of experiences in life. I cannot claim to be the medallion at the end of the race. And I ain't no 'Sir Oracle; when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!”. I guess enough self-depreciating disclaimer, however we do grow wiser about some things as we go along.

When I learnt cycling back in first year in college, I would borrow it from my second year seniors and would try learning by myself in the free open spaces we had within the hostel compound. I took to the road only once I had learnt enough so that I wouldn't 'repeatedly' become the victim of cycle-hazing/ragging by the school kids who couldn't fathom how someone could make it to college without knowing something as basic as cycling. This fear wasn't a figment of my imagination; I learnt the hard way that you take to the road only when you can confidently be decently inconspicuous there! However this learning wasn't the 'one thing' that changed the course of my life. More basic than the fear of taking to the road was the challenge that I couldn't balance my cycle. I would focus on the wheel to make sure I wasn't banking either way and try to adjust the handle only to fall each time. Seeing me struggle 'the oracle doth spoke- child take your eyes off the wheels and look straight ahead...just don't look down.' He was the hostel guard; 'baba-ji' and he just shouted across to me from his watch tower and went back to smoking his bidi. Honestly that was the only fear I had to overcome, I didn't have to fight any rowdies or intimidation. I didn't have to learn to focus and align my eye, hands and feet and the wheel, I just had to learn to look away and look straight ahead. The rest would fall in place.

Yes it was that simple, just one thing to get the wind talking as I rode along in my purple ladybird!

The other anecdote isn't this prehistoric, this one is more recent. As I ran along the beach in Rio, I was jealous of all the people who could get into the waters and play with so much ease and absolutely no care for the world around. At that point swimming didn't just look like a physical activity it looked like a cultural hallmark. In India I felt our relationship with water is ostensibly sanctimonious or a little hypocratic in some ways. I have always loved the waters but I had never experienced this freedom and ease before. I'll have to admit that I have never been to Goa, and everywhere I did go I found myself around people who would walk gingerly along the shore secretly wishing they could throw themselves in the water with no care for the world. As a society we soak in so many inhibitions that we are afraid to be seen all free and wet and frolicking in water! All this critical realization wasn't the one learning that I needed in order to woo the waters when I went swimming this summer. 
I didn't enroll for any professional help and went all cultural. And what a cultural learning it was, my Chinese roommate was kind enough to religiously coach me for the first two days. Her Chinese bunch of friends took me under their wing and I was learning 'frog style' just as all Chinese kids in primary school! The south East Asians were the only persistent swimmers, the Americans loved to take a quick dip and then sloth and float in the summery sun. The learners, the having fun and the lazing crowd all shared the same lane and you could strike instant comradeship with the exchange of few smiles and sheepish grins. I persistently went every alternate day, initially just playing around and then slowly pushing myself a little harder. I observed others swim almost effortlessly but for me the waters were like a strong opponent that I had to fight with my hands, legs and my breathing. I had some what learnt to move my legs and hands which had some resemblance to the swimmers around me, but my breathing was killing me. I couldn't time it, and would end up coughing out or drinking in the water. I knew I was doing something wrong, I was missing something. One fine day after admiring for long a Korean guy who swam past me every time I was gaping for breathe I asked him for a helpful tip. He was caught a little off guard and in that slightly awkward exchange of English sentences mid water I could only pick up the word 'rhythm'. Yes that is the 'one' thing about swimming, following your own rhythm. 

The hands, legs, breathing all need to follow a rhythm and when you get one, the waters sing along.

Ah I feel so inadequate at times, learning to do all the things that most people seem to know since birth. And may be this should be a consolation for me that fundamentally I am just missing out on ‘one thing’ before I can join the elite club. So I tell myself it’s just ‘one thing’ that I really need to know before I can drive someday. Inshallah!

The benefits of boredom..

I can think of no better way to write this post than to use the words and images of people I took refuge in when I was really bored and aimlessly scouting for just anything under the sun and hidden somewhere in thin air .. Although technically that wouldn't qualify as being bored because i was reading interesting stuff and not really doing 'nothing'. 

(source:The heady thrill of having nothing to do)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904.html

For me the '2003' milieu extended till 2008 (maybe) because I read the following article on a boring lazy winter Sunday morning in Kolkata. I don't remember if it was TOI or Telegraph because we got either depending on the newspaper dada's whim. I couldn't agree less with the article so i took my pen and diary and wrote the damn thing down. Reproducing it here so that I have a electronic version with me (Google didn't show up anything when i tried searching) and sharing it across with the few loyal readers I have!

'Boredom's doldrums are unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life's most quintessentially human moments..

 A long drive home after a frustrating day could force ruminations. A pang of homesickness at the start of a plane ride might put a journey in perspective. Increasingly these empty moments are being saturated with productivity, communication and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices.

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries- one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing something (can't figure out the actual word). To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works. Granted many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the point of life?

There is a strong argument that boredom-so often parodied as a glass-eyed drooling state of nothingness is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science and even love...'

This breezy read was followed by a philosophical entry from a book, 'The unbearable lightness of being' that I read in Hyderabad, 2010. The book did not talk of commonplace boredom that we experience in short spells of idleness. It talked about a chronic aimlessness, emptiness, ‘lightness’. I felt that the following extract beautifully captures the whole essence of the book 

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being.

This is the thing with philosophers they can use dense arguments in the opening and the middle only to leave it open ended in the end... I love to do the same sometimes when I post a blog at 1:39 am.

'Not' for the camera..

There are some questions that we try not to ask ourselves; we are afraid of the answers..Honesty is not the sweetest potion for the bruised soul.
I know of the people I have hurt and the times when I have been selfish..
And for all the above times when I ask myself if my regret today would earn me forgiveness for the past I am afraid of the answer.

There are some equations in life that remain unbalanced; we are secretly afraid of change.. To change for someone is not the easiest for the human soul. I know of the people I alienated and the people I failed. And for a small subset of people above, I sense their uncomfortable absence but I am afraid to change the nature of silence in any way.



There are some moments in life when you pause and reflect and realize that we are but human in the end., far from perfect..
Yet we can strive to be a better version of ourselves as we grow and learn each day. Yet we can have the heart to love and accept the less  than perfect version of the people we meet.

There are some moments in life when you are just caught unaware on the camera. Lost in thought somewhere in your own world..before you shake off your reverie and break into a wide smile for a pestering shutter-bug but beware sometimes these are just a bunch of posers!

epilogue: Dedicated to my old laptop..-''Not' for the camera.. but actually 'For' the laptop!'
However the post turned out to have no reference to it. I guess just another of  my imperfect ways to say: Dear old Dell you will always be missed!

Photo credit: sr

Old Friends

"Old Friends 
Old Friends 
Sat on their park bench like bookends 
Newspaper blowin' through the grass 
Falls on the round toes 
Of the high shoes 
Of the old friends 

Old Friends 
Winter companions the old men 
Lost in thier overcoats 
Waiting for the sunset 
The sounds of the city sifting through trees 
Settle like dust 
On the shoulders of the old friends 

Can you imagine us years from today 
Sharing a park bench quietly? 
How terribly strange to be seventy... 

Old Friends 
Memory brushes the same years 
Silently sharing the same fear 

A time it was 
It was a time 
A time of innocence 
A time of confidences 

Long ago it must be 
I have a photograph 
Preserve your memories 
They're all that's left of you"- Simon Garfunkel

photo credit:sr

The Question

I tried to put on a ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ hat as I tried to delve into this question, which always elicits a different response from both sexes.
I have always asked a question for curiosity sake from all my friends who are contemplating proposing or getting engaged or tying the knot in near future. I mean anyone 'in the process of', ie the stage that is beyond the safe single pad but not quite there, something like the 'no-man's land.'
Well to be honest there are quite a many questions that I can ask such a person. But then again I can recall many a college hostel nights that turned into wee hours of the mornings, debating and deliberating on many of these questions. And I might as well use a little high school Shakespeare to sum up these conversations:

“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.”

So when it comes to this question, we are all pretty much Gratianos. Now some folks may get indignant at being referred to as Gratiano, but that's not even the point, it’s the missing ‘two grains of wheat’ even after the whole discourse.

So I just pose one standard question. The response I almost always know, but I still do the ritual just for the sake of collecting enough evidence before posting this blog. And apparently that day has come finally!
So moving on to the question:
'Madame/Monsieur: How do you feel about your life changing decision-Confident/Confused?'
I will have to admit that I manipulate conversation/people to get one of the C-words out or try to gather enough evidence in favor of either one of the two words.

Well whatever it is, this question inevitably evokes the same-different response from men and women!
Same as in the answer is the same always and different because the answer is always different for men and women(I just wanted to make the statement more obvious because sometimes my sentence construction gets totally misconstrued and the wittiness gets downright obscured. Well some people might even try to contend the wittiness part but then I am running the jury here so-'Objection Over-Ruled'!)

So here are my survey results- men always seem to be 'Confident' and most women confess to being 'Confused' ( a little/ totally, somewhat) with a very small fraction wriggling into the Confident zone. So before I propose my theory a disclaimer:

There is nothing like absolute truth so there might be exceptions, I accept cultural, socioeconomic and even political anomalies.
Then again my sample set may be biased because I am talking about people I know and not downright strangers.
There might be resemblance to people I know and who have had this conversation with me, but I have tried my utmost to conceal identities.
I detest all gender biases and stereotypes but regardless I believe I have a point to make.

With close female friends I always know when I broach this topic, I am in for one long conversation full of stories, anecdotes, assurances, reassurances, novels, movies...
The arranged marriage conversation starts with a confession of being ‘totally confused’. Slowly it banks towards feeling slightly more ‘confident’ about ‘this person’ than all the others paraded.
The ‘love’ or ‘self-arranged’ conversation starts with a confession of being ‘totally confused’ about doing the right thing. There are fears of throwing in the towel too early or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (‘the baby’ being the friendship along with the freedom-‘the bathwater’). Usually here the conversation can bank either ways- a reassured happy ‘the end’ or a contagiously confused ‘hmmm’ on both sides of the line/chat/booth.

So here is the first observation, most women (guilty for generalization) can talk an awful lot deal. The ‘confused’ response gives them the perfect alibi to speak a great deal. So because women can speak a lot they come up with the ‘confused’ response.
Speaking again in some/most cases is related to thinking; those who over think always have something to say. Most women (guilty for generalization again) over think even the smallest details of their lives. So again the hyper active brain cells align towards the ‘confused’ response as they try to foresee different scenarios.

I have created the perfect stereotype: women talk a lot and think a lot and therefore respond as ‘confused’ to the above question. Again exceptions exist but some people like yours truly can be charged as guilty on both the above counts.

Coming to most men I know, they like to sound as the most confident people at least pre-game. They will tell you that ‘she’ is undoubtedly the one and quickly dart off to the next topic of discussion. Talking is not their strongest suit in most cases and the quicker they can wrap up a sticky conversation without much dissection the better. It is somehow this urge to strut as the stronger, confident person that explains the choice of response.
The decision-making process takes an entire 180-degree turn between men & women. Men predominantly play the pursuers and in most cases look(think) before you leap is an alien concept when faced with a moving(moody/mysterious/unpredictable/confusing) target! The reflection, contemplation, thinking, confusion comes later when the act is done.

I have created the perfect stereotype: men try to escape conversations and their mantra is to act before thinking and therefore they respond as ‘confident’ to the above question. Again exceptions exist but most men can be charged on guilty on both the above counts.

The bottom line: you can trust neither men nor women when it comes to this question. Psychologically, genetically socially each is more inclined to react in a particular manner but honestly no one really knows the answer to this question. At least not one that can be accurately put across in words, so the apparent myth-‘it just feels right’!

What a long wordy post.. when I could just go and post the following song. I am confident of at least one person who is never coming near this long post-my brother!

Any further insights, arguments, comments are always welcome to develop the theory better..