Bloody Heaven

A nice, long break from the mundane eventualities of life is always welcome. Even though once upon a time this mundaneness was a dream; its becoming a reality makes everything else much more meaningful. The world seems to be moving on at a pace at which your footsteps aren't of much consequence.

It rains or the sun shines, people strike or go about their work...festival or regular-old-week-day...life is never at rest, click click click and another number dialed...click click click and yet another mail sent...click click click...voila! reporting the height of mundane!!!

It is inane, how things of significance start seeming like necessity if provided in abundance and how getting deprived of them can send one in bouts of melancholy...

Weeks ago, redundancy was a subject worth pondering...now it is nothing less than a fantasy...

What is still to unravel is... if "we look up" for happiness in the spreadsheet of our life, then how should the search field be defined and... how potent will the formula be if all the different files of our life are open from different sources?!!?

(GEEEEZZZZ!!! This is definitely NOT how I want my first book to read like one day!)

The sweetest of hell is the one that pays you to be part of it... and while everyone of us experience it at one point or the other, it can't be all for all of us.

Sometimes there is an escape route all figured out...sometimes you merely improvise ( like Captain Sparrow, if i might add)!

But hell catches up, all the same...

Money Money Money!

The world sure knows the value of money and yet tries hard to deny it!

It is believed that money can't buy happiness, memories and love. (But money can sure lead the way to all these!)

Even if you don't have money but you have integrity, your life is successful. (But it doesn't hurt to have money and a show of integrity!)

Money can't help you sleep at night...(But it can buy sleeping pills for you! Or better still, can provide you so many options that sleeping becomes redundant...)

If you flaunt money, you are tasteless...a Northerner(read Delhi-ite & Punjabi) in India and a Southerner in US!(But have money, you must.)

Money can't give you inner peace (But it sure can fuel some ambition and keep you young for long! After all, if you have more memories than dreams then you are nothing but old...)

Money surely isn't the best thing in the world (Yet it is gratifying to have as much of it as possible...)

Now, why would an entire specie be so mad about something as mundane as pieces of paper or in the more contemporary sense, digits in your e-bank balance? No other specie on the planet is even interested in barter...let alone finding a convenient medium of transaction. Nature gives and everyone takes graciously, the word 'transaction' is that much to them. But not us enlightened ones! We have to do things uniquely...don't we?!

And thus originated 'Money'...

Personally, I don't fancy money much... ( I can almost imagine the cynical grins of all those who are reading it)...green is really my color only when it comes to couture!

But the fabulous nature of money isn't lost on me either. I adore the idea of owning and purchasing and trading and hence...whatever money facilitates, I adore that. But not money in particular....

I mean, I would love to have the power of money! Never having enough of it have made me covet it quite often. Having some of it occasionally have made me appreciate its significance and being utterly without it at times have revealed to me what 'lack of inner peace is like'!!!

I could be a millionaire if fallen hair were the medium of transactions and not those green notes/shiny coins; sadly it isn't so! So the dream of money stays...

The desire to be rich and limitless is as enticing as ever. With time the (boring) significance of making money the right way does dawn upon most of us...but money still remains that sinful temptation that is not openly appreciated by society yet secretly loved by everyone.

Man-eater

ooo... here she comes...she's a man-eater...

ooo...here she comes...

Yes well, the title implies something more grotesque than the femme-fatale! But so is obviously not the case. In the battle of the sexes, some smart*** has found a perfect way of settlement and named it "Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus". Whatever happened to evolution, dude?! An even more incredulous fact about this "settlement" is that it is proposed by a guy!!!

I suppose everyone has a right to humor themselves, but really, human males and females are pretty much a different sub-specie. For one side to write about the other is as fair as chimps writing about orangutans! Again, one is entitled to one's opinion, but that opinion when reduced to such basal statement as to different people being from different planets is a big OUCH!

For one, differences between the sexes are just not to be laughed at. They are there for a reason...they are there because women have evolved to a point where they have started seeming different to men. Let us consider just about any other specie on the planet (preferable mammals, coz many non chordates seem hell bent on exhibiting cannibalism right after fornication!); males and females are pretty much alike. Behaviorally, anatomically and socially...males and females act as the same specie. But not the planet-dominating specie! No-no...we have to be different. And its not just enough that we are different from all the fauna, we have to be different from each and every specimen of our specie as well!

And so we come back to the real topic, the femme fatale a.k.a man-eater :D

Now that females have evolved to perfection, a metaphorical cannibalism is inevitable. Women are shining everywhere. When I was in school, it was the better CBSE pass % of girls... then when I was in college, it was the excellent intellectual finesse of girls over boys... and getting into the statistics of other things is simply mundane! Everyone knows, what a girl can accomplish, a guy can't (what with an incomplete chromosome :P)

The perfection isn't all... there has to be dominance accompanying it. Hence the femme fatale version of the fair folk, I am referring to. Of course, becoming a Black widow is not the way to be but grabbing every opportunity and getting ahead, surely is! Give all the 'Barney(s)' out there, a run for their money!!!

So all the single ladies (and ok, the married ones too) out there...don your fierceness and...

"make a lil love...live a lil life...get down tonight" B-)

Green Grass Blue Sky

The normal, natural course of things is always favored by humans when it comes to the world around. But when the same favor is requested by a human being, it is more often than not, denied!

Oh, it isn't yet another forlorn piece that keeps marveling at the inadequacies of being human. It is a piece that accepts that nature is normally dominant but human will suppresses it so, that every instance new nature keeps emerging...and a new norm is attained.

One may wonder however, what does the greenness of grass and blueness of sky has to do with it? It is with absolute clarity that I can connect these four words with the Vodafone (Hutch) jingle! And I am equally certain that all of us can...What we don't bother to pay attention to is the utter lack of naturality in the advertisement. Given there were grasslands and mountains and ponds and clouds and everything else that nature provides us to feast our eyes upon... but there was a cute, little Pug too in it. It is the most un-natural thing I am referring to! It follows the kid around (ok yeah, dogs do that!)...it brings the kid whatever it wants...without even being instructed to do so ( yeah that happens to, but come on! Was the Pug psychic?!)...it slept on its back, imitating the kid (can you buy that?)... its even out in the damp, rainy time to be 'wherever you are' (I had a dog, he hated damp. You can't fool me!)...

Now the contention is not to deliberate over an excellent advertisement, but to observe how human will, over-rid nature and produced a masterpiece out of it! I believe that it can't be so difficult, therefore, to alter a nature that is inherent to a being.

Its not only philosophy, obviously not! Its a belief deeply rooted in the fact that people do lose weight!

Not the "biggest loser" type only...but 5lbs, 10lbs here and there...people do it all the time! Now why does the need arise in the first place? Because its in the nature of those indulgent people to seek happiness in food. And believe me, its not a disease always! Its not an emotional inadequacy either...its simply nature!

I can't help it if I was born underweight and decided as an infant to make up for it all my life...i DON'T want to help it if my idea of a good time is having chocolates and ice creams to gorge down! ITS MY NATURE!!!

But then its also my will that I won't be beat down by my own nature... I don't want the torment of browsing a fashion magazine all my life! I want the satisfaction of being as hot as the pages that my fingers flip through! But in this clash between WILL and NATURE, I want both to reach a compromise... The passion for food must not be replaced by anorexia and bulimia for the will to win and the nature must not prevail by making a BMI of 27 seem unavoidable!

After all...if a Pug can do it, I sure can :D

Undependable Independance

Freedom is bitter, freedom is sweet.

It feels like raindrops and it feels like heat.

It breezes away the worries of the heart that beats.

Freedom you are mine...

without you I am not human, I am meat!

The sentiment is well understood by all (black, brown and white; alike). Its so well understood that it morphs into any meaning one wants it to have. For we are free to interpret freedom in our own way. In the smallest things we do in life, we want to be free to make the choice. How we live life should be our business not anyone else's. How we cling to the past and how we plan for the future, how we love and how we hate, who we love and who we hate...we must have freedom for all that!

It happens or it doesn't is another story altogether. Most of us don't even want freedom to that level that it is acutely felt... most of us are happy with the notion of freedom at the national level, community level and cultural level... for an individual, freedom doesn't seem to account much. We all have acclimatized to the notion that "man is a social animal" and so independence is not real, its just a matrix pulled over our eyes until the social human nature obligates us to behave in a way that defies freedom.

So you are free to be you until the world wants otherwise. Of course independence is cherished and a quality admired by many. But not without a dash of disdain...

If you are independent, people will hail you for your individuality...but a green monster in them would always want to see you crumble and seek dependence.

If you believe in free thinking and free living, people will appreciate your guts and glorify your nerve...but a conformist in them would want to see you fail and fall back on common knowledge and living with the world.

If you are free enough to wear you heart up your sleeve and put yourself out there, people will pump you up and pour over suggestions...but a cynic in them would always want to tell you one day "there is no such thing as true love".

So as dear as freedom is to all of us and as dearly as we covet independence, its the sublime greyness of human nature that makes it surreal. You can depend on it for as long as you are prepared to be "out-standing", an aberration, an anomaly, an outlier...The moment you decide to be free and yet belong somewhere, you are lost! Individual freedom of thought and action is never conforming to anything that the society thinks is a way of life. Independence is encouraged but actually not expected of anyone...

Everyone must have a role model..or a mentor...or a pillar of strength...

Why that is necessary, nobody waits to brood over it! Eventually, people who keep striving for a free existence (in every sense) are left deliberating the life they made on their own. Their mistakes and their successes are their own but there is always a nagging doubt... was the independence really worth its while?!... Life would have been so much easier had I not been so free...

Tap-some-Bong

Dream -

He had the superpowers he always wished for...he could fly (no kryptonian side-effects), he was super strong (no boy-scout behavior and savior's syndrome), he didn't have to breathe (so water and space were pretty much accessible), he had special sixth sense...he was telekinetic and could shape-shift!

In short, he was THE-Superhero!!!

Reality -

He was just an above-average Joe. He went to school and then college like all other kids of his generation. When he was about to turn 11, he desperately waited for the letter from Hogwarts to arrive...Ofcourse it never did! Then he grew out of it.

When he was 16, on a class field trip to a nuclear reactor plant, he dearly hoped for some freak accident to happen to him...it never did, either...so he grew out of it too!

Dream -

Life had been cruel to him... His parents never appreciated his special abilities. They thought of him as something of a freak-show! He had no friends and whoever he crushed on, always liked someone else... He dreamed of a normal life but was subconsciously reliant on his powers too much to get by with life.

Reality -

His life was normal. So normal that he was eternally bored! He has parents who were always over indulgent in his life and over protective of him. He had very many friends and girls usually found him cute. He dreamed of a superhuman life...a life that was not governed by laws of nature!

Dream -

He fought the anti-social elements without any sense of obligation to a past or a person. He liked being a superhero...somewhat like Metro-man! He had no weaknesses so villains could hardly ever exhort him. And he never wanted a change of scene...he was satisfied being him.

Reality -

Ah life! He wished for it to change somehow...everything was so predictable! He hated being an above-average Joe...he hated being a pushover and he really wished that someday, somehow he will be able to deny his parents whatever they emotionally-blackmailed him into doing, against his wishes!

The Merger -

He waited and waited and finally he decided to take his life in his own hands! Now by day he was his normal boring self and by night, he went by the name of "Tap-some-Bong"...the night crusader, the friendly neighborhood superhero, the alien boy scout...nobody was any match for him. For he was not goodness embodied, he was goodness itself!

He became everything he wanted to be...

He fought aliens, monsters, zombies and mafia clans!

He dressed in spandex outfits that hid his true identity and made him feel cool!

He finally had real friends who were always there for him!

He knew who crushed on him and who missed him the most and who was his fan!

He could share whatever was on his mind and the world paid heed to it!

He developed his own isolated perfect life!

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All thanx to facebook! :D

Redundancy...thou art dear!

Its a given that an artist's inside is reflected on her outside endeavors. I am just the one who believes in keeping subtlety absent,when the obvious is glaring one in the face! Presently, many of my talents are feeling redundant, which in turn is making me feel similarly... NO COMPLAINS though!

What is unnerving is that in the very heat of my 20s, I am not supposed to be so satisfied with being idle. Sure, like many direction-less aspirants of my generation (the no. is fast dwindling!) I can be floundering around in life, doing not even a single thing that I truly want to...but being redundant is something our "Gen-Y" isn't very good at! We have to feel useful. We have to know that our life means something (see, we don't really believe in self discovery at the age of 30!). We have to know we had some dreams and we either lived them or we didn't. There is hardly ever any scope left for "may be(s)" or "someday"...

We want it, we take it(or get ambushed,trying).

And thus my wonder at the fact that I am so at ease with my (short-lived) redundancy. In fact I am quite liking it! Life has absolutely "No Demands" from me for almost a quarter of a year :D!!! Now at the beginning of this long coveted break, I could only imagine the stupendous amount of days I would have to be happily useless... then the time actually begins. Many of the concessions and liberties of being useful have to be given up...but What-the-Hey!, once you taste the utter lack of obligations after going through a (supposedly) highly demanding, professional course; its PURE BLISS!!!

It is understandable that a percentage of that feeling is coming from the fact that once life is going to restart, everything will be in its place (Yeah right, I made it happen!)...the sense of future security can put anyone at ease. But a major portion of this feeling of ecstasy over being redundant is coming from an accumulated need for a break, over the years...

Living in a famous-for-its-population (and mildly competitive) nation, one learns pretty early on that education and career building isn't going to be easy (especially when you are a Jack-Of-All-Trades-Master-Of-None sort of person). So of-course, adolescence is fueled by quotes like -

"beta ye do saal +1,+2 mein mehnat kr lo; fir araam hai"

"bete CAT crack kr lo, fir MBA toh apne aap hojani hai"

"Friends, I(a wannabe cool Prof at a B-school) assure you, with two years of smart work in your MBA, you will reap benefits throughout your life"*

*Conditions in corporate world are nothing like college, dude! I am just messing with you!

So one trudges on in life, putting in a little more of self in the process of becoming someone else. We lose time to chill and be ourselves...we harbor that grudge against ourselves for being all that useful, all our young lives! So when finally, the chance to be "FREEEEEEE" presents itself...it certainly is dear.

CHEERS!!! :P