lets play in the rain

Life's little big moments

2010-05-27T12:01:00.000+05:30

When we look back, think about how things ended up the way they did, about how we reached where we are today you'll be surprised about how it’s not what you thought to be the really big moments in life that are responsible for your current state. It’s the seemingly irrelevant, utterly insignificant moments that changed your life forever.

Like the unhappy husband who decided to watch a little more TV instead of going to bed although his wife surprisingly wanted to have sex that night. Though his interest was piqued by his wife’s approaches resentment from many months of fighting and a little laziness prevented him and by the time he got to bed she was already asleep. Things got worse and they eventually split up, whereas in an alternate universe he went to bed early and they spent the next few weeks in the happy afterglow of a night of some rollicking love making long enough to realize that they were going to have a child after which their determination to make the marriage work somehow kept them together long enough to realize that there are bigger problems in life than a nagging wife or an emotionally detached husband.

Or like the teenager, sitting at home the day before his college counseling session where he has to choose which college and course he wants to do, who receives a call from a friend who inadvertently tells him that one of the two colleges he had shortlisted was crap. The next day he goes and chooses the other one, and everything that happens to him from that point on, his best friends, the great times, his first job, and the type of person he ends up being was decided by that phone call. (True story this)

Or like the software engineer, who if he hadn’t sat up for most of the night playing games on the PS3 and also have to sleepwalk through a really bad day at work wouldn’t have been depressed enough as he rode back home on his bike to be thinking about what his next rant on his blog would be about and probably would’ve noticed the big truck that suddenly cut in to his lane…

The really big moments in life are the small ones.

Did some things really exist till we came up with a word for it?

2010-05-20T18:14:00.000+05:30

Lessons Asif taught me

2009-07-07T10:44:00.002+05:30

1. Laughter is an inspired moment when for a few seconds we forget everything else. Much like what they say about the experience of having heroin, the kick is about the sense of release that comes from totally disconnecting from everything, including your own feelings. Its not the result of a feeling or emotion, its the lack of it.
2. A certain sense of calm can be attained by attempting to forget our constant looking back into the past and worrying about the future. There is no time, and the best we can do is to live completely in the now. (I don't completely agree with this lesson or maybe I don't completely understand but it seems to work for him)
3. The most important lesson of all: With everything that's happening now, the worlds getting fucked like the wife of a soldier who just got back from the war front. So we might as well stop worrying about getting promoted and our savings and take what we have and hit Amsterdam while we can.

Let’s pat ourselves on the back

2009-05-22T11:06:00.001+05:30

Human ingenuity knows no bounds. From the day we invented the wheel we have continually come up with new ways to make our lives more comfortable and pleasant. And it has happened yet again. Victoria’s Secret has unveiled a bra that can be put on in seven different ways. It is so amazing there are truly no words for it. Just watching the ad and seeing with your own eyes the stuff they do with it is a mind-fuck of mind-numbing proportions. This gives those who had started unhooking bras with their left hand (not me) just for the challenge, a new puzzle to solve every day of the week. It’s like sudoku for the fingers. Seeing this modern day miracle, I am so filled with optimism I think we can find solutions for the financial crises and global warming in our sleep. I just hope someone’s put up the video on youtube.

The clouds have parted

2009-05-17T11:10:00.002+05:30

Saturday evening. Awesome weather. Girls have put the long coats back in the closet and taken the tiny stuff out. Sitting in the green grass, watching ferries sail away. Cruise-liners at the harbour. AR Rehman, Bob Dylan and Metallica on the head phone. Manchester United won the league. The finger for Liverpool. The perch is ours now. Perfect.

Life is beautiful again.

Football fans of the world unite!!!

2009-05-05T12:56:00.000+05:30

To those wondering at the weirdness of the title, let me explain. It has its origins in two morally questionable things I did last week. One was reading the Communist Manifesto while eating cheesecake and sipping Starbucks coffee at Barnes and Nobles, the Fox books of book shops (In case you haven't seen ‘You've got mail’, go and see it for Meg Ryan, who is by far the cutest woman ever). The second was watching football matches at a sports bar here. I even had to fight a bit to get them to show the game the first time I went there, the US being the football deprived nation as it is. You might be wondering what’s so bad about that, but then watching the premier league title race unfold while being surrounded by the blatant commercialization of sport is like a monk eating at a strip bar. There were players from a local football team (American football not the real thing) signing autographs and a live auction of stuff the players had brought along. I don't want to denigrate any form of sport, but when the teams are called seahawks and cougars, there is obviously something very wrong.

So there you have it. You're thinking I sold out, aren't you, you judgmental bastards. You're thinking I spat on the graves of the martyrs, and insulted the one true global working man's sport by watching it while around me people were watching games with enough time outs and breaks to make marketing men wet their pants. Maybe, but I would like to see it as vindication that even in difficult times one can always stand up and do the right thing.

PS: Few points to be made in passing. If you haven’t read one of the most influential world changing pamphlets ever, it ends with "WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!!!". The manifesto makes some pretty pertinent points which seem pretty relevant today, almost prophetic, but that’s a topic for another day.

Free Love

2009-04-21T10:31:00.000+05:30

There's only one way to live in this world and remain sane. And thats to love it unconditionally, and everyone in it. The mistake all of us make is to try to make sense of it all, which is impossible. Love is nothing other than a higher level of acceptance. And unless you can bring yourself to love and thus accept the world for what it is, warts, mass murder, poverty, corporate thieving, bad movies and all, you can never be truly happy.

PS: By the way, the hippies actually got this one right. And if most of them hadn't ODd on LSD and the rest end up selling their Camarros for Chevys, I wouldn't have had to wait this long and learn this the hard way.

You just gotta love body lotion... :)

2009-04-12T14:47:00.000+05:30

Lighten up and let us light up

2009-04-12T14:42:00.003+05:30

Something deeply alarming has happened. Severe restrictions have been made on public smoking, and no one seems to mind. The almost jingoistic public opposition to smoking has blinded everyone to the real problem with this government decision. The real issue here is not the health risks smoking poses, but rather the interference of government in our day to day lives in ways which are totally unnecessary. The moment we allow the government to mandate to us on matters which strictly fall into the sphere of personal choice like when and where to smoke, we are on a very slippery slope. The tragedy of government today is that there is too little governance where it is required, and too much of it where it is unwanted. Designing and implementing a health program that will provide universal, affordable and quality health care is beyond the limited imagination and commitment of the health ministry, so we get dramatic gestures like this.

India is a country founded on the nationalization of an ideal. And that ideal included the freedom to choose for oneself. However, state and central governments have been continually whittling away at that right. The basic strategy is simple. First wave the flag of some threat into terrifying the public into accepting legislation which normally would never pass. If you talk about lung cancer long enough, you can scare the public into accepting any law that would seem to save them from it.

The basic argument in favour of this smoking ban is that non-smokers should not have to suffer the ill-effects of passive smoking, which when considering the level of risks posed by passive smoking in public places is a fundamentally flawed argument. By the same coin, we should place a ban on all motor transport because even a person who doesn’t own a vehicle is forced to suffer from vehicular pollution.

We cannot get distracted by the general hatred towards smoking from seeing the real issue here. If we don’t take a stand now, the next government encroachment on our freedom will be even bigger. Governments are generally incapable of doing any good, and so the lesser they have to do with our lives the better. Our message to the government should be clear. If you won’t legalise pot the least you can do is let us light up wherever we want.

(Originally written in Oct '08)

Everyday sadists

2008-10-05T07:34:00.004+05:30

The real proponents of fear are not our right wing political leaders, but people like the bastard who forwarded a mail about a poisonous spider which hides behind toilet seats.

While Hull City can go to the Emirates stadium and beat Arsenal, there is still room for hope in this world

2008-10-05T06:07:00.003+05:30

Lessons that life teaches us - II

2008-06-17T11:06:00.002+05:30

We are the post-modern scum of the earth. We stand for nothing meaningful or deep. We are not the ocean, just the condensed vapour settling on a refrigerated cola can. We've got hip-hop not Bob Dylan or The Doors. It's not about the music or the lyrics; it's about the half-naked women (I have nothing against half-naked women by the way). My point is, in this age of instant gratification only sensual pleasures count. Superficiality is enough to please.

This feeling has been inside me for a long time. The feeling that something’s wrong with the world, but I could never put my finger on it. Until the day I rode my cousin's new bike. A Bajaj Pulsar in case you were interested. It was comfortable and convenient. Attractive features, a smooth ride, decent pickup, good mileage, and no soul. It transported you, but did not converse. It offered conveyance, not a ride. To quote my friend Aasish, "It moved the body, not the soul".

I've always been enchanted with history, especially modern history. And now I realized that it’s because each era stood for something, and although mostly tragic they at least had an identity. We are not just the middle-men of history with no Great War or Great Depression; we are the soulless intellectually stunted mass-produced off the assembly-line clones of time. We don't have Che, not even John Lennon. We're happy we've got Britney and Paris Hilton.

God help us.

Tears

2008-06-09T07:53:00.004+05:30

I was driving. I was switching between radio channels when I found a Malayalam radio station playing Malayalam movie songs. I stopped the car and cried.

I've sold my soul to the devil

2008-05-31T09:42:00.004+05:30

Today is the day I sold out. I can claim purity no more. I am a fallen man. Because today is the day I visited the temple of blatant consumerism and dipped into its fountain of soma. I bought leather slippers from Wal-mart. Whats even worse is that I still think that for ten dollars, it was a fucking steal.

Return

2008-05-31T09:35:00.002+05:30

I am standing on top of the hill. The clouds and the sky form a message for me. They say, "Fall".

Today, I choose to walk back.

The roads less travelled

2008-02-14T23:34:00.002+05:30

Whoever said that in life we either take the superhighway of wrongdoing or the difficult and less traveled path of righteousness was a simple minded idiot. Life’s choices are not black and white, but between different shades of grey. And there is no winning, because when the choice is between rape, orgies and incest moral victories are impossible.

Lessons that life teaches us

2008-02-14T23:22:00.000+05:30

When taking a crap in public toilets (ones where each cubicle isn't covered on top), and someone is also quite audibly engaged in the same activity, your not exactly sure whose shit your smelling. Just as in life, it most probably isn’t yours.

A farewell to arms

2007-05-29T00:07:00.000+05:30

When there is so much hate, and there are no answers. When your life is no longer your birthright. When revolt is as bad as meek submission. When hope has played its last hand and lost. When solitude has degraded to loneliness. When the righteous have lost all conviction. When nothing remains to be corrupted. When even the memories of past innocence fade away. All that can be done, is to lie down and die.

When you forget about reaching there, the journey becomes much more enjoyable.

2007-02-05T14:22:00.000+05:30

Also true literally.

I dream of silence

2006-12-13T21:50:00.000+05:30

The words shout out to me. They say "speak me". But there are so many of them I don't know which one to choose. Together they dont make any sense. What is the word I'm searching for... cacophony... I'm not really sure whether that is the right one. Just that its the one that probably comes closest to describing the noise inside my head. As I type this I erase some of what I already typed in, along the way. But what I really want to do is to delete the words screaming out in my head. I do not have an obligation to give them release. I own the words. Even if I don't own them, I atleast leased out some space in my cranium to them and so I have some authority over them. They do not own me. There is a spider on my ceiling right now, and he uses up my space to survive. But we live in blissful mutual excluisivity, where both of us do our own thing and stay away from each other, merely acknowledging each others presence once in a while. Why isn't it possible to do the same with the noises in my head?

If we knew all the answers, life would not be worth living.

2006-12-10T16:18:00.000+05:30

Life in a coffee mug

2006-09-07T01:04:00.000+05:30

Drinking rich black coffee, made from freshly grounded coffee beans that came all the way from Brazil. The truth be told, the coffee is so bitter that its almost a punishment to drink it. You know that the three rupees worth cup of tea from the road side tea stall is heavenely compared to this. But then this is espresso made from Brazil's finest. So you keep on drinking.

Musings on morality

2006-05-03T16:40:00.000+05:30

Ultimately, everything in life boils down to a matter of choice. A choice between doing what is right and what we want to do.

This statement is based on two things. A strong belief in free will. And an equally strong disbelief in fate. There is no way to argue a logical case in support of free will, just as there is no way to present an argument against it. It is a matter of faith. A belief that we decide what we want to do at every moment of our lives. A belief that we always choose for ourselves. This does not mean we always get to choose what we are, or what happens to us, but get to choose what we want to do about it. Not believing in fate follows from this. As with free will it is impossible to logically prove or disprove predetermination. But I find it totally meaningless to lead a life where I'm just an actor living a role with the script already written out for me.

So to return to the primary premise of this exercise, it is all about choice. A choice between doing what is right and what we want to do. If you keep getting this choice right, then the choice begins to disappear. Gradually, what is right is what you want to do. I don't know if you noticed but I side stepped a potential land mine just now, of what is 'right'. It will probably be difficult to find two people who can agree on a definition of right. Here I'll go on a limb and put my faith in the inhernent goodness of man. I find it defeatist to believe that we were born as sinners. But I place my faith on the fact that since time immemorial, men the world over have always shared a common concept of morality, and that something within all of us finds rape, murder, and corruption repulsive.

I can see that this is a very simplistic version of morality where I have skirted around most of the controversial aspects of the subject, but I just wanted to say one thing. That we go about each day deciding our own fate, opening the doors that take us to our salvation, or not.

Small joys of life

2006-05-03T16:13:00.000+05:30

Changed the accelerator cable on my bike yesterday, cause the old one snapped. Was taking the bike out of the workshop and when i turned the accelerator, it was pure magic. Its so smooth I can hardly believe it. Riding the bike in the morning and turning the accelerator especially was one of the most erotic experiences of my life(which is not saying much but then what the hell).

Had a little foreplay in the morning. Going to have a wild night on the highway today.

Empty soul...clenched fists...bleeding heart

2006-03-09T22:13:00.000+05:30

There was childhood... and there was innocence...and fun....
There was adoloscence... and there were dreams... and more fun...
Then there was college... and bigger dreams... and ideals... and friends...

And now, all there is, is emptiness...

The biggest con the devil ever pulled was to make people believe that he did'nt exist

2005-11-28T14:12:00.000+05:30

From Usual Suspects

A tale of two cities

2005-11-28T14:04:00.000+05:30

Went to the infy campus in Mysore some time back. Everything there is deliberately opulent. Largest is the word you hear most. World's largest IT training facility. Asia's largest gym. Three star accomodation built in such a way as to spell the company name from the sky. I guess I heard largest lab facility too in between the barrage of self-promotion by dedicated employees who also happen to be my friends. Manicured lawns on the flanks of well-paved walkways. And a lot more, swimming pool, pool tables, badminton courts, table tennis, department store, the works. There's even a golf ball shaped multiplex coming up. But then what hits you most is the I'm going to conquer the world tomorrow look in the eyes of the trainees there.

Cut back to real world. Time to go home, and I'm in the railway station. People lying on the floor of the station, a lot more lying on the platform. Beggars waiting for the next train. Dirty coolies smoking beedies. The sound of blaring horns coming in from the streets outside. As the over-crowded train rolled in, I suddenly remembered the young and eager faces I had seen at the Infy campus, and I did'nt know who to feel sorry for. I'm still in the same city... Or am I...

Thought for the day

2005-09-15T15:32:00.000+05:30

If when I die there is atleast one person who is happy or even relieved then mine would not have been a life but only a wasteful existence.

Are you happy? Really?

2005-09-09T16:53:00.000+05:30

Which feeling is more stronger? The joy you feel during the good times, or the sense of loss and longing you feel when you look back at all those great times you had in the past and realize are never going to be yours again.

The necessity of hate

2005-09-05T12:52:00.000+05:30

All of us need to be loved. There is also a very strong inclination in each of us to love. But surprisingly on deeper reflection one will see that there is an equal necessity to hate and be hated. On the face of it even though this might seem to be evil and sadistic it actually is not.
For instance, you need to hate corruption or illiteracy or sin inorder to be motivated enough to do something about it. Hate,surprisingly thus actually acts as an impetus to do good. The social revolutions in Europe were inspired by the principles of equality and justice. However, the fire in the hearts of the revolutionaries was kindled by hate against the aristocracy. We as humans find it hard to hate an idea. We need to give the idea a human form to satisfy our hunger for hate. It is so much easier to curse George Bush than to hate American imperialism or the war on Iraq.
But other than such noble hatred there is also an everyday need to hate. I like to start my day seeing the faces of the people I love. But then equally refreshing is seeing my prick of a neighbour and cursing him in my head while I smile at him as I go to work each day. Which one of us dont have a favorite cricket player, and also a few who makes us boil every time we see them on TV.
I am weak, I am human. I guess I might make it for some time, alone and unloved, but I wont last a single day without having someone to hate.

An obituary

2005-08-25T17:43:00.000+05:30

There used to be this terribly confused college going boy who was searching for his place in the world. And now that boy has died or grown old, which is just the same. Know what?

I miss him.

"Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains." -- Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

2005-03-31T19:46:00.000+05:30

Rousseau said most men live lives of quiet desperation. Look around us, look at ourselves and one would see little reason to think otherwise.
Control over our lives is an illusion. All of us assume that we decide the direction of our lives. But if we pause to think about it, we will realize that the feeling of being in control is a trick our mind plays on us. Did the fisherman looking out at the sea thinking about how tomorrow's catch would be know that a tsunami was going to hit him wiping away his family and his happiness. Or taking this a step further, if the fisherman had a choice would he have been a fisherman in the first place. How many of us live with the firm conviction that they spend each second doing what they really want to do? All of us do the things that we do to achieve something else; not for the joy of doing it. We study to pass exams,pass exams to get a degree, get a degree to make money, make money to....
Why should life be a compromise? If we are powerless to decide our own fate is there any point in living? Man it would seem is a slave to circumatances that are out of his control.
Are we condemned to submit ourselves to the flow of humanity over which we seem to have no influence whatsoever?
Even if for only a second, I want to be able to do what i really want. I want to do things for the sheer joy doing it gives me and not for what i will gain as its consequence. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull I want to fly not for catching food but for the joy of flying. Let me not live for anything, just let me live. That is my only prayer.

In the wilderness

2005-02-15T01:17:00.000+05:30

I went to the woods not in search of acceptance,
But to escape from the jeers.
I went to the woods not in search of food,
But in search of my soul.
I went to the woods not because I was mad,
But to remain sane.
I went to the woods not to be a beast,
But to remain human.
I went to the woods not to forget what I had been taught,
But to learn anew.
I went to the woods not to flee from life,
But to embrace it.

I went to the woods not to lie down and die,
I went to the woods because I wanted to live.

From 'Notes to Myself' by Hugh Prather

2005-02-06T22:46:00.000+05:30

Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernal. I can take them out and look at them, they fit in books, they lead me down that narrow way. And in the morning they are there. Ideas are straight-

But the world is round, and a messy mortal is my friend.

Come walk with me in the mud.....

Come,hold my hand,lets learn or even better, lets forget

2005-02-06T14:47:00.000+05:30

Come with me my friend,
And let us fly together.
Because I fear heights
And even more
What I might see.
I know your afraid too,
But together we'll be stronger.
So lets fly high,
And maybe for once
We will truly see.

The cruelty of our happiness

2004-12-09T01:28:00.000+05:30

We live in different worlds. Each one of us in our own microcosms, disconnected, distant and unreachable. All this noise about the world shrinking and mankinds entry into the age of information and communication is just another cruel joke. All of us live in seperate worlds which are filled by ourselves. 'I' is perhaps the most powerful word. It is what fills up our vision, thoughts and motivates our actions. Each one of us goes through each day doing what profits us most. Even the most seemingly sacrificial of acts, usually have grey shades of self interest.
Today, my most important priorities are my lab exam next week and my project. I spend time worrying about both. Currently these are my problems and my whole world will end if either of them don't work out well. And my friends who have the time and patience to read this blog will have problems of their own. But as I worry about passing out of college and getting a job that will pay me enough to allow me to indulge in what this world has to offer, there are millions living(if you can call it living ) without knowing where their next meal will come from, there are mothers who can only watch on helplessly as their babies cry of hunger, there are those who don't know whether a bomb or a stray bullet will kill them the next second. Tell me that we share the same world with such unfortunate people and I cannot believe you. By 'we' I mean those who by some great fortune only have to worry about passing exams and completing projects and not about surviving till the next day, the next hour, the next second. To be able to go through each day oblivious to the plight of a vast number of our fellow beings seems to be the most amazing human trait. Maybe it is what keeps us sane. Or coming to think of it, isn't it really a sign of insanity that we remain reasonably happy, that we can actually laugh and make merry in the midst of all this pain and suffering.
Isn't this daily display of indifference our most cruel act?
Will my actions of today help improve the life of an innocent child who by no fault of his own was born in a remote village in some famine-stricken country of Africa?
Will they ever?

The questions we never care to ask

2004-12-01T23:11:00.000+05:30

Why do we fight?
Why is there never peace for all?
Why do some have no food to eat while others have too much?
Why is there so much hate?
Why do strangers kill each other?
Why is love so hard to find?
Why can't there be happiness for everyone?
What is so special about small pieces of paper with numbers and the picture of an old man?
Why does no one really care?

The most tragic question of all:
Why are there no answers?

Our obsession with magic

2004-12-01T22:25:00.000+05:30

There is perhaps none among us who is not fascinated by the magical. There is something in all of us that so badly wants to believe in fairy tales, in true love, in heroes and fire breathing dragons, in a world where there is no suffering, where everyone is happy, where men are good, and friends can be trusted. Maybe it is our soul yearning for something pure, unlike the world we live in. Maybe deep down we are repulsed by the greed, the lies, the deception and the pain that is charecteristic of this world that we call ours and even more by the part that we play in it.
What if each one of us is born with a fascination and a natural tendency towards good for a reason. What if magic has a place outside the story books, and in our own worlds. Maybe our obsession with mystical tales of love and valour exists to make us try to change this world we live in into that magical place of our dreams.