My Ineptitude

When do we start distinguishing between a pain that is physical and one that is psychological? There are medicinal proofs that psychological pains can translate into physical pains. That, by any stretch of logic, means that either your brain can't quite distinguish between the two or your brain decides that this pain is worth crossing the line into the other.

Is this rewritable?

*****

It's been fun the past week. I managed to hoodwink my colleagues to think that I can write something and that it is worth publishing on a newspaper. It was interesting in the sense, I realised how much of a non-fit I still am in this job. There are obviously lessons that I learned and lessons that I didn't recognise. Honestly, a byline is over-rated. So you wrote something and it came on the paper, big deal! It doesn't affect the way you process things, does it? It still doesn't change the fact that you'll throw up a million masks to every single new person you meet. It has no bearing on the way you look at life, be it welcoming on cynical.

*****

It's funny how one single conversation can have heterogenous responses. It's funny how someone who you thought had half-a-decent idea of who you were says that they never expected some action from you.

*****

There are some people who bring a smile to my face. Then there's her. She's never failed to make me gleeful. She's never signed off without knowing that I've smiled. I try hard to do the same to her, but she's charming beyond compare. There's no one that compares with her.

It had been close to a year since we had a proper conversation, apart from the usual hi and bye on chat. It was a chat again and it was just for some twenty minutes. But even she would've been charmed.

It's not the things she says, it's not how she says it. It's not even how she puts it. She makes me stop. She makes it hard for me to think away from what she said. It's her, there's no arguing with the effects she has on me.

And the best part, she has no clue about all this.

The Answer

I've finally made mild sense of what/who I am.

I am a cockroach in a toilet where the light's just been turned on.

I've got something to tell you

Everybody has a secret. That one deep dark secret that has changed the course of your life forever. If you haven't had it yet, consider yourself lucky and find a bomb shelter, fast. Sometimes, it's so damn obvious that it stares at you from right in front of your face, to haunt you forever. But secrets aren't always some scary shit that you did when you didn't 'have any other choice'. They could be something nice you did which didn't result in the recognition some other narcissist might have demanded.

Everybody wants to shed their baggage. They do want to offload it, may be they don't know how, but they sure as hell do. The problem with that is they do not recognise the consequences of that offloading. They spent a big part of that lifetime carrying a mighty old dirty/nice secret along with them, building lies upon lies to hide the base, sometimes 1so much so that the base is something unrecognisable. So if they do ever offload, they'd blink till the world cracks.

City Island: This movie is one of those exceptionally brilliant movies that you watch purely by chance. It was released this year, well atleast is US it was, and it has a simple cast. Some recognisable names, but no one earth shattering.

The characterization is like nothing I've seen before. The pick would have to be Emily Mortimer's role. She plays this beautifully scripted part. She's like the voice in your head. She looms large, omnipresent. But she can't handle it if you do end up doing what she's been pushing you to do. She goes back as suddenly as she came from.

Don't let the comedy fool you. Beneath the simply written lines that would definitely invoke some, not much, humour, are some brilliant roles.

The guy who plays Tony, is pure class. He's that storm that is required to shatter a pseudo-perfect setup. That person/thing that happens so fast that you don't know what hit you. But the difference between this storm and the voice in your head is that the storm stays back to watch the damage/good it's done.

Easily over-looked would be the son's character. He's the other voice in your head. That supervisor. That voice that says out loud the things you'd always wanted to say, but never could, because of pithy issues like morality and decency.

The best scene for me was the last portion where the story is all broken down step by step for you. The effects are there to see. The way Emily Mortimer stays till everything she wanted to be see done is done and then silently slips away, yet leaving a trace of her escape. The way the eyes of the son contort when he hears his dad's 'dirty big secret'.

Purely wonderful.

Off you go

*take a deep breath*

*describe a recent event incessantly with a mad rush of words (that may or may not make sense, to you or otherwise), and walk away without waiting for the listener(s)' response*

*draw breath back*

Repeat process if required.

"But what's puzzling you, is the nature of my game"

Home, Home again..

What a long, strange trip it's been. I was waiting outside my cousin's home, on the street, with two huge suitcases. This auntie from across the street was seamlessly multi-tasking between flipping her chappatis, giving me the stink eye and contemplating on calling the Police. That was ten months ago.

I was one of those who believed in the inherent goodness of humans. After some choice experiences thanks to some select people, I pity the fool I was. Delhi's given me a fantastic deal. Good friends, better memories and the best alone time I've ever had.

The moment I stepped into the Delhi bound train (seems like a lifetime ago), I decided that I had to test the city to its limits and to put myself under the microscope. I did, to a large extent, get side tracked often. But more often than not, my experiments and illusions were ably guided and suited for the city that is Delhi.

But that was before. Home is where I am right now. Chennai. A city with which I've been tied ever since birth. There are things here that I don't understand, things that are beyond me. But still, there are the people who condone me. God bless them.