Diary - Day 35

There was a strange truancy of nervousness when I took the stairs to reach home last night around 1 AM. It didn't take me long enough to realize that the comfort was because of knowing I'd open the door to no one. Mom has gone away to be part of a distant cousin's wedding festivities. What is it I've got with being around people and feeling irked? Is it because of the constant let-down they are capable of or is it plain intolerance for discord between my self and theirs?

I must admit I have a thing for women of astounding beauty. Okay, let me say, Elegance. No amount of reading, or discourse or growing up can completely rid me off the feeling that beautiful is good. It's not wrong but it ain't right either. Okay, it's wrong. I guess it's one of my idiosyncrasies. Probably this is what is forgiving thyself. I am coming to grips with the fact that I can't help but relish the elegance from afar. She doesn't need to be in flesh and bone. I can equally take delight in a beautiful woman's portrait. I said beautiful - doesn't necessarily imply succulent or voluptuous or something of that sorts (Hey you New Age Feminazis, you got me there!). It is some sight to watch a woman who can carry herself effortlessly.

So this is about my hatred for keeping company and liking for things of beauty, err..elegance.  

Diary - Day 34

I tasted a bite of New Age Feminism yesterday in the gym.

There were 5 treadmills among which one was unoccupied when I entered the gym. I stepped in, walked towards the one treadmill. A middle-aged, visibly capricious lady sprang up from behind a Pilates ball and asked that she'd take the treadmill instead (it works on a first-come-first-serve basis with treadmills at the gym).

I said okay but pointed out the she'd spend more than permissible time on treadmill (which is 15-20 minutes) during peak hours. She retorted by dragging a friend of hers into the argument by a seeking a validation from her friend that she never overran on a treadmill. I tried to play down the altercation by saying, "I don't have to lie to you, madam. I've seen you going on about 45 minutes and over, many a time" and walked into the weights section.

Some good 30-35 minutes passed and this lady got off the treadmill. Mind you, 30-35 minutes. She walked up to the farthermost corner of the gym where I was working out. She wagged her right hand index finger at me threateningly and said,"Learn how to talk to women first."

This was after I kept addressing her as madam all the while. I spoke only in English - not to give scope for any possible misinterpretations.

I shot back saying,"madam, maybe you need to know how to talk to human beings first before you advise me on learning how to talk to women," and went ahead with my workout.

My back could feel the piercing of virtual arrows she shot while she stood there fuming (probably plotting another gibe at me) as I went on with my workout.

Diary - Day 32

21st November, 2016. 11.46 pm. At work station. If I am fortunate to be alive and sound in mind for few decades from now, I will surely look back at this time, reminiscing these grim days and nights spent in this oddly spacious cubicle with a queer sense of nostalgia.

I get this feeling once in a while. It strikes me when I find myself gazing through the things around me and reel back in reverie. It feels like every travel I make in my life, I leave something behind. Although how much I may hate being in a place during my stay there, I guess I develop a sense of familiarity. That familiarity is more often than not irksome - but only when people are involved (aren't they involved almost always?).

A sense of being in a physical location, devoid of human intervention, allows me to absorb its setting & the associated ambience. I make up stories in my head wherein I imagine montages of events that could be set aptly against such ambiences and so forth. That's all just fantasising parts of stories I wish to write if I ever turn to be a novelist one day.

So some interesting thoughts I get during such times, I jot down and I move on - from such places - further in my life. Literally and figuratively. But what intrigues me is the slow kicking-in of that queer nostalgia when I reminisce about the places left behind.

For instance, I don't like being here right now; with a designation and the attached nonsense of it. But the pensiveness I indulge in while I am here will trigger a later day's nostalgia. 

Diary - Day 29

We live in a time of indifference, apathy and self-indulgence. The ethos of our times has been driven home, quite strikingly, every now & then through thoughtful art, artists, thinkers and other eminent people of the world. It has only been in such point-making instances the increasing indifference of our times glare into my face. As the time passes, its radiance slowly diminishes and settles into an unremarkable doctrine we all quite sporadically grapple with.

There was a human moment this morning, which put me to shame for my shard of indifference and self-indulgence. I went to the cafe after the morning workout. I order my regular, medium-khadak chai (see, obsessed with details of what I did; you're welcome) and opened a QoA based social networking site on the phone.

Charging myself guilty of nasty, pre-defecation reading material, I was reading about a man's sexual encounters he's had through a dating app. Slurping my tea and sucking pleasure from reading a stranger's sexual escapades. That's when a destitute widow walked into the cafe with her under-provided children. Them entering the cafe was registered in my head, only semi-consciously though. Because, consciously I was busy devouring some early morning erotic literature.

There, within a distance of mere 1.5 meters, were two existences - one, falling short of means to provide for her children, counting the coins she has and comparing the prices of stale snacks put up on display; and another, me, feeding on something that's a supply for my free time and thought.

And the misery is, all this didn't strike me for as long as 20 minutes. Only a rerun of happenings in the head and adding a pinch of perspective here and there, revealed to me my abominable indulgence.

I could have bought her something to feed her children - but the pessimist inside me questions about the inadequacy of my service, wondering about their lunch, dinner and rest of the meals until they find some means to be self-sufficient or until they cease to exist. But I can't forgive myself showing this as an excuse to not by them the breakfast I should have bought.

Sure, there are people who are trying within their own rights to defeat and keep the three demonic nouns (ones I mentioned in the beginning) confined to dictionary. Salute to them for trying to do something for which I am plainly not human enough to try doing. But the times we live in are pernicious and sorry but are we doomed.  

Diary - Day 28

Most of the times, I have consciously refrained from writing about any societal happenings on this blog. There have been exceptions, but very few. I too have been the victim of restlessness as currency began eluding common man's reach on November 8th.

Demonetisation

Intents of policies are always noble. Execution is the game spoiler usually. Without much rhetoric, I will talk about my take on the recent demonetisation carried out by GoI.

India has less than 5% of its people who declare their incomes and hence, pay taxes for the same. Being an agricultural country predominantly and farmers & allied workers constituting as much as 56% of the entire country's population, India holds 2nd rank in the global contribution to agricultural output. All these numbers are just to bring in a perspective that agricultural income is not taxed in the country and so is its workforce (largely).

It's no rocket science that more the cashless transactions (if and wherever possible), less the unaccountable money (we call it 'black money' dearly). Use of cashless transactions is as high as 93% , quite predictably, in Belgium, followed by other developed nations like France, Canada, UK, Sweden and Australia, in that order (with difference in percentage between no two countries going over 2%). Coming to India, unsurprisingly, it is as low as 11%. The penetration of cashless transactions isn't going at a great rate either - merely at 0.43% (approx).

As I am scribbling this down, I coincidentally receive a text that goes like "Go Cash-free. Use code XYZ123 to get Rs. 100 cashback before Nov 25th. T&C Apply" from a wallet services provider whose services I use quite infrequently.

Now if mere 11% of the entire populace are going cashless, and in good faither, let's assume the 11% are alleviated from the perils of the cash crunch since Nov 8th - what about the 89% rest? They go all cash for their daily tenders and kaboom! their lives have come to a standstill. Filled with dead air.

I am not questioning the govt's intent behind the alleged masterstroke-ish move. Execution should have been more farsighted, thoughtful and planned.

Now when I say thoughtful, I've got a thing or two to add to the above lines. To drive the country's cash-based-people aka the socioeconomically & technologically naivete masses on the path of cashless transactions, it comes back to educating them, empowering them with tools, leveraging technology to help them go cashless. It's important to drive increasing number of people in the direction of going cashless while the transition is not uncalled for, smooth and does not create the chaos as we experience today. I am saying this because only a small fragment of people who are socioeconomically nurtured enough to receive texts like the one I just received are able to go cashless.

Demonetising bigger bills may hinder currency counterfeiting but if it is handicapping the hapless lot of the country on the other side, I am not sure which side must the weighing scale sway towards.

Diary - Day 27

For as long as my memory can take me back in time, I have always longed to be in a place, far from any place I've ever been in all these years. This elusive place has always been in the back of my head, stoked when I read a piece of fiction or watch a movie - wherein one of the characters seems to be in a similar kind of place which could come fairly close to my fancy.

What's interesting is when I look in retrospect, I've actually walked past such places of etherealness but could barely recognise them, for all their etherealness only exists in my head. That could be an unassuming lane with a scenic tea shop at the end of it in a normal, tier-2 city like Jamshedpur or Darjeeling. Maybe, the whole idea behind such dream is to be in such a place that offers an escape from familiarity. To be somewhere where I could just slip a bag on my shoulder and saunter around. Rid of any obligations to be somewhere else and do something that I'd dread to do.

I started watching Black Mirror yesterday and 3rd episode in the 1st season held my breath. For as sweet as memories seem when they are ephemeral in their flashing, their outlasted lingering in our heads will only welcome their twin sister that goes by the name Chaos. This point was exquisitely dealt in that episode. After a point, one desires memories to be erased - like cleansing roads of snow so that the bogey called life could resume its journey.

The next time I pass thru one of such places, I'd stop, fill my lunges with its air and go on. 

Diary - Day 26

Another week has just kicked in, bringing with it newer challenges at work to which I am not really looking forward. But like it happened so far, will happen so forth.

The queerness of my dreams in alarming nowadays. The more I'm coming to grips with reality in full consciousness, the queerer my dreams are getting. It has taken me good days of rational thinking and pathetic days of paranoia to accept the few unassailable things in my life. But equally oddly, my brain acts quite weirdly in formulating my dreams. When I wake up, I feel I am in my body with someone else's brain - which makes me upper lip quiver in cold, terrifying sweat. This feeling almost puts in jeopardy the torrent of experiences and so the learning milked out of them. Only as minutes pass by into the day, the naughty subconscious part of my brain retires into its lobe and the consciousness reappears on the foreground.

I am still thinking on the lines of whether such stark contrast in the functioning of brain's conscious and subconscious is normal or is there a problem that has to be identified and to be dealt with.