Thursday, October 16, 2008
Questions?
Who doesn't?
What's wrong?
What isnt?
Whaddya want?
What do I don't want?
Where's the love?
What love?
Where are you?
Where's who where?
M&M
Music - ditto.
So when you have Movies about Music, it's better than bonus on a payday, better than surprise twins, better than life after death, better than Trinity giving life to Neo.
On the radio today, they spoke about a certain Mr. Cash recording some songs in a prison and they comin' up with a CD or two and DVD about it. Come evening, and I pop in Walk The Line into the DVD player. It had been lying there for days, so why today, I ask. There aren't no coincidences in life.
Music, Love, Life. Movies on legendary lives have happy endings. Does life?
M&M's. Keeping the hope alive. Hope floats. So do I. There is supposed to be happy ending, right? Say Yes.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Post Facto
One of those questions led me to pick up pieces of my own self and move on. I figured this is what was destined and happened for a reason. You _try_ to understand the reason and move on.
We are not here to ask questions actually. We are just here to understand the answers. The sooner you understand, the sooner life poses the next question for you.
Someone asked me, "Are you OK? What you write is really sad." I said, "I am fine". Sad is me. Kurt Cobain said, "I miss the comfort in being sad". I like to interpret that to my advantage, however incorrect it may be. Happiness is fleeting, sadness is eternal.
At the end of it all - the questions are trying to help me find my path. I am lost.
Question
I question everything.
Is my existence justified?
What am I doing here?
Why am I even here?
Have you ever sat face to face with someone or thought about sitting face to face, and not saying anything? In movies, there a soothing symphony playing, when it comes to me - a raucous cacophony - What am I doing here? Is this stare game going to end? There's that report to finsh still. Do I make enough money? Does she love me? Is this too much like the movies, but just more meaningless? What is she thinking?
May be I should really meditate. Maybe I should focus on whats important. Maybe I am waiting for someone to tell me that. I am sure I will not listen to that person. May be I should figure it out. Maybe I am should just trudge along. Maybe I should be happy. Maybe I should be less me.
It's the question that drives us. What's the question? What?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Confused
Two distinct sections in my life - work life and personal life. Notice how the work part comes first.. Well, that has been a bane but its the relatively pre-dominant section of of recent past, what with my personal life going for a toss. So, what's confusing at work?
What activities to prioritize? (all the Project Management training and still no where)
What to delegate and not to?
Whom to delegate?
How does this make sense?
What is driving this policy?
What are my chances of getting promoted?
Why can't some one do something about the roads (in Pune)? and the traffic?
Is this salary decent or am I missing out?
Will I ever get out of the rat race?
What am I doing here?
Where do I want to go with this?
What's confusing in personal life?
How do you trust some one?
How do you know love is for real?
Is there a metric system to grade friendships? Facebook? orkut?
How do I avoid saying Yes to people? (I know, I should read some books on being able to say "No", that might help in a way)
How to nicely handle parents? and sister?
How do you get someone to take a hint, or not?
How do you prioritize you RTM to-do list?
Should I get the iPhone or not?
And I am not sure why I started this post at 12 in the night thinnking about someone and it ended up being enitrely different..
They say it goes with being a Virgo.. not that I ever cared about it, or may be I did, or didn't! ;)
Confused? I am..
Saturday, April 26, 2008
What does it mean?
Solitary lunches
Solitary laughs
Solitary pleasures
Solitude unwanted
Unwanted memories
Unsolved questions
Uncharted territory
Undone good life
Lifelong irritation
Lifeless existence
Life no longer one
One day at a time
One thought not escaping me
Me minus
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Fear
Is fear your inner demons? For the longest time, I have feared my sub-conscience the most. The things it conjures up are scarier than any spine chilling horror movie I have attempted to sit thru. And it has got company too. My over-imaginative imagination. There's a reason why it is called "image"nation. It conjures up pictures where you don't want none. It only serves to feed my sub-conscience into dreaming up a Ramsay-Spielberg joint venture.
With introspection being my favorite indulgence, these two factors (inner demos & imagination) routinely crop in my thought process. If not only to muddle the thinking, but to also send me into trips of melancholy. The pride that I associated with my thinking is now a sense of foreboding. An invitation to the inner demons to lay siege to me and wait till I cave in. It is only in a clutchful of friends can I see solace and climb out of the hole that I dig myself into.
But this is a war of attrition, I think. Everyday is a struggle to keep the demons at bay and everyday is a fresh challenge. And everyday, I think, a bit of me never comes out of that hole. I think my obsession with what happens at the age of 27 may soon catch up with me. I hope not though. It will be too easy and escapist to cave in. But I will take it one day at a time. I hope to get a huge dollop of solace soon, but then again, it may not be coming.
...that voice inside my head gets stronger...
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Of False Starts and Introspection
We talk about leap of faith and the whole partners for life schmooze and I think of the filmi but now seemingly true to life characters of Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire and Will Smith in Hitch...
"...you complete me"...
"...and there's only one person that makes me feel like I can fly"...
Past tense is probably more accurate...
Words fail me. I could actually turn this into the worse rant post I can ever write but there would be only more pain in seeing sad reality coming to haunt me on my screen.
The reality is
even if u mend the broken glass, the cracks are still there;
even if u patch a pricked balloon, you can still see the disfiguration;
even if the wounds heal, the scars are permanently etched;
even if u reformat, its still the same machine.
In the weird circle of life, there is no complete "Undo"
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Black and White
4 lane freeway - 1 lane potholed excuse
cold - sweat
white - brown
independence - in dependence
WiFi - dial-up
aloof - hospitable
DIY - never need to try
comfortable - struggle
land of opportunities - land of history
Bush - Kalam
Civic - rickshaw
Thanksgiving - Diwali
Google - Infosys
me - us
live concerts - concerts on DVD
edge of your seat sports - plush sofa with remote
legal alien - disposable native
freedom - stranglehold
turncoat?
realist?
Friday, September 28, 2007
Root Cause
Musing, while I let the movie soak me, I saw what must be one of things that Che must have seen and felt - Hunger; with a capital H.
We saw people evicted out of the land that they once called home only to be someone's petty slave and lead a life in servitude where once a chest was pumped with pride. What drove them to do this? Or what forced them? What was the root cause? What IS the root cause?
Hunger?
Hunger for food.. very basic
Hunger for money.. thats the way the world works now
Hunger for respect.. what a man or woman holds dearest
Hunger for love.. what steeps you in selflessness
Hunger for more.. what drives us to be the beasts that we once were
It is strange that a movie on Che made me think of Buddha.. yes, *the* Gautam Buddha. He said, "*Desire* is the root cause of all evil". If you could think of Desire and Hunger in a little abstract terms, you realize that they are the same. Hunger is the root cause of all evil.. Maybe hunger is the root cause of all Desire too.. Maybe Hunger *IS* Desire. I wish I could extrapolate..
Che sought to level Hunger with his revolution, Buddha to quell Desire with with his resolution.
I am not here to take sides. Just to put forth the the thought-trips that some of the best English movies take me on. What makes you think?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Tense
Have an insipid existence
Will have an uncertain future
Had a few leeches
Have a couple of will-do-anything-for-me
Will have no one to cry for me
Had fallen in love
Have struggled to get up
Will have to go about it alone
Had blood raging thru me
Have a sense of the what heart gone cold is
Will have to wait for 5 billion years to thaw
Had my people around me
Have a terrible time seeing them go
Will have get accustomed to the vicious life and what follows, or maybe never will
Had not lived in the past
Have a terrible feeling about the present
Will have not such a great future tense
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Why do I blog?
Back then, I had noted that I would have wanted my site to also be an online diary of my life. What purpose would it serve?, why would I want hapless surfers a peek into my mundane existence?, I did not know. But I did start it and soon gave it up - blogging never happened and it was too cumbersome to maintain a blog when you have write the code too!
And, in circa 2006 when Google and Web 2.0 was everybody's baby, I signed up to blog. Why?
1. Everybody else is doing it, so I should too? (Nope, I am not so good at following crowds and trends.)
2. I have a lot to share with people from my variegated life? (Unlikely.)
3. I have my Oscar acceptance speech ready and this is the closest I am going to get people to hear (or read) it? (Ideally true but considering the # of people who ready my blog, very ambitious.)
4. There is a hidden writer in me craving for release? (Probably.)
5. Something to brag about? (That 2 people read my last post and commented?)
6. I have nothing better to do? (Close)
7. I don't know (Pretty close too!)
Wondering...
Negativity, by a Pessimist
I have been a pessimist ever since I knew what that meant. And a touch fatalist and nihilist to boot. I have also been of the firm opinion that it is this negativity that gives any meaning and importance to the transient happiness that flits in and out of our lives like the dreams of dating Pamela Anderson! lol..
But seriously, had it not been for the all pervasive negative energy, we would not have been eternally running after the happy shit. The yin and yang, matter and anti-matter, positron and electron all exist to justify the other half's existence. But I digress (I do that often, running off on tangents and hyperbolas).
The point I as trying to make is that I am soaked in negativity and all things associated with it. Heck, I am left-handed even - the classic negative example. So inspite of all of this, I suddenly came to realize that I have been consistently creating negative energy around me by mouthing off. See,I talk too much anyway and that means talk too much negativity.
Pointed criticism of my employer, contracting firm, salary, friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues, India, Pratibha Patil, America, Bush, the new hot chick at work (what you can't get, you pretend is bad anyway), the list of things to spew venom about is endless. I realized that I have been drawn into these vacuous conversations all because of needing to to spend time here (see my post about the work-feed-sleep repeat routine - Life aboard a Spaceship). An idle mind is the devil's workshop - spot on!
So, I have made a conscious decision to quit (or rather minimize) talking about the negative highlights of our mundane daily existence. Not only does it give me a convenient excuse to be quiet in public conversations, I do not end up being drawn into the vicious circle of repeatedly bashing things we can't control or those people who are not around but also saves me energy and lets me focus on doing other things (reading thru Shantaram is one).
I am not sure if this is the right thing to do and how long can I sustain it, but I am going to turn a little more introspective and see what comes of it. Like a said, it's a thought in progress and I am going to let it wander.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Always Late
Late in realizing that I was wasting time in engineering college (3 years after under grad)
Late in starting to study (last semester is too little too late)
Late in abandoning unworthy friends (a few more to go yet)
Late in getting married (Rush is so right for me)
Late in getting into IT
Late in quitting IT (still no balls to do it)
Late in acknowledging people's gratitude and love ( you know who you are, I don't)
Late in blogging (I have been thinking for a long time and not jotting it down)
Late in sleeping (everyday)
P.S. My taxi driver in Kerala said "Sir, today very laight..". I heard "Today, very light". I thought he meant sunny, but I was late for my sightseeing...
Sunday, September 09, 2007
What is my catharsis?
As I fight my sleep yet another Saturday night, I wonder what is my catharsis, or probably more appropriately, my release. What delivers me from my calculated, modulated self into a free flowing human? What's my liberation?
In my teenage days (that's how far back I can recollect my self as being introspective), it used to be music. Just the daily dose of my MTV followed by ad nauseam discussions with friends to break it down thread bare was liberating.. It was followed by the boyish craving of females (not that it has died! ;) ) The off beat movies came later on, interspersed with movies about sweaty females in procreating poses (how tacky! :( )
See, its always been a shifting target, steady ever so little until you become too comfortable with it and it stops being effective. Dissolving myself in work was a very weird way of doing that. My seemingly huge and complicated programs were but a mere speck of dust in the castle I would have wanted my code to be.
What has not shifted is 2 things - Books and Friends (notice the emphasis). Unwavering true friends and the one sided conversations with books (yes, JSha, we spoke about this) are the perfect deliverance for any pathetic mood swings, pangs of loneliness and general frustration at being ineffectual in changing the world. Books are that perpective you've ever had, maybe always had or never would have had if not for that writer putting his thoughts down for the others to ponder over. I digress, but does a writer think about the readers when writing?
Friends have head banged with me, split those countless inane jokes with me, helped me stay alive when puppy love caught up with me, have tried to keep me on the path to sanity when life was crazy. Isn't it funny how we realize the value of most of the precious things in times of distress?
But these have their limitations. Whom can you have at your beck and call when you need them? At 3 in the morning, there are only so many things you can call upon. Rush would probably do.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Life aboard a Spaceship
We drive to work as a routine (take scheduled space walks), do not wander around the city (limit ourselves to the confines of the tether), engage in perfunctory talk with native workers (say Hi to the fellow cosmonaut on board Mir/ISS), perform regular, predictable, monotonous, tasks (check the solar panels, repair obsolete, moribund gadgets), appear to be involved in a highly technical environment "We just upgraded to 10g and our procedures broke" (OK! the spaceship *is* a technically challenging environment!), come back home and browse DVDs etc (seal the latches and de-pressurize the suit).. You get the hint..
The drudgery of this life is broken by unusual burst of activity, predictably around long weekends. (Hey, the new Soyuz module docks in 3 weeks!) More often than not, it is a case of too little, too late. Only the most artistic and athletic ones break the humdrum through painting, dancing, tennis, squash... the works. Rest are left to fend off their demons with nothing but a 40:1 rupee:dollar rate, the NRI tag, alcohol and high speed Internet access.
I don't see this changing. People will move on, newer astronauts will take over, software services will continue to be profitable and the orbiting tin can will chug along...