Are we there yet?

Why is it so difficult to take a strong stance on a burning issue? Yes, it's difficult. If it's easy, it's not strong enough. It's just a wave of the hand. That's never strong enough. 

You have an opinion. You recognise that you have an opinion. You see that it's birthed out of certain fortitude. Principles that you've held dear for a while now. Principles that you consider to be formed not out of a whim on a Tuesday evening, but you are sure are seated deep within you. Principles that you know would take a lot to be shaken out of you. What would it take? May be that's a question for another Tuesday. What else would it take? Surely, that's a question for this Tuesday.

Is the issue burning enough? Of course. Thousands of your peers, at least that's what the papers and the tweets and the news say, have been moved. Moved they have been, enough to take a few hours out of their lifeworld and march towards a random building. A symbolic building, but meh, buildings and symbols and V for Vendetta type analogies are also for another Tuesday.

Surely all this must bother you. You, yes. And me. And the person next to me. For the thousands out on the street, there are ten may be twenty times more inside their homes. Reminds you a bit of The Dreamers, yes? Don't get distracted now. It definitely is very bothering. Everything that you understood as being valuable enough, everything that you ever considered worth raising your voice over a dear friend's for, and everything else you one day sidelined for later appraisal, is all being done away with thanks to a simple wave of the hand. Hands that need to be tied down for one fucking moment while you... do what, exactly?

May be it's a question you're uncomfortable to search an answer for. Answers, if you are happy with them, can be very troubling. Answers can make you want to never seek answers again. May be it's an answer that you've always thought was begging for a question. The question has arrived. The answer is being ignored for you know what it means. The passivity is cowardly, albeit a strand of cowardliness that doesn't get seen by the outside.

Restraint is damn funny business. The more you exercise it, the harder it is to seek credit for. Happiness, oh yeah. Visible like the Hindenburg. Restraint needs to be pointed out. Hey, look at me. I'm not over-emoting. Look, damn it. To exercise restraint is the least narcissistic act a fellow could do, I suppose.

Restraint has its time. Everything does. There is time for quiet observation, mulling over the happenings, waving that hand and bidding adieu. But it is not now. Wake up calls usually come at the end of a slumber. Slaps on the wrist are more timely in their arbitrariness. 

You have your opinions. You have based them on principles. You decide to exercise restraint. 

For shame.

Sometimes, you might want to take a walk...

You want to take walk. You've just witnessed something, seen something, heard something, listened to something that makes you want to, it doesn't matter. You just want to take a walk.

But you're appreciative of the fact that you can't. You just can't leave things as they are and go for a damn walk, can you? But isn't that wasn't you want? It's a walk. You have no idea what good it'd do to you. You don't even know if it'll do you any good. You just want to take the damn walk. You've not really been the 'take a walk' kinda person, though. A walk is something you've never sought. It's just been these last few years when you've thought that a walk could solve something. How does it, though? You live by yourself. Even if you aren't literally by yourself, you live by yourself in your head. You can stand by yourself when you will it. You can be by yourself whilst in a crowd. And yet, somehow, you think a walk would help. If being by yourself, if being indifferent to company, is a thought away, why take a walk?

Because walks are romanticised, aren't they? You feel as if a walk will most definitely solve something that, say, a session on the pot won't. A walk will help resolve matters, the most immediate matters, in the way a drink with a good friend won't. A walk is a walk for a reason, as they say. Not always.

This particular walk, though. What can you say about this particular walk that's different from all the other walks you've wanted to take? This particular walk is something special. All of them are. Not because this particular one has context, all if them do. Not because this particular one is a spur of the moment thing, all of them are. It's because this particular walk is pressing. Not all of them are. Sure, some of them are. But this one is more pressing than any other. Why should there even be a comparison between walks? Aren't walks like cups of tea, each one special and warranted irrespective of others?

You want to take a walk. Not only because sometimes you want to. Sometimes, you need to

Crisis it comes and crisis it stays...

My crisis is my own. I own it, I live it, I experience it like you never can. I didn't just wake up this morning and decide that at 2330, I'd surrender myself to this instantaneous crisis and torture myself by lying awake in bed. It didn't find its way into my thoughts when I turned towards my water bottle. It was brewing, it was on a slow boil, it came to fruition, it saw light, it kept rising till it no longer could be bottled down. It might have been developing in the unconscious, it might have made itself appear in my consciousness at a moment it saw fit, but it's a crisis now nonetheless. It's called a crisis for a reason. It's not a mundane thing for you to tell me to forget about it. It's not an everyday occurrence for you to tell me that it'll be okay by the time I wake up tomorrow morning. It was born sometime ago and attempts were made to quell it then and there. Methods don't matter. Results do. It was put out there, like Blind Willie Johnson's dulcet moaning for anybody to catch and it was duly caught. Fucking ego. And now I struggle to make two thoughts connect. Don't come in here with your rainbow-flowing-cheery-sunshine and tell me it's all going to be okay. Tomorrow's just another day. For the crisis to continue, for me to wallow and for you to leave me be.

***

Some voices in the head are annoying as fuck.

A morning in Phnom Penh

The clock has just struck 630. Outside Phnom Penh's historic Orussey Market, the Capitol Tours bus stop is as busy as a movie set this Wednesday morning. The bus drivers hang around for the appointed departure time to arrive. The helpers load up the back of the bus with the wares of the passengers, placing my backpack on top of all the cardboard boxes with the trepidation one would usually associate with a cat that's unsure of the meal she's just been served. Outside, freshly baked buns fill the air with the smell that is distinct to bread just pulled out of the oven. The aroma of Cream-filled centres, pork buns, and jam buns wage a stately war with the fresh buns that are waiting for their fillings. This is something unique to Phnom Penh, both women and men selling the crispest baguettes, waiting with forceps on hand for you to point out to the filling that you'd like.

Phnom Penh gets quite busy at even at 630.

The six ladies at the helm of the ticket offices barely have the time to catch a gulp of water. Buses are leaving every ten minutes, worried foreigners are streaming in at about 3 or 4 per bus, wondering if the ticket they bought the previous night is legitimate. Locals are rushing in, parking their motorbikes with the deft swiftness that I have come to associate with Cambodians, and hurry to the ticket counters to buy tickets and head back out with the same alertness. Yet another set of motorbike riders are arriving, with huge packs of sealed boxes carefully balanced in the little space the bike offers between their legs. Pick up the box, drop it at the feet of the lovely ladies at the ticket counter, fill up a form, paste its copy on the top of the box, show the original to the lady, pay, and off you go.

The driver also picked up random packages from strangers on the road and delivered it, with no form of communication if I might add, to others down the route. Par for the course in this part of the world I guess.

 

A few Khmer words on the PA, my bus driver rushes to his seat and taps the horn twice, and turns to find me sitting diagonally to the right of his shoulder. He switches on the music player and skips a couple of songs. Jiggles his shoulders with a broad smile. He's found his favourite. He turns to me and hopes to elicit a similar response. I smile. He's worn his sunglasses. Uttered a choice few words to the motodup rider blocking his way ahead. The bus and I are off to Kampot.

****

This is the start of a series of posts that I hope to write on my trip to Cambodia. In no particular order, of course. Simpler ones to write are the first to go up, I guess.

Exiled at home...

During a casual conversation in class the other day, I was introduced - unintentionally by the other person - to another side of what I've been very thankful for over the last 2 years.

Since January 2013, I'd been living at home by myself till I shipped myself to college last August. For almost 17 months, I was living by myself at the place I had grown up in, the place I had scrapped my knees playing cricket in, the place in which I made several friends who I still hold dear, the place I called home. I'd always looked at this as a rare comfort. What else would you call being in a relatively expensive city by yourself in your early 20s without having to pay rent or worry about the general things people of this mould usually worry about! I didn't have to worry about other families in the building constantly being aware that they had a bachelor living amongst them; about coming home late well past midnight or not coming home at all for a few days at a stretch.

The other side isn't this accommodating.

I was exiled at home. I realise now that the opposite of home isn't always exile and the opposite of exile isn't always home. The forced exile at the very home you grew up in, formed memories in, tackled early life in, got hurt in, got told that it's okay in, heard stories in...I came back to an empty home every night. Then there was silence until I spoke. Then there was stillness until I moved. Nobody to push, nobody to move, nobody to speak, nobody to speak to, nobody to listen to, nobody to shove, nobody to see. Nobody.

Home is when you're okay with the notion of home changing; drastically and dramatically in an instant.

The present

Right now, at this very moment of utter vulnerability and fright, I am reminded of the pattern of feelings that was uncomfortably frequent over two years in the recent past. That pattern ended, with a final gut punch, towards the middle of last year when I entered college again. Now, just after 28 weekends from that sullen low, I feel like the swirl is sucking me back in again.

A large distraction, to go, please?

Of years gone by and lessons...

There are reasons to be glad that 2014 has ended. It was most torrid with the latter part of the year needing a drastic move to a new town and a new place to salvage a little peace out of the year. That said, save for a few months towards the start and in the middle (barring March thanks to all the travel woohoo) 2014 was tepid at its best and horrendous at its worst.

Thing is, to expect a new year to bring new fortunes is more than plain naive. But what else is there to provide hope when things spiral out of your control before you can grab the end of the rope, and with impeccable frequency at that? You'd think there are lessons to be learnt and you'd be right. Sometimes, it's tough and almost impossible when slight teases are thrown around here and there to lull you into thinking you've got a hold of this crap before it explodes on your face. Again. Just like the last time. So to hide from it all seems most ominous and pertinent for now and that's precisely what I've done. A year and a half more of this hiding and there might be hope after all. See you on the other side 2015.

Where is my colour?

I was sitting on a bench on a balcony, looking out into the open where the setting sun's splendor was being eclipsed by a dark cloud swallowing a lighter cloud. I see beauty around me and it makes me happy. This happiness makes me sad.

The sadness is not out of cynicism but from a sense of alienation. I haven't felt happiness in a long time. When I'm hit with it out of the blue, I don't recognise it. I can't understand it and I can't talk to it. I am not able to bring myself to locate it. I feel disjointed. I don't want to know it. I want to walk away from it, see it in a new light and at the same time I want it to swallow me for the dark cloud that I am.

I don't want it. What is the return policy on unrequited happiness?

Questions that are asked and never answered are worse than questions that were never asked. Let me go you rotten, sidey, shady, disgusting, slimy scum. I hate it.

I hate that I hate it. I hate that I am able to recognise my hatred towards it but not it by itself.

I see happiness and I want nothing to do it. I see sadness and I want to slowly walk away from it. I see this greyness and I want to stab it summoning all ferocity. Where is my colour?

Of a familiar pattern...

It is quite odd that writing has followed me for over a decade now, from writing lengthy exams to pointless notes in class to more exams to magazine articles to online stories to assignments, it's been quite the journey. The last bit of the equation is probably one of the few things that I've taken on voluntarily.

Being a full fledged student once more, after a full 4 years outside of a class room, was pretty odd at first. To force the little discipline gained from a sparsely-corporate lifestyle for almost 4 years out of the way and to inculcate the typical laziness associated with a student has, to put it mildly, been the toughest thing to do. Sadly, it had to be done. I'm not in the least bit implying that this transformation has somehow been completely voluntary or under my full control. It's been a result of the circumstances, past and present, coupled with a willful undertaking.

Yet, I am Buridan's Ass. Faced with the demands that college makes, primary of which is that of intense thought and understanding at all times, along with a mostly lazy refusal to indulge in the aforementioned demands, I am Buridan's Ass. The test though, is to see how long the tension lasts.

In search of something...anything!

This is not a call for inspiration. I have stopped doing that. This is, for all intents and purposes, a plea straight to my mind.

Stop. Stop this madness. I can barely take your every day tantrums, but when you step up your aggression and hold me ransom, I simply can't take it. Stop searching everywhere for inspiration. Stop looking at people and thinking if they're fit to be a muse. If they are, you'll know. Stop telling me that muses can't rescue me.

It might not make for a pretty analogy, but this mental menstrual cycle is exhausting. Like clockwork, I'm hit by this angst. First, there's the laziness in mood. Then comes the simple refusal of the brain to think up new words. Your 'skills' need serious rethinking if you're subconsciously using the same words to describe an event the second time. The worst hasn't even arrived. By now, it seems like inspiration has all but been deleted from the world. People stop being interesting. Their movements, their messages, their tactics don't trigger your mind.

Like an avalanche showing a new face of the mountain to the world, the mind reveals a nasty devil. Everyday things don't seem boring. Everyday things don't seem interesting either. The mind recoils into its corner and shuns anything and everything. The nothing-is-interesting-or-boring state is a fucking cancer. It strips you of words, emotions, feelings and worst of all, of thought.

I honestly do not know a foolproof works-every-damn-time solution for this. To wallow and allow it to take its course takes a massive toll. This needs to stop. A strong sense of resolve, however, is as useless as a machine gun in outer space.

Ayrton Senna and me...

I wasn't there at Imola in 1994. I wasn't even watching Formula 1 at that time. One of the things said about Ayrton Senna is that every F1 fan remembers where he or she was on that fateful day. I don't.

I started watching F1 in 1998. Towards the end of the '97 season, I had caught a glimpse of a red car bang into a blue and white car. The commentators were losing their minds. One was saying it was suicide and the other said it was irresponsible. I was 9, I didn't understand those words. I had started to read the newspapers just around that time and the morning after, I saw it in bold letters, something about a man being punished for his selfishness and losing a title.

Through the next 4 months, I watched every bit of F1 highlights i could lay my eyes on. These were the days of DD at home, mind you. I hung around a neighbour's house whenever I could, the kid from that house used to play cricket with me and he had cable television. I went through newspapers, the ones that hadn't been sold off any way. I learnt a few things, discussed it with any patient ear.

I came to know that the man in the red car was Michael Schumacher. And that he'd banged into Jacques Villeneuve so that he could put him out of the race and hence stake claim to that year's championship. I could see why people called it irresponsible. Putting another man's life in potential danger to win some shiny cup? Please!

But the man made me watch F1 the next season, I wanted to know what this mad man would do the next time around. Through the next 7 years, Schumi has allowed me to access feelings that I might never have otherwise. He went on, during that time, to become the most successful driver in the sport's history. One evening though, after an epic race in Monza in 2000, I heard that name again. Michael had just equalled Ayrton Senna's record for race wins. That day, I saw my champion cry.

I couldn't understand why. Surely, over the course of a sport, records will be broken. Why should, I thought, this guy, the guy I had come to revere the most, cry his heart out by the mere mention of equalling someone's records. I started to leaf through F1's history books and I'm glad I did.

To this day, I haven't watched a single race of Senna's. I didn't watch him mesmerise the world driving in the wet in Donington Park. My heart didn't race to its heights and almost stop when he did what he did during the qualifying session in Monaco in 1989. I wasn't there, wringing my wrists when he led *that* race in Suzuka. I didn't stand by the rest of the world as he challenged The Professor, Alain Prost, to the leader's position in Ron Dennis' McLaren team. I wasn't watching when he took out Alain Prost from the Japanese GP in 1990, going on to win the title that year. I wasn't there either, when he openly accused his team mate of being in the pockets of the then FIA president.

I was, however, there when Schumi crashed in Stove's corner in 1999 and fractured his leg. I was there weeping when he came back just a few months later to do his best to encourage his team mate, Eddie Irvine, to fight for the title that year. I was there when Mika Hakkinen did that overtake in Belgium. I jumped like a little girl when he won the title in 2000, when he showed me, and the rest of the tifosi, what it meant to be in the Ferrari family. I was watching Hungary GP in 1998, San Marino GP in 2004, Belgian GP in 1998, all those times when he was utterly and purely dominating everybody else.

I was also there when he parked his car in Rascasse in 2006, when he was booed by Indianapolis in 2005, when he gladly took the race from Rubens Barrichello in Austria in 2002, when he almost punched David Coulthard in Belgium in 1998, when he almost put the same Rubens through a wall in Hungary in 2010. I was also there, watching and having my mind torn apart, when he made a brief comeback to the sport for 3 years.

And that's precisely my issue with celebrating Ayrton Senna's legacy. While I understand that living and appreciating only the times we live in is incredibly myopic, I also understand that history can ignore certain perspectives. Some of them, most of them, are lost to us because history concentrates only on aspects it chooses to.

I have always only heard of Ayrton Senna from the history books, from TV presenters of that time, from journalists who have had heartfelt conversations with Senna and those who were there at Imola in 1994.

What might have happened had the suspension not collapsed at Tamburello and claimed Senna's life? He might have gone on to win a few more titles, surely. He'd would have glorious battles with Schumacher, winning some, losing some. He'd have probably resorted to the kind of tactics he did with Prost. May be they would have been team mates under a masterful team owner like Ron Dennis or Jean Todt. I could have been a fan of Senna's. I could have also witnessed him, wither away in his twilight years, like I saw Schumacher. The sport could have gained a lot had Senna lived through that day, but he didn't. He died, too early, I'd agree.

The could have beens are probably mind boggling. 20 years later, I have come to agree that what Senna did in his lifetime, for both the sport and for the world, completely outweighs what could have been.

When..

When change is on the anvil and you just wished the blacksmith would wait one more second before he whacks it. When you're at the beach with her, looking into her eyes and feeding her lies that she laps up with joy. When you tell her you're begging the sun for one last moment of moonlight.

When you're alone, hoping nobody would walk into the mess that you claim to be. When you're trying to pick yourself up and decline the helping hand. When you're in tears, moved by something so damn beautiful that it would be ruined beyond measure if it lasted for a second more.

When you're on the sidelines, watching the world go crazy, hoping for one moment of sanity. When you're given that moment of sanity and you're like a dog chasing a car.

When you think the Universe is conspiring against you, whilst holding at bay the thought that you're as insignificant to the Universe as that yet to be discovered species of spider in the Amazon.

When you're utterly clueless about anything and everything. When you're beyond sure of what you want to do.

When you're there and you aren't.

That's when you want to cease to be human.

Your move..

Desperation makes a man do funny things. When desperation is triggered out of a desire for change that is so strong it eclipses every other feeling, it ceases to be desperation and transforms into a need. This need, this pitches a tent in your head, refuses to budge when the strongest of thoughts are summoned to evict it. It will not move away until its demands are met and there is no convincing it otherwise. It simply can not be rationalised with and that irks me to a large extent.

Change is a whole monster by itself. The mind craves what it craves for and change is its opium. A little sniff at the minutest of possibilities and the mind it weaves patterns aplenty. No attempt to wrench it back to reality actually works and more often than not, it's wiser to give in. If you're going to be craving for something, why not do it whole-heartedly, rather than cheat a glance now and then.

On the other end of the spectrum is indulgence. Just how much is too much. When things get out of hand, it's much simpler to fall back on nostalgia and blame the self for looking one way in the past when the other way makes more sense, in hindsight. To fall back on hindsight never helps. It allows us to be a little more appreciative of perspectives, yes, but in that present moment, it's as much use as a poncho is as a spacesuit. 

**

On that note, after 3 years of working at Autocar India, I have bid goodbye in favour of an automobile news website Indianautosblog.com Here's to taking risks whilst young.

So much for that

There are days when I put in too much effort at work for a story that barely makes a dot in the minds of my readers. There are other days when a 50-word bit is taken out of context, blown out of proportion, misinterpreted and sensationalised.

And then there are rare days when life makes just a little bit of sense.

A realistic list of things I wish to do before I turn 25 in a few months' time.

People simply love making lists. What they love more is to tie that list up with a life-non-event which somehow makes it more worthy. If you ask me, it’s got very little to do with the feeling of physically writing something and it acting as a motivating factor. If doing that has ever helped you cross off important things from your life, good for you, for you’re a better human and you need to shout that off the rooftops. All that making a list achieves is relieving some mental space. You’ve finally managed to remove all that glug and now that it’s on paper, it’s time to fill up that space with more unearthly aspirations. That said, there’s also this issue of ‘What next?’

Now that I’ve adequately contextualised my cynicism, I shall proceed to bore you with a list myself. This is, however, a list I will not fling into the trash can unless I finish crossing off each item. Before I come across as extremely ambitious, I only propose to do things that I can do within a week. So you see, I am actually buying myself some time and making sure it coincides with my birthday, as if that’s some grand event, but that deserves a whole rant some other time.

A realistic list of what I can and might end up doing before I turn 25 in three months’ time:

1. Resume playing badminton – There was a time when I was half-decent at it.

2. At least start that story I’ve been thinking about since who-knows-how-long – If not for the story, at least write. A lot more.

3. Watch one movie each week – Already doing it, but there simply has to be one thing that you’re sure of doing. Satisfaction and all that jazz.

4. Talk to her. Seriously, it’s getting well past pathetic now – Well.

5. Finish the damn kimchi story – One damp Sunday, a few 30-day-cycles ago, my boss watched some documentary on the making of kimchi on TLC and happened to read something on the increasing number of South Koreans in Chennai. Cue phone call on Monday.

6. Get the camera lens looked at – Damn thing won’t autofocus any more.

7. Do some couch-to-10k type thing – I know I can run a 10k at a moment’s notice. But something tells me having to work for it would somehow make it better.

And then what..

I've suddenly realised that this summer marks my third year of being back home. It only seems like yesterday when I was in class in Delhi, attempting to understand a classroom whose occupants would run about claiming to be right in a few months' time, with what I can only presume to be - in hindsight - goggles that closely resembled beer goggles. It also seems like it was yesterday when I was wearing my heart on my sleeve, running behind a girl in an attempt to garner her attention, only to be told that I didn't know what I was doing. Why, thank you, Miss.

Sometimes I am a sellout. I go on this diatribe about nostalgia being useless and how indulging in the past doesn't, in any conceivable manner, affect anything that should matter, other than may be make you pause and waste time, for whatever it's worth. I don't understand things. When I don't, I try to and when I don't, I am heartbroken.

*

What I am undergoing right now at work can be summarised by something someone said, I can't for the heck of it remember who. If you're good at three things, he/she said, it's the perfect scenario. If, for instance, you're good at sticking to a deadline, your work is good and your colleagues love interacting with you, that's the ideal scenario.

I am not, thankfully, a slave to that ideal. I am a pain to work with. My senior colleagues have all but gone down on their knees begging for me to discuss story ideas with them, but may be they've unleashed a monster (heh, it's good to flatter the self at times) by not appointing a colleague for me to work with.

*

I find myself, disturbingly, in the same situation that I was in this time last year, with regards to work and my plans for the future. When the plan was about to go haywire this time last year, I told myself I'd make some radical changes. May be having to live alone is a big change enough - or may be I've convinced myself of that.

Things change and shit happens and you're glad and you lose sight and you travel the circle like some blind fcuker with a misplaced sense of elevated confidence. You watch and attempt to understand work that is supposedly inspirational and life changing and it ends up having the same effect on you as the terms drag co-efficient and pitch and yaw would have on a three-year-old. You begin to think the wall you built to repel the advises of chatty folks had outlived its purpose. You might come to realise that there's little you can do and will do and you start blabbering in your head and you think it'll sound better on paper and start to write and your pen won't work but you have to put it down so you reach for a keyboard connected to a bright screen and you start typing and you realise the crap-factor of your thoughts hasn't changed in over years. That makes you happy.

Nudge

You're sitting somewhere, physically present at the social gathering or event, doing what is appropriate and yet, you're not. Mentally, you're elsewhere, wondering about the route to take back home, taking a lengthy glance at those long legs right until the time someone in your group or the owner of those shiny legs realises you're watching, thinking of that annoying conversation that you had with that person last night and how that's left you mentally drained and not in the good way. And then, there are those times when there's an incredible urge to write.

Write what? That one thing in your head that's up to here with intensity, that incredibly mind boggling idea that you've had marinating in your thoughts for all this while that has finally taken a solid shape, a form, big enough to want to get out of your head in a hurry. To talk about it to someone is useless. They'd never get it. It's yours, for it has been impregnating your every living moment, apart from the time you cheekily glanced at those legs, ever since it popped into your head during one of those mind-numbing moments social events.

Let it rip. To allow it to stay inside is as big a crime as chucking a bottle of Jim Beam down the drain. However, wait. Wait till you simply can not wait any more. A half-baked idea is as good as an umbrella in Antarctica. Nobody's going to reward you for pushing out half-assed ideas. Let it stay there till it simply has to come out, growling and tearing apart at the seams. Little nudges do help along the way.

And then, revel in the joy. Smile. Restart.

Back against the dam

Self-deprecation and I go a long way, so long in fact that we're often hanging out in bed after hours. But if there's anything appreciable, there is this insanely cheeky ability to take a step back and see things as they are. Whether that helps, I am not sure. But the objectivity, or at least what I term to be objectivity, is at times so easy to achieve - If I can call it an achievement - it is very very scary. So scary, it makes me wonder if all this is just a trick of the devil.

There is then this concern regarding the easiness, if this is all a by-product of wanton detachment. Let's not even get to how scary that shit is.

This objectivity though, prized as it may be, rarely solves a purpose. As in, it's all fine and dandy to sit back and watch the show unreel, but what use is it if it does not instill in you a sense of judgement. Now that, that really makes the underside of my pants turn all murky.

A little bit of this and a lot of that

Oh yes, this year's ending. I begin to thank whoever remembers to flick the calender each day, only to be interrupted by the thought of having to face another year soon. Suddenly, the person in-charge of the calender looks like a bulls eye my quiver can't resist.

Some people, make that most, never seem to appreciate the magnitude of restraint it takes to do something. Even the short and cynical guy can at times be hopeful that there is a face in the crowd that can see what a struggle it is. What is done is, more often than not, praised till the skies dry up. What isn't done, however, is barely recognised. What isn't done, when it so easily could have been done.

Sachin Tendulkar has retired from ODIs. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this feeling of the world-crumbling-around-me-for-I-do-not-recognise-it-without-one-of-the-surest-signs-that-has-been-around-since-I-bothered-to-look-over-my-shoulder isn't new. When Michael Schumaher retired, I wept. I sat smug in college for an entire day, blaming everything from a squeaky chalk to a lime juice with less-than-normal sugar for why the world looked darker than usual. And then again, six years later, a familiar feeling. Only this time, it was amplified a million times, thanks to the knowledge that I will not, for whatever reason, be subjected to that insurmountable joy once again. Fans of Shahid Afridi (*points and laughs at any such person*) might know this feeling.

The dashing guy that I am of hopes and dreams, yet another task was fully completed over the course of this week. Sadly, however, the results weren't premeditated. 

An incredibly crude joke I made in Shanghai might have made the night at that table, but the knowledge that that particular punch line had landed on the ears of six people from four different countries is only exponentially multiplying the cringing.

While time tested patterns are running their course and refreshing themselves, I sit in my same old corner wondering what I did differently this time to avoid those patterns and how, despite what seemed like best of my efforts then, they still managed to repeat themselves. 

A stagnant stream

Suddenly, everything is just stationary. Life stopped moving ages ago, mind you. The mind isn't as active as it used to be and the heart has let it become that way. The will to fight back exists, but laziness has a killer upper cut.

It's beautiful. There's this floating person watching this person in a bubble, struggling to get things in order, getting his feet tied up over absolutely nothing and ducking down just in time to let the big things swoop past him.

Whoosh.


***

It's a pity that stories are told. It's a pity that the effort taken to tell them is monumental compared to the laziness that prevents one from reading it.

May be some stories need to be weighed individually and not against a history that has seen sparkling examples. Laziness though, is effortlessly universal.

**

It is not stationary because I am waiting for some one great thing to happen that will sweep the flooring from below me. Neither am I saying that the things that have happened/are happening are of little consequence in the bigger picture. Some of them are huge pivotal moments. Just that I couldn't care less or I wouldn't miss much had they not happened.

"Life has to fall apart so you can try and rebuild it to your liking (which of course isn't possible as it is only going to fall apart again and you're supposed to draw solace from the fact that you've done something during the course of this rebuilding.)"

Meanwhile, the anticipation has taken a tumble from the cliff. For good, may be.