Dot.

Lethargy. Diligence. Physical exertion. Stares. Aggravated exertion. More stares. Break. Early hour ponder. Preparation. Imposed diet. Guns n Roses. Sugarman lost & found. 9 miles apart. Corporate penitentiary. Longing. Lethargy. Grit. Diet anomaly. Adherence. Longing. Fleeing. Mike Rosenberg. Snow Patrol. 9 mile journey. Soap operas. Wee hour ponder. Lovelorn. Sighs. More sighs. Hope. Endless optimism. Striking reality. More stares. Sighs. Under the duvet. Piercing darkness. There You Go. Endless loop of Tautology. Eyes shut. Misogyny. Cannibalism. Eyes wide open. Water. Eyes shut. Slap. Turn. Sway. Sleep. Killing. Rampage. Mitigation. Dawn. Lethargy. Diligence. Physical exertion.

Nice Guys might not finish

I wasn't sure whether labeling would be of any help but I can't help but shrug now & label myself as a Nice Guy. I am a Nice Guy. I have my own set of insecurities, inhibitions, fears & strengths but on the whole, I don't intend to harm anybody out of vengeance, if not help the needy if the need is within my capability. No crooked thoughts about anything that seems fishy. I believe solely in being a better (informed & wise) person tomorrow than what I have been today.

Fortunately or unfortunately, they say Nice Guys Finish Last. I don't know who they are. I am yet again unsure to label 'them' - those who said the above adage. When somebody no longer seems to be a 'known person', he/she involuntarily gets categorized as Strangers & they demand all the respect from me like you & me usually treat strangers. Be courteous to them.

When such courteousness is often being mistaken for my defeat & resignation, I again don't feel the surge to momentarily dump my niceness & bring out the bad balls. Because not feeling such surge genuinely to prove your balls keeping aside the niceness actually is the primary quality of Nice Guys.

The reason I am afraid Nice Guys might no longer finish, keep aside finishing last is Nice Guys are taken for granted. You women fall for those who cheat on you, turn you philistine & make you crave for things that hardly matter. Nice ones remember what color of tulips you always wanted to hold on that magical evening on the beach side.

Yet the color of tulips will soon be forgotten. Favorite beaches will be abandoned. Dreams will be disregarded. Sun may be washed by the sea; old will be lost in the new sung Michael Rosenberg. Nice Guys remain behind as despised memories in the hearts of philistine women. They will be dismissed for reasons 1,2 & 3 but the women will always be loved by us for the same reasons.

Just like Ana Scott shouts "Newspapers are everything. They tell the world what I've done all my life & how far I've made it" to which our dear William Thacker responds with a perplexed face "Today's newspaper will be tomorrow's scrap." 

Garden State blew in some hope.

On the last Sunday which turned out to be a homely Sunday, Garden State happened. I watched it for an umpteenth time and I fell in love with it, yet again. It dabs the sensibilities of life while it invents its own language, flavour and landscape. Going back to the titles of the movie felt like I was home. However, I felt few lines really needed to be up here on my blog. I have never been a cinephile and so is why, immortal lines from immortal movies never made their way to my blog. Garden State however stands out as an exception.

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But you know what? That’s all ego. None of that really matters. If I get to be with you right here and our beautiful baby, that’s all I need. - Albert

This necklace reminds me of a really random memory of my mother. I was a little kid, and I was crying for one reason or another. She was just like, you know, cradling me and rocking me back and forth. And I can remember seeing the little balls on this thing floating back and forth. And there was snot dripping down my nose. And she gave me her sleeve, and she told me to blow my nose into it. And I remember thinking even as a little kid, like…this is love. This is love. - Andrew

When I’m with you, I feel so safe. Like I’m home. - Andrew

I’m really messed up right now, and I’ve got a whole lot of stuff I gotta work out, but I don’t want to waste anymore of my life without you in it. -  Andrew 

Pact of Trade

When writing was just about to grab the front seat,
She entered into my life.
With love that ignited my senses & put me on heat,
Writing took a back seat 'cos I wanted to make her my wife. 


That one who can love me & write about it
was the one who I looked forward to.
She confessed she cannot write a shit;
I was convinced I'd tame her to.

We made a pact of trade.
I give her writing & she give me love.
But I didn't know it was meant to fade
Just like an autumn took away from us a dry clove. 

She decided to keep love for herself.
but I never wondered that she'd instead teach me how to hate.
I am stuck here with 'love rebuttal' as my motif.
She moved on to write a brand new LOVE on her slate.

I cross paths with strangers to accidentally discover her all over again.
But all I discover is a whole new bunch of faces.
Waiting to be found.
Waiting to be loved. 




Deekshith

The one-third shucks.

The world has seen Gandhis and Mandelas. With ll due respect, hats go off to their ulterior motives that changes the courses of mankind on a grotesque level. However, when it comes to the worldliness, the whole concept of 'work' & a man's definition that's conceded on the work he does & the way his life revolves around the work he does always eludes me.

1/3 - all it boils down to that fraction. 8 hours a day. All our lives. 1/3rd life a man lives, he works. To win his bread. His existence. Survival. Things might have been good if those were the only ones that could have been bought by work. It just has gone beyond. Overboard. Suffocatingly overwhelming.

Peer-peer relations are rather plasticized I would say. This thought struck me as I was coming back home from work & Mike Rosenberg sang in all his glory - "I walk past the businessmen, sleeping like babies in their cars." While the song always made me nostalgic for where I chose to emigrate from in search of love; London will always be special to me. That lyric depicted a London night succinctly.

First things first - coming back to 'work' & its correlation with a man's presence and his toke of being acknowledged by his peers, I find it absurd to determine the amount of respect he is entitled to receive stays directly proportional to the multi-national presence of his employer and the number of zeroes that are expected to be added endlessly on his pay cheque. I honestly didn't understand the gist but sadly, I live in a world where making peace with incomprehensible things makes life livable.

The thing that my chest was swollen with pride when a nameless commercial Telugu movie had its protagonist shouting out witty one liners about Dignity of Labor. Rebellion without a cause always gets bolstered by wit, I say. It does & so it did back then. But when Dignity of Labor is looked back at with rationale now, it enlivens a hope for Utopia.

I consider its the approach of a man to the incidents he gets subjected to, directly or indirectly - shapes him into what he actually is. His reaction to all such incidents. Each incident like a snow of flake being deposited on the mount of snow on a snowy London afternoon. Tonnes of it together forms a berg - A Man.

Let me save nobility for Gandhis & Mandelas. For us, the mere beings, the common men, lets welcome our hearts, gut & substance define us. Not the one-third of our lives. We acquire education, skill to prepare ourselves to work to make a living. Not to earn one. To make a life, work's plenty I suppose. To earn one, hearts should enter the ring.

Work is work & we are not always what we do. We are what we think we are too. 

Ignorance is Bliss

Mainstream has become mainstream because of all the sad elements it managed to attract while it always divulges from the river to cascade into the sea called World. When the good old men yelled that Good is Always Less in Number, it just seemed as a rant out of despair to see a sensible world, or what we call it in new age as Utopia.

When pictures are clicked only to etch onto the walls of facebook but infrequently eschew in the folders of dust bitten albums which can be viewed years later fondly to kindle such memories, 'memory' seems to have acquired a new definition & escalate the new age dictionaries as something that goes like this: "an event from the past which wins others' praise".

A tablet no longer means a pill for an ailment anymore but it reminds us of an oddly rectangular slate digitized to rob our privacy. The smell of an old book opened after years has got replaced by tapping fingers & scrolling text.

When social credentials make it opulently to wedding cards, hearts long stopped crying out love. The vastness of a groom's heart is measured by the vastness of a barren land he owns just around the corner around the city's ghetto.

The Green Card issued by American Embassy probes the underprivileged to go green with jealousy. When people are redefining love by stating that it's an "in-definitive symbiosis", old school chaps sulk into the unreachable depths of pallor.

The simplicity of a walk into the town down your street hold you up for your financial ineligibility to attain a better mode of transport. Blame the third world country and its subsequent problems. Royally.

Fake smiles decorate the profile pictures on facebook but they ridicule me every time I term their smiles indeed fake. When ignorance is blossoming smiles on their faces & if smiles are all that denote happiness, am I being compelled here to be Ignorant?

If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won

Apathy. Self loathing - probably the shortest way to destruction. Listening to somebody who sings about 'Apathy' when driving to office seems to establish the connect. But on the darker side, it has terrible aftermath. Ask me.

The guy who's on a pause on the stereo in my car was paused at 'If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won.' Or must I say I chose to pause him right after that line? To add meaning to the menace I was about to go through. To define namelessness of existence. to decipher the burden of freedom as the 'soul' (or at least I thought it was soul) eluded my being.

I look back & figure out that it's not even a week things changed. Changed in an incomprehensible manner.

While the 'soul' seeks the spirit of liberty few miles away from me, apathy somehow finds it way back to me.

The good ol' brother (people call him Ashok) once said to chase meaning than method. God knows I've failed but He knows I have tried.

While this piece remains to be the spit of self loathing, I struggle to keep calm. Though I know all this would barely constitute to a particle some years down the lane, particles are all you're made up of - reminds my naive heart.

As I move on from this with an angst unbeknownst to me earlier that breeds loathing, I walk back into the smudged alleys of future singing 'If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won.'