The Cake Dream

The sight of dark swirling chocolate with whipped creme in front of you and the scent of hot cake wafting from the oven behind. The slow rise of batter visible from outside, every glance stolen. Bubbles on the surface telling you, it's going to be perfect...fluffy, scrumptious, warm and tender... Then the focus shifts back to the icing...it has to be perfect too...the dark, rich brown of coco hiding the pristine white of creme...
Then you shift and wake up!
Damn!!!
It's morning and there is no cake cooking...it was just a dream.
In zombie fashion you walk to the washroom and get fresh. Somehow the residual sleep is magnified after the  trip to the loo. Dragging your feet to the kitchen, you fix yourself a brown bread sandwich with soya spread and nutri. So much for the cake dream!

Sifting through the daily mundane activities, and the oh-so-heavy dose of reality, the cake keeps visiting you from time to time. Sleeping is not required anymore, you can almost sense its taste and richness in your daydreams. The fantasy turns to the haunting! Ingesting some more yellow-food you fantasize about the dark coco color of your imaginary friend...
A friend, yes...The dreary reality makes the fickle dream seem like such a friend. It doesn't apply rules, doesn't expect, doesn't judge your actions or other thoughts...it just lingers...like an emotional support to your battered psyche. You ache and long for the chance to drift back into the dream world when you can actually taste your magical creation of the night before. The idea doesn't occur that the dream may not continue (its not "Tivo" up there, after all!).
By the time its the hour to hit the sack again you are so obsessed with the cake that you can't shut your eyes long enough to fall asleep. Every cell in your body seems to be vibrating, dying to transcend into an alternate reality which can take you that much closer to your cake! 60 minutes of tossing in the bed later, you get up.
Pick up the phone.
Dial a 24 hours service.
Place an order for your dream.
And then the reality hit you again... there is no cash in the wallet.

Damn!!!
You pick the phone again.
Dial the same service.
Cancel the order.
Hit the sack.
This time, sleep doesn't evade...it comes and engulfs you in the scent of your cake once again...

Freedom...j'adore!

Of the changes I keep choosing to experience, the one that has begun this year is the most liberating one! Freedom without independence (yet!) can be quite unnerving and for a change, I understand now how the people of our nation must have felt on 15th Aug, 1947. The idea is not to compare my life to the country but to simply cherish the idea of comprehension which has long since escaped me. I detested history lessons about our freedom struggle with an uncanny passion; not because I am not patriotic but because they were the same for 5 whole academic years!!! And I still couldn't figure out what was all the big fuss about...
So basically my own lack of empathy bothered me beyond expression.
But finally I have caught up.
Freedom is something so dear to revel in that it doesn't matter how often you talk about it, you will not be able to do justice to the feeling in itself. Sleeping without an alarm clock, eating when you want to and not because it's the lunch hour, lounging (read lazying) around with your favorite book and going out when the weather is actually worth enjoying. That's a little piece of heaven...right there...on earth!
You don't need to die to get all that.
You just need to kill the independent chic inside you!
For independence is a different story altogether. It makes you responsible and sneakily build shackles of its own. You start depending on yourself and before you know it, you are proud of yourself. Pride that is based on the shaky grounds of consistently holding a job and sustaining yourself. Pride that helps you hold up your head and walk into a store and use your plastic money to buy some form of happiness and of-course, experience some very expensive retail therapy. Pride that affords you meaningless nights of intoxication just so you can have a hung-over Monday, earning yourself some more independence. Pride that makes you look down upon those who chose the easy life and didn't bother to enter the rat-race. Pride that eventually turns you into someone you hoped you will never be...a slave to your independence.
Been there...done that!
And now that I have opened myself to experience what is so fleeting in it's essence; I don't want to let go. A childhood dream of becoming a pirate one day does come back and appeal horrendously to me. But then again, may be it will take some more life to finally be ready for an adventure of that proportion. For now, I have to satisfy with feeling free to do with my life what I wanted to. Be selfish and not proud. Be free but not independent. Struggle a little against the norm and renounce the "Stepford" routine once and for all.
And while it's possible...live a little. :) :) :)

Fear of fear

Fear.
It is probably the most detested word in the dictionary of mankind. The emotion is as pathetic as it can be and then some. Poets have scorned it, authors have mocked it, bards have condemned it and artists have shunned it in all their creations.
But fear has stayed on...for it did not need anyone's praise or acceptance. It knew when to creep in and corrupt someone's psyche. Fear is more self aware of itself than any other emotion and it gives the possessor an uncanny capability to survive. For without fear, there is no fight.
It's not my favorite vice...I would rather avoid it and if it surfaces, I try to master it and get over it. If someone even implies in some hypothetical situation that I may face fear; I rush on to prove that fear will fear me...I am that brave!
A more accepting mind will admit (to self) that fear is as much a part of one's existence as the need to survive. Bravery to the extent of being daredevil is nothing but denial. It is astonishing, how it takes someone's brave struggle against extreme pathos to make one realize the potential of fear.
We are what we make ourselves and not what life makes of us, but this fire to make something out of our own ashes and rise again like a phoenix comes from nothing but fear.
Without fear of failure, there is no extra effort.
Without fear of loss, there is no reason to protect.
We build ourselves in anticipation of a future which may not always be what we fear but which may be so. The desire to improve and get ahead of oneself doesn't just come from ambition but from fear as well. It maligns the most positive of notions and brings a notoriously bloody flavor to life.
Sometimes it's important to be not brave, to not stand and fight but to fear the nemesis and make an exit strategy. Sometimes the only thing holding you back from giving your 100% is the lack of fear.

It hasn't been easy to accept the potential of fear, but the idea has made its mark.
Still, I fear, admitting that I am anything but fearless will take me a lifetime...

Little life...

A little sweet...a little sour...a little close, not too far...all I need is to be free...


The lines are stolen for sure but the feelings are closer to home than they can ever be.
To an outsider, the other side of grass always seems greener but what if the grass isn't even grass and merely a mirage...
Those who perceive you as the ultimate person are unable to comprehend your lacks and wants. Those who are envious of you can not value their own  blessings. All the philosophies ever written in the world are a writer's attempt to convince self of a greater sense of being and a way to wait for a better purpose in life. Philanthropy for instance is raved about by many, but at the same time scorned for the hypocrisy that propagates it in reality. Now someone missing the trait might glorify it as it is something that may be highly coveted while someone who has 'done that and been there' may be able to tell for a fact how a good deed can go down the drain!
However, truly ingenuous is the persona that makes you want to be like that yet makes you realize the impossibility of it...a life that you want to have but can't have due to the sheer nature of 'you' is what dreams are made of.
Some of us search for these sweet and sour flavors of life in a sheltered and unsurprising life...others, try the unknown to taste freedom! Some of us like the harmony of routine while others like the challenge of chaos! Some of us like to be spectators and some want nothing more than being in the spotlight. Contentment is hard to get by; but then again who has ever told a great story by being content with life?!
It's the dissatisfactions, the restlessness and the unease of being incomplete that drives people towards greatness. (Its sheer abuse of time that drives people towards writing philosophy...NOTE TO SELF - write a story next time!!!)
In the end, life may seem a drag when the hours of the day are ghastly and hard to pass...but it is in essence shorter than the oscillation of an electron and should not be wasted wanting and not getting. It should rather be wasted (Err...Utilized) getting and wanting some more. 
The little life we all get is to live and to be alive...to be or not to be is never an option...its just and illusion of an option!

A voice that soothed and wounded at once...

No, I am not talking about your conscience!!! It either soothes or wounds...possessing both the qualities is rare for even an inner voice...
However, one man wielded such a weapon and used it very well...

Tributing a few words, a blog post or a few minutes of my life to the Legend called Jagjit Singh may be inconsequential to a world left bereft since the legend departed; but I can not NOT write about the era that has ended...
After all, the guy singlehandedly made generations crave for sweet melancholy of love by singing about it...
'koi fariyad' made coveting sounds so absolutely HOT...
'hoshwalo ko khabar kya' made a guy playing with a scarf seem NOT cheesy!
'kal chaudhvi ki raat thi' proved how moon pales when compared to love's glow...
'hotho se chhulo tum' is as intoxicating as a patiala peg...
'woh kagaz ki kashti' has made many of us nostalgic about those childhood moments...
and 'chitthi na koi sandesh' has left many a wet eyes in its wake...

The list is endless....all of us have at least one favorite from his treasure of gazals! For those with some deep set wounds of heart, his music and his words always acted like a balm... The songs never felt unworldly...they were as if they were written for just your situation...
However for those of us, who had no apparent reason for being sad, his songs simply meant a chance to sit on the rocking chair and act all grown up while listening to gazals on the walkman... :P
Or perhaps to some of the crazier creed amongst us, imitating him whilst having fits of shivering just felt too amazing to resist...
Something about this icon of a man and his singing appealed to everyone!

Nevertheless, there has never been a more melodious baritone and there probably never will be...It may not be as sweet a tribute as he deserved, but he will be missed all the same and always remembered for the Titan that he was in the arena of music.

Oscillations

Some heavy duty nostalgia is what it takes to rocket one down the misery-lane. You miss what you once had and didn't cherish enough and you crave to have what time would never allow you to have again....your past!
But its the same nostalgia that can give you that feeling of wholesomeness that describes a full life...
You had friends and you had great fun with them...
You had time and you made the most of it...
You had dreams and you slept some more to build the plot further... :)


Its the swinging between the good and bad of thoughts that makes or breaks one's day. For sure, the thoughts aren't innately holding any character. They are just synaptic pulses shuffling between the idle neurons, there for not much good. Character is given to them by the colorful human mind which doesn't life things to be neutral. One minute you would be staring at a screen full of rows and columns and the next, your mind will be painting an image of a hostel room somewhere, attached to which was the sunlit balcony where you lounged with your friends and had faux-saas-bahu conversations.
Someday you will be watching a movie or show about friends and you will be thinking with a smile, of all the friends you miss and want to be with...
On other days, you would just be miserable thinking about your friends...of why you can't be with them and why the f*** does politics affect your plans!!! (cursing is just the beginning then)


Its not unusual to come across such oscillating-between-realities individuals everyday. It is unusual to stay unaffected after such contact. Their swing can put your mind in motion and send you  in throes of unwanted emotions. The key is to retain your brain for those rows and columns momentarily and save your trip to nostalgia-ville for some time when you can enjoy it more than it can enjoy you.
After all ...there is no better way to spend some time alone lying in your bed, thinking about the good, the bad and the ugly of what made you...you!

Tere Mere Sath Jo Hota Hai...

As a student, its easy to hate chemistry....especially if u have a sensitive nose and a lousy memory...
But as you grow...u learn a new definition of Chemistry; which has nothing to do with acrid smelling H2S leaks or 'ring tests'...[Pun intended]...or may be it does...
How two people react to each other, how they bond, how they don't gel, how something sizzles and something fizzles...its all explained by this 'chemistry'!
Now for an amateur, its difficult to understand how biology gets explained by chemistry! But hey...I din't go to college for nothing!
Its as simple as it seems complex. what two people have, two other people can't have. Its the law of 2...
Edward-Bella is not equal to Bella-Jacob!
Harry-Cho is not equal to Harry Ginny!
Ron-Hermione is not equal to Ron-Anyone else!
Johnny Depp-Palak is definitely not equal to Johnny Depp-Any other fan!!!

The chemistry creeps in because of the 'chemical locha' that goes on in one's mind (Munna bhai nahi dekhi kya bheedu?)

Developing an insight into relationships that we have with so many of our friends, colleagues, family members and that-special-someone is not something most of us bother our minds with. But life is much more easier when we establish our own different shades with different people around us!
Ever wonder why just the sight of some people make you smile and why the mere mention of others makes you cringe?!?
Its not because they are different...(well Duhh...that's a given!); its because you are different towards them!
Howsoever non-judgmental, non-committal and unprejudiced one may be...What electrical and chemical pathways your body is going to choose in response to one person are not going to be the same as those chosen for another.
The sooner one accepts that, the easier it is to digest that while you may be the most adorable and un-explosive friend to your friends; its no guarantee that you would be as amicable a lover...;)

So when a happy-go-LUCKY singer asks 'tere mere sath jo hota hai, wo sb ke sath kyu hota nahi'...ask him to read my blog!!! (& comment too, if i might add :P)