I Belong ...

I want everyone else’s life
I want what’s good in it
I want all their happiness
But I don’t even see their pain

I don’t want my life
I don’t want anything that’s bad in it
I don’t want any of the pain
But I don’t even see my happiness

A collage of other lives is what I hope for.
And my life is a tiny part of many other such images. 

Adulting

Sometimes I used to reflect on life
And about living this life out.
But mostly, I was just existing,
Loving the ability to "not think"

Sometimes I used to think about life,
And sometimes it used to thrill me.
Rarely it was bleak or scary,
But mostly it was just normal, I guess.

Sometimes I used think about family and friends,
One big love gained and some love lost.
But mostly I'd just sit, lost in my thoughts,
Or focussed enough to lose track of time.

Sometimes I used to let myself be available,
And tried not be so self-absorbed.
But mostly, I just thought random things
Things that were neither about me nor about someone else.

Sometimes I thought about others' lives,
and heard their problems out.
But mostly, I'm used to just solving things.
And that's really all I did when I heard.

But of late, I've woken up to the strains of living,
The difficulties that could have been mine.
I am told the colourful and beautiful stories of past
But somehow, I also see the horrors that would have been.

I can't unsee the "could have beens" anymore.
I can't not care now.
So, I guess my floodgates are truly open.
I can't just "not think" now.

I see colours but I don't see shapes!

I firmly used to believe that I am a person, an individual who doesn't go well with the institutions. I wanted to be a rebel. I wanted to feel like I'm more important than any organization. Any group wielding it's power frustrated me, making me feel like the world was unfair, that the individual had no hope against an organization.

And then I met him...

"What are colours, what are shapes?"

When he asked me this question once, I laughed at him. For it was so silly. Colours and shapes are... 

He continued, 

"Well, they're nothing, really. Scientifically speaking, they're a bunch of electrical impulses that our brain perceives and understands. Philosophically speaking, they are defined in more ways than I know of. But what are they?"

He took a pause and started, "When I walked into the room on the left, I just saw the bed, the red covers on it, the velvet pillows and the red draperies. But I kept staring on, and the rigidness of everything disappeared. The velvet was no more velvetty, the draperies were no longer held by the poles, the red flowed down into the floor and the bed was now just a pool of red. All I had to do was keep staring at the room. The room so familiar in colour and shape, but all the shape in it had vanished."

"What a loon!"I thought and wanted to walk away.

"Well, you can do this too, just keep staring at this room, just use your eyes and pull the field off focus. Your brain doesn't see the shapes anymore, but of course, we see the colours. The colours are now free, they've been let go, not bound by the institutions of rigidity and shape."

The rigidity that the colours were having in their existence is now removed. I've freed them. But they are still thereabout. I asked, "The red never goes, does it?"

He replied, "I closed my eyes and imagined the room on the left, and now I imagined the room on the right. In my mind's eye, the red room was no longer my environment. If you meditate for long enough, you can escape the room too. You can turn it blue, or like me, you can render it colourless."

So, now I choose to see nothing but colours, all around me... Colours that I can control. 

I don't see shapes. I don't see confinement, I don't see rigidity. 

So, I don't cry against institutions, because I freed myself from them. 

The institutions and I can now exist peacefully, mutually excluded in philosophy, but as always, sharing the same space, being the same entity, just like the colours and the shapes. But I can be sure that just like everything else, I'm temporary too, I'm imaginary too.

But who was HE? Well, should it matter? I can only tell you his colour and shape, but WHO he is, is a question far beyond the scope of descriptions.

Of wanting a future

What did I want? Did I want to live? Was there any point to living after being shot down in battle, rendered useless. I groped around to find a place to sit. It was inside a long hallway and the lights were blue - dark blue. As I sat, I saw my wound. A bullet had gone straight through my armor and all the way into my intestine. I didn't think I had any purpose to live anymore. And then there was silence, as beautiful as a garden on a summer morning. The silence was a great deal of change from the dull blue around me. It was green, it was yellow and it was definitely bright. I was a child again.

In my house, there were a bunch of guests. I really couldn't see them, but I listened from the upper end of the staircase. Could I know them? And I stayed there till they left. I didn't want to know them and I walked downstairs, there was nobody. The living room and the kitchen were empty. I searched for my parents and started crying. A deep desire in me for food made me want to open the fridge and scavenge. The fridge was empty and cold. The lights turned dull. And I walked back upstairs, crying, alone and the house seemed to get bigger and emptier. I could hear them, but nobody was there.  I wanted nothing more than belonging.

Bessie.

Elliots beach, Chennai (Madras), India. It represents the character of a city that has changed slowly but drastically. As the tides rise and fall, the cycles of the days in Elliots are almost set in stone, though written mostly in wet sand. 

As the morning comes, the sun peeps through the blue sea. But already, we see a few fishermen are in their boats, ready to row into the sea. And before long, they are back in the shores with their catch, welcomed to land by the horde of obese and old joggers that flock the pavements and never touch the sand. Their sweats are just as salty as the fishermen’s, “but why” wonders the young Raja, a 11 year old from the fishermen community. “Why do they run like that, everyday?” And he slowly drags the boat into the wet sand, leaving trails of the sharp nose and footsteps.


As the day grows older, the beach forgets the sweat and the fish. The boats are upturned, the fish drying on the shore. And there are the few stalls, selling soft drinks and cigarettes. Yes, smoking isn’t allowed on the beach, but again, this is India and rules are always optional here. And thus, the wet sand gets burnt by the cigarettes being put off by the people who are lost and know only one place to go to.


In the peak of the day, the wet sand is mostly left alone. Except by the occasional visits from the boys selling snacks there and the old lady fortune tellers. Why do they hang there? For the couples of course. Those college kids and office goers who escape the society’s harsh looks and sit on the beach for some private time. India is still India, rules of law are broken, but rules of culture are rock solid. “Get a room” is sinful. The beach is the couples’ haven and the wet sand is (almost) the only witness to their private lives.


As the sun dies, the couples leave. The families run the show now. And finally, the shops can earn some money for the day. Fast food is selling and the balloons are flying. Kites are ancient now, it’s flying lights that the kids seem to like. And of course, good old beach cricket is on the southern part of the beach, mostly being played by the kids of the slum. But kids from the richer, northern parts are more into frisbee these days. Isn’t that beautiful? They sweat the same, but they don’t wanna play the same. And the wet sand enjoys the tender footsteps of the children, of course, it knows no difference between rich and poor.


Cometh the night, the families leave too. For it is time for the college kids. Those drunk insolents who flock by the dozen, come and dive into the sea. “They die all the time” says the wet sand. Of course, the sands have seen so many of them being dragged back to the shore. “It used to be only boys, but that was a long time ago. Girls are also visiting these days. Drunk.” Maybe the rules of the culture aren’t as rock solid as the afternoons show us. Times are changing. Women’s rights are mostly good!


Post dinner time, the wet sand is freed of the occupants by the cops and the friends of police. They drive everyone out. Like they should. “Because murders happen.” “and rapes.” “So, get out!”
And finally, by midnight, the wet sand is finally alone, to continue it’s perennial romance with the Bay of Bengal.

And Bessie gets ready for another day.

A Moving Image

Conceive. 
Bring it into the world. 
Make the light bounce off it. 
Make it dance. 
Push the trigger. 
Swallow all the bullets and magazines. It's pink as a baby now - 
Push it. Pull it. Or just do nothing.. 
Cut it up - stitch. 
Let it grow... 
Add soft tones and blaring ones. 
Breathe! 
Wrap it up.. 
Store it away - put it in the attic. 
Forget it, dear. It's over. 
It's not worth anything anymore. 
Forget it! 
Except of course.. We wait for the applause -
the closure we want but never get. 
From conception to the pin holed product.
It's never complete. Never. 

TDKR.. Blow by blow

First up, I wanna say this blog post is my opinion and might be a little harsh at times, despite the fact that I'm a fan of both Batman and Nolan. I will try in by best reaches to analyse crucial parts/events/characters of the movie and will be attempting to be as complete as I can with criticism, both good and bad.

SPOILER ALERT if you've not been to the movie already

Wake up!

By now, we’ve all finished considerable amount of coursework in this college. So, we’re all well into the brand “NITT”. So, give yourself a pat on the back for getting through the rat race of getting into one of the best colleges in the country for technical education.

Before going any further, just stop and think. Think where you’re headed. Think what you’re doing. Most importantly, think if you’re happy. While definition of happiness changes from person to person, it is important that we keep revaluating our happiness quotient in this increasingly changing world.

We need to go through a thought process called “waking up to oneself”. When it’s really quite simple on the outset, the challenge is to take the elementary ideas farther and form a complex picture of ourselves, a picture that extends far beyond the simple boundaries of the education system.

We all need to start this thought process not by routine or asking ourselves a questionnaire but by realizing the presence of ourselves in a world where there are at least a thousand other people who have the same resume as you do. This is where we need to extend ourselves beyond resumes and grades and try reaching a greater height in what people call “personal satisfaction”.

When having a college degree and a rich resume helps one fetch jobs and set a career, very few of us dare to think beyond the idea of a “stepping stone”. The sad truth is that in the process of getting ‘educated’, we marginalize the importance we should be giving to ourselves and our uniqueness. Most of us have actually changed the idea of what we think is important to us through the process of ‘standardized education’.

Looking back at the time we spent in college, one must see a development of character and more importantly, the development of an idea of what one actually wants to do in life. The decision about the future should happen more out of choice than out of compulsion. While it is disheartening to see that more people “shift lanes” after completing engineering, it should be seen as an indicator the sense of “cluelessness” that people are in when they make major career choices.

While the fact remains that an engineering degree at NITT offers you’re a great chance of ending up at a high paying job, the sad truth is that most of the people who go through the process of “educating” themselves, lose themselves more than they can imagine.

It is not even in the hour of death after one gets “offer letters” that one is able to wake up to oneself and find what he actually wants. However easy it may sound, it is impossible to wake up to oneself overnight or settle down happily to the idea of working at a company that picked you from 200 other people because you suit their job better than the others. The most important thing from a personal point of view has to be whether the job suits you more than the million other career paths that you could choose.

So, if you’re still in your early days and haven’t really decided where to go after NITT, start thinking already. Because “waking up to oneself” is a process and not a decision to be made. It needs time. So, give it a thought.
ps : It is true that "survival" plays a major role in life decisions, but at least open your eyes to things and pursue them as a hobby if not anything else. The most important thing here is "self satisfaction" :-)

Paper planes

Please watch with complete attention. This short film is metaphorical representation of the process of reaching God. Like my dad always said.. It is important to keep three things in mind when trying to reach God. 

 

 

The little thing called 'ME'

Finally, a blog post after a loooooong time! I have been having a recent self realization! I haven't really talked to anyone about it... I call it the realization of myself.

Honestly, this realization should have happened ages ago! This isn't about how good or bad or how awesome or stupid or negligent I am.. It's about how significant I am... And in effect, how significant each one of us are...

There are like two things that drove me to this realization, these two are supposed to be the same, but yeah, they are different experiences because they let me to entirely contrasting conclusions...

The first one is 'Chandni Chowk'. Getting out of the metro station at Chandni Chowk, I saw an elevator that would take you up three levels on a single stretch. And it was FULL of people. Once I got out of the station, I was in a street about 2 to 3 metres wide where there were a million platform shops. And that street was FULL of people. And walking into the unimaginably crowded "gali"s of Old Delhi, it finally hit me. I'm one among 1.2 Billion people... "WOW" was the exact feeling. "Is that how insignificant I am?" I thought. "Maybe... Maybe not! I don't live like the other people, do I? I can still make my life significant." I thought... And with that optimism, I swallowed "Garmaaa Garam Gulab Jamun" and dived into my holiday in North India.

The next one is "CMBT". Back home, I visited our very own Chennai Mofussel Bus Terminus, CMBT (koyambedu). As we had gone on a motorbike, my friend and I decided to park it in the parking lot of the bus station. And we entered the 3 level deep parking lot, to find only a small slot available in the bottom most basement level. And around us- above us, beside us, in front of us and behind us, there were like a million versions of one thing - motorbikes. It made me realize how insignificant my friend's bike was among the multiple thousands of others. And flashing back to the first time I saw his bike and how proud he was, made me realize how each and every bike there has a similar story. "It is pointless", I thought. "I am no different! No matter how significant I think I am, there are people who have reached my stage and been as significant as me! And so," I thought, "the only significant thing you can ever do in this world is to live a happy life that satisfies your heart and mind to the fullest"

The beauty about the realization is that for me, it has happened in what I think is a very crucial phase of my life. It makes me realize that I can have dreams of being happy, but not dreams of being something nobody else has ever been before.

Happiness and success are not written in stone, they are written on brain cells.

US Return!

I was sitting on one of the two hot chairs, wondering how to make my hair-cutting session less boring. I was unwilling to listen to the lame attempt at a spoof on Sun TV while looking at the wall and posing for my hair-dresser. Just then, I saw the mirror and a balding sixty-odd year old man wearing a loose green polo and a pair of cargo shorts filled the hot seat next to mine. His hair had grown wildly and he obviously hadn't visited the barbers' for months.

“Welcome sir! Short? Or Medium?” enquired the other hair-dresser who had been in my locality for well over 10 years now and knew me by my name and even knew where I was studying. A jolly fellow he was and he was entertaining his customer with perfect hospitality. He seemed to know him too.

“When did you return from the US, sir?” he asked.

Modern Righteousness

"I would consider water service to be a better option" said the guy in the black t-shirt who just walked into the tea stall.

The worker in the tea stall was washing the bike there with water and a soft cloth, the owner of the stall (and bike) behind the counter, fetching his customer some cigarettes and small-talking.

"Water service? Water service once a week will cost much more than an hour of Dilip's time" said the owner.

Dilip seemed to be unimpressed by his owner's comment as he frowned at him, squeezing the water out of the cloth, into the bucket of dirty water. He then dropped the cloth and took the bucket in his hand with much difficulty. "It should be tough on an 8 year old boy" I thought.

So, I kept the tea glass on the ground, walked swiftly to the bike, got on and rode it away, rock music playing in my head and adrenaline pumping through my veins. Hearing screaming voices of the owner and the sound of the thrown stones, largely muffled by the "wrrrrroom" of the 4 stroke bike and the pulsing blood in my ears.

The 24th chromosome

There she stood, watching us all, singing something to us from behind the glass. If anything like this was there back when I was 20, they'd call it a zoo. Caged, sparsely fed and angry was she. Tamed by her keepers. She wasn't a creature to be tamed. She was a natural beauty.

Her wings, silver like the moon and feathered with those beautifully streamlined quills! Her beak, sharp as a knife, yet crooked as a hook. Her eyes, blue and glowing, reflecting the bright Sunday sun. Her neck long as a pencil, and legs like shoots of the bamboos that beautified her abode. Her skin ebony in shade and glowing. And her dress for the week, a beautiful red velvety gown that swept the glass floors clean. Yup, she wore a dress. And yes, she was human, almost.

The ripple, the tide and the tsunami.

Once, I was taking a helicopter ride from one island to another in the Andamans. It was picturesque, certainly! And I was at awe, just gaping at the beauty of nature. And then suddenly, into the calm ocean, my friend dropped a pebble. It made ripples in the calm, so beautiful in the blue. And at that moment, a thought struck me, I learnt a lesson, a very cherishable one. I call it "The ripple, the tide and the tsunami".

Finding some shoes to fit into...

As a 20 year old who's 75% through with his bachelors, you'd be justified to expect a decent amount of career oriented clarity in me. Well, I request you not to. In fact, I suggest you don't expect that from anyone my age in my position! You're asking me why?? Let me tell you a funny story:

Once upon a time, there was a young boy. He never had worn shoes; till the day came when his eyes suddenly looked down. His head fell and he realized every one of his friends wore shoes. Though there were some tailored shoes, most of them wore a single type of shoe : the slip-on. He asked them where they got the shoes and they said they earned enough to buy themselves shoes. So, our young hero told his parents that he wanted shoes. His parents asked him what type of shoes he wanted. And off the top of his mind, he told them he wanted slip-ons.

Leaky clouds and an improbably happy me!

In the UK, gloomy is gloomy. In Tamil Nadu however, gloomy with the smell of rain is almost as good as nature gets.

After a hot summer afternoon, struggling to manage all the shuttling between my hostel and the Instrumentation and Control Department, I went and sat inside the Control Engineering lab for a (yet another, grueling) lab session! And as I sat there, busily(!!). I was running through my mind on how I would talk to the professor who was planning to penalize me for having low attendance in a course. I was desperate. I was imagining staying back on campus when everyone else left for 70 days during summer! I was feeling angry at myself. A rage was tunneling through my veins but it suddenly stopped dead only for me to realize that there was hardly much that could be done.

“If she says you need to do it again, you need to stay back, Deepak! You need to complete the course. You don’t have a choice” I said to myself. “Pity yourself! But seriously, shame on you!”

I was distraught. I was helpless. The summer looked like a dark time to live in and my life seemed to be full of gloom.

Oh Good God!!

Radical. That's how I see religion. It's not traditional to claim something invisible to be something obvious. It never could have been. Religion has crept in through the ranks of society through the ages and in my opinion it is here to stay. Why?? A few things pop up in my mind as an answer to why god is good for man.

A new lease of life.

They were a cute, young couple. When the two of them started going out, they were just about 17 years old. They had no idea how damaging real relationships can be. They were just two youngsters trying to have fun as they built on to the impulsively planned out future. A bright future ahead of them, supportive parents, gushing young blood and delightfully optimistic minds.

Initially, all the newness of a relationship held their hands through. Everything was a first time. The first date, the first big hug, the first kiss, the first time they said the three words. It seemed like they were on a cloud they would never come down from. Top of the world.

Science?!

When the tall, black haired, Brahmin said "I believe my religion and believe when it says Darwin’s theory is wrong”, I had a conversation within myself.  The two people inside me : the atheist and the son of my parents kept talking and will probably never stop. But I guess there’s a winner nonetheless. Till the day the son finds enough belief in the religion to throw the atheist out of me, the atheist will keep winning. But this is an episode where he actually lost!!

Atheist : Hari can’t be serious!! It’s just the heat of the discussion getting to him!!

Son of Brahmins : I half doubt Darwin too. After-all, nothing has ever been certain. So what if they found fossils? Maybe that was also a wrong theory.

Atheist : So, you’re saying if people proved the world to be round and not flat, they will prove humans are humans and not evolved apes?!

Son  : Yes, I bet you can’t find a fault with that argument of mine.

Happily Ever After!

“And they lived happily ever after”

What does that remind you? Cinderella? Snow White? Any other fairy-tale? I’m sure it’s only in fairy tales that we see a phrase like that. And the reason is simple, because the phrase in itself is quite an imaginary thing.

When we start out moulding our lives, we have a goal in mind. The goal is pretty simple, “A happy future”. But as we live life second by second, we are forced to rethink this goal of ours.