April 22, 2013

We are nothing but statistics, infinitesimal points tending to zero on a self adjusting bell curve.

To be a romantic

I am a hopeless romantic. And sometimes, that's not a good thing. Being a romantic is like having a disease. It involves living in a world of unrealistically high expectations after watching a movie or reading a book and being thoroughly, unsettlingly disappointed with the mundane present. It means smiling to yourself when you see a dog sleeping in the sun and being at the receiving end of weird looks from people who happen to see that. It means walking into a cafe, ordering something, and settling into the cornermost seat with a quaint book in your hand and not wanting to leave for hours. It is this strange urge to be anonymous in a city that you know too well. It is this dangerous readiness to trust. To please. To give. To be hurt. And then to repeat. It is this constant struggle to fight back a lump in your throat on random incidents, texts, videos, book snippets, pictures on a daily basis. This constant need to be touched and known and understood at a new level each day. This craving to be someone different and better each day. It is never satisfied. You live your life as if you're on a trip, a holiday, or wanting to be on a holiday, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is real enough.

March 13, 2013

I look around and I see so much inconsistency. People are inconsistent. They are not what they were a few minutes ago. They are not what they think they are or should be. Their beliefs are not rooted in anything. Another thing that people are, is indecisive. They delay decisions until the damage is done. They live in this spiral shaped hollow of denial. Most of them. Including me. Perhaps it's because of the way we are brought up. So many memories I have are broken. They were lost and abandoned one by one as I added years to my life. I hated leaving once. Now I may enjoy it. 

I dreamt a very vivid dream. I was walking with my father and he held my hand and in the gesture, passed me something. Perhaps a piece of gold jewellery. But it was something that meant something. To both of us. I felt my heart fill with an inexplicable mixture of joy and longing. 

How empty would the world be without love. There are different kinds of love. And the love between the same people keeps changing from one kind to another. The first is the kind of love that fills the empty places in your heart. So you feel that you can never be unhappy again. That the puzzle of you has been solved and you are now complete. The other is the kind of love that empties you. It is as if someone has opened a tap in your heart and all you are and used to be is rapidly draining out. As if you need something and you don't quite know what. As if there is something you need to do and you can not find out what it is. As if you will never ever be whole again. No form is better than the other. They co-exist. Claiming all hearts in turns.

The wish of a song

I want to create a song. A song so tenderly and innocently happy that it evokes an untraceable melancholy in your soul. And I want to hold a guitar and sing it with a smile on my face, as if it doesn't kill me. As if now is all we have. As if there is nothing loftier than this moment, not even the weight of the past. I want the tune to be fast, not too fast to make you pant for breath, neither slow enough to let you rest on any one image that any note evokes. I want it to be a collage, a dancing collage of confusion that leaves you with a sense of both contentment and loss at the end of the night.

*I heard a song like that.*

Would you let me be your pillow

If I promised never to betray

Every drop that ever wet me

Every dream you let slip away

There will be days...

There will be days when both yes and no will be equally wrong. When what you choose affects not just you but a lot more. On days like that, breathe. Remember the little girl who wrote letters to God. She is still in there somewhere. Find her. Let her tell you who you are and who you ought to be. She knows.

There will be days when the injustice around you will numb you down and make you feel vulnerable and powerless. When all you'd want to do is cry out loud. Do. Allow the grief and the nonsense of it all to wash you down. But remember to wipe your tears to a day that is a tad brighter. Do what you can to make it happen.

There will be days when it will be hard to rise. When the prospects of the day ahead would be daunting, and the comfort of warmth and inaction tempting. Sometimes, rest. Slow down in the swirl of your coffee and indulge in the familiarity of a book. Turn up the classical music and soak in a hot tub. Let the good things heal you. Eat. Replenish what has been lost. Call a friend. Go to a cafe with the book. Stay. As long as you want. Leave behind a note of thanks.

There will be days when the past will overpower you. When the bitter memories will trouble and the happy ones will hurt. When a song or a smell will take you some place else. Some place sinister. On days like that, let them. Watch the replay. Laugh. Cry. But remember to get on with the present when the play is over. Like any performance, there'd be lessons. Take them, and move on. There's something shinier, prettier, happier awaiting you today.

Rant

I do not look at the world the same way after 1984. The book has awakened in me something basic but something that I have been conditioned to ridicule and suppress. 

I had a short talk with X yesterday, and we talked very interesting marketing. And he mentioned, in passing, the differences between the nature of the markets in India and China. Nothing new. Perhaps it was the way he said it, the terms he used. We all know India is a difficult market, and that we tend to prefer a cheaper product even if it is of inferior quality. The new China, on the other hand, is very brand conscious. In his words, some of them, would cut down on meals to buy a brand they covet. So, he talked about some super elite products. We'd raise the price, he said. And we'd limit the volume. That way, the brand becomes more covetable, elusive, elite. Interesting as the whole interaction was, there was something sinister about the examples. For a fleeting second, I saw him as this enormous talent unaware of his own role in this unnatural thought driven by greed that is gripping the world and slowly strangling out of it of all that should be natural and easy and free. 

Capitalism is this giant ever-growing organism that has grown its limbs into all our lives. And I see nothing wrong in that, as long as it functions as an organism. In balance with the world outside. Giving and receiving in equal measure. It has altered all of us. In unimaginable and sometimes frightening ways. It does not just fulfil needs anymore. It creates them. 

A society progresses when it finds leisure. It rises above its current and immediate needs and thinks of more glorious, more noble things. Leisure needs to be valued. Un-knowledge and curiosity need to be preserved. There needs to be, sometimes, a wait before we attain something we need, material or intellectual. We need that wait, that anticipation, that wondering the mind does before it receives or finds the answer, that picture the heart paints before we obtain something. What we don't need is so much boredom. Language is a clever tool. It has the power to scale down the magnitude of absolutely abhor-able things. Boredom in the virtual presence of a whole world of possibilities on a screen in our laps is not ok. It is an indication that the more we have, the more we are taking for granted.

It is possible to be a balanced capitalist. And although we have been made to believe that thinking in this direction is impractical and ridiculous, I believe that this is not just possible but necessary. The ideas of profit maximizations and trade-offs between stakeholders alone, will, by general logic, leave the world a highly unbalanced place, with excesses that are wasted but not consumed by those in need. We are already almost there. It is time we started looking at businesses in their entirety, their entitlements as well as obligations to the environment where they thrive. 

I can not say what exactly would happen if we didn't start to be balanced yet. But this whole unpredictability, opaqueness and creepy totalitarianism in the name of data collection does not give me a good feeling.

Love

Love. In every inch of my body, in every mole of the microcosm I nurture within my soul, in every ounce of light and darkness and all other manifestations of present and absent energy that I am part of. In the rhythm of my heartbeat, and in that of yours, in the one giant heartbeat that we are.

01/ 01/ 2013

You are the one person I'd allow into an inglorious moment. Keep the key to the window from where I am naked and stripped of all pride and strength. Keep it safe. Some day, I'd need you to climb in and wrap me, not in passion or love, but in acceptance. I'd expose all my wounds and ask, not for medicine, but a relieving touch. Give me that. Like today. Be who you were today. Be that pillar, that illogical pillar that stands right there no matter how rough-edged the leaning object is. Tell me I need not fear, because you are there, no matter what. Give me that no-matter-what. Always. I'd need that.

01/01/2013

Resolutions:

- Sustain.
- Love more. More unconditionally. Be more giving. MUCH less judgemental.
- Manage time. More than time, attention. Manage attention. Be where you are, in what you are supposed to do.
- More early mornings. More yoga. More walks. More music. More pens and paper. Much less computer. More camera.
- No more books. Finish the pile first.
- Be more assertive, where needed. And don't. Where not needed.
- Care about the world. But don't be paranoid. Don't let it seep into personal relations. Stop acting like a raw nerve.
- More patience.
- More water.
- At least one monumental trip. Many small trips.
- Less monologues. More travelogues.
- Fear less. But fear when needed. Fear is nature's defence mechanism. Do not strip it away.
- Breathe it out. Let it go.