Diary - Day 41

There's an insect crawling on my desk
It could be one of those outcasts from its sect
For only idiotic ones set out at a winter's dusk
It nevertheless is slithering into the warm of my monitor's shadow

It must have known different fabrics of warmth.
One could be stifling, another cuddly.
Only the penchant for an unknown warmth
must have gnawed its brain to set out early.

As absurd it is as to think of the insect as smart
but knowing a different level of smartness exists out there
makes it smart indeed. For an insect seeking a
new height of smartness, the warmth it left behind with the peers is surely a tether. 

Diary - Day 39

The entire essence, and hence effort of this diary project has been to keep it as impersonal with respect to my daily happenings as possible. But what has proved difficult is to try and squeeze in time consistently, day after day, to think about the abstract and give it the shape of an entry here. Or maybe, this is what I actually wanted when I dreamt of running a diary project. To delve into the daily torrent of thoughts, think about why I am thinking what I am thinking/feeling and understand myself better. This's just a tool that's expected to help me (as I explained to Sandeep) to make mistakes, put tongue in cheek whenever I realize I made mistakes, learn from them and hone my craft.

This thought of evading the price of staying in IT has become recurrent now. Perhaps, it'd be appropriate to say that it's a 'daily occurrence' now. I dream of things I could do, decently enough, to vouch myself a day job at doing them. I could think of nothing other than speaking and writing. My immediate and direct senior in the Vemuganti's lineage has been a salesman for more than 3 decades now. I may have inadvertently rubbed off some persuasive skills from looking at him persuading people do what they don't actually want to do. Now the very same persuasiveness wins my bread and beer.

Another thing I can (dare I say) consider to hunt a day job for in is Writing. This stint at IT is like a flower pot cracker for me. It's dazzlingly bright for as long as it can go on - so bright that it almost blinds my vision. But we all do know that it has a short life, don't we? So before the flower pot goes off in a disappointing fashion, I should figure out how I could make writing a long-lasting and also a sufficiently bright cracker for me so that I'd while away my time here in its just-enough brightness but for long enough.

Diary - Day 36

I have not really been a lucky person. At least I don't consider myself so. But I've been lucky in one aspect. At every juncture of my life, things have asserted themselves so that I don't lose sight of what's needed of me.

I am writing this today - Friday at 2.30 pm. 3 hours to call it a week. This week has been a bitter one comparatively. Got into a few tiffs (very unlike me), felt pangs of anxiety for a day like I used to feel back in 2014 and got to see the weak side of my father.

Myself and Vikranth have agreed on one thing recently about Indian fathers and the dominantly patriarchal society Indians live in and perpetuate. Coming to think of it, I have had a feeling that I always have my father as my support system when I weather through rocky times.  Maybe, it's about time my father saw me as a grownup compatriot of the Vemugantis, not merely as a son. And he's seeing it that way. This perhaps has urged him to talk to me about his fears, last night over phone.

I played it cool when I was listening to him but it sent shivers down my spine. Those are fears every man would have but like I said somewhere up there, it's my father and it's me thinking he is too brave to feel fear. It has only been recently that I made peace with seeing my parents as not just my parents but distinct individuals with their own sets of weaknesses, fears, strengths, desires and delusions. That is me coming to realize their individual existence. But my father allowing me a glimpse into his fears totally caught me unprepared.

I (or rather we, the Indian kids) am not really used to see the weak side of the father. For me, he has always been a rock solid anchor to whom I could turn, in times of chaos and indecisiveness.

What's undeniable is he's ageing, he's ageing fast and he's ageing right in front of my eyes. And like ageing naturally does, it is weakening him - physically and mentally.

And it's for me to man up and accept it. To view him as a middle-aged man who's made his fair share of cabbage in his day. 

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.