Life Befuddles Me

Yes, it does. And in ways that I seldom understand. The past two weeks have probably been the toughest since I moved to Bombay. For some reason I find it difficult to be honest today and yet, I'd like to talk it out. I feel depressed. My health is all over the place, my family is not at its best and well, I just don't feel at rest now. You know, its not the best time in the world when every day, at least once, you ask out aloud, when will all this stop?

You know I'm going around minding my own business, why cant I just be left alone.

Yes, Twitter and non-believer in the same sentence - sue me! And the ultimate reason for our ADD.

What in the world is Twitter anyway? Every morning I come to work and as a reflex sign into my Gmail, work email, facebook and well, twitter. Once done with the rest, I stare at Twitter. and I dont know what the fuck to write. I mean seriously, what could be happening? At every moment?

I'm completely missing the point. The stuff people write on Twitter, is meant for who? Themselves? Followers? Is it soliloquy? Who's reading my shouts anyway. And it's an ongoing stream of links and disjointed and disconnected conversations one after the other, after the other.

Like imagine this, you're sitting in your living room and there's the Ninja Blogger, the Ms. I'm from LSR-you idiots dont know literature, there's the local rockstar who thinks he's made it big with 700 followers, there's me - the I dont know I have nothing really to share person, the insane vagina lover blogger I follow like a maniac, there's the Indian TV reporter whose name rhymes with Marka Mut.

Wokay, so great y'all, glad to have you all in my conversation streams.

Me: Morning! Friday already! I love it!
Marka: Government should set up a collegium. Representatives of govt, opposition and two -three eminent citizens shd be part of it.
Me: Umm, ok.
Ninja: " Behold all is vanity and striving after wind" Ecclesiates
Ninja: Just ordered some of my pics from last year's Boulder Marathon. See all my pics here http://t.co/Bze3iEr via @brPhototweets
Me: Yeah, about that...
Vagina Chick: Each time I remember that Gossip Girl isn't on again until APRIL 18 I feel so much irrational anger. Also filed under: THAT KISS. GAH. HATE.
Vagina Chick: @spitts27 Totally agree, they're awesome! Email me your address and I'll send you one :) nicole(at)coleismuchbetterthanthat(dot)com
Me: What the..
Vagina Chick: YES, THE FIRE ALARM WORKS. STOP TESTING IT. AH. DEAF.
Vagina Chick: Don't keep your email open all day. Don't keep your email open all day. Don't keep your email open all day. #trainingmyself
Me: Dude, seriously calm down!!
Me means LSR: @dramoli I agree though- since data collection in villages thro health/ anganwadi workers is questionable - we may not fully know incidence
Me means LSR: Factual Evidence shows that women who read are way better to cope with life threatening situations than men. (Men? Shit, did anyone say that M word? I hate Men? I'm gay.)
Me means LSR: @MEN you're all sick rapists. Let's fight. Yes, thats why they teach us at our college, how to pick fights with anyone of oppsite sex, at the minutest of your inconvenience, oh that and verbal vomit.
Me: hehe.. I totally made that up. No, they dont "actually" (admittedly) say that.
Rockstar: Life is overrated. I like suicide. Seems the way to go for us all to be dead famous.
Me: Dead.. hehehheee.. you're funny. RT
Rockstar: I'm playing at Blue Frog tonight. come! And check out my pic with seven chicks totally ready to give me all www.twitpic.com/1245
Me: Yeah, you see, I'm at work an..
Rockstar: and here where I was at the beach, shaking my booty..oooohh yeah!!! www.twitpic.com/5677
Rockstar: And here - I had to show you that I "actually" know all these people! bit.ly.667/pic5 arre see to the right, that boxer shorts with "bum main dum" facing backwards, is mine!
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP

Ok, I'm now tired, but you see, this is a completely frustrating conversation - for anybody! I think people tweeting are running their conversation in mind and just dont give a shit for what is actually going on. And so many links, jeez, link to my blog, link to my eleven thousand photos that I now take since I have an iphone bitches, link to my rest of the post since i dont know how to write in 140 characters, link to my site, link to my contest, link to this post from some totally random guy just cause I think its RAD! NO. NO. NO. NO. You've got it totally wrong. Lets repeat once again - I did NOT sign up for spam. Did. NOT. Did not. And twitter is like spam on acid. And I will not contribute. Will. NOT. Will not.

And what are these hashtags that you randomly create and think the world has thoughts on the same and one fine day they'll all be collated and you'll be the guy who bought it to light. #pukeonmycouch #HoHoHellNo #sickbastardmustdie #kittykitty #myparentsroom #stomachflab #chotachetan #kaminikabmaregi #charliesheensinning (the last one was me, oh! come on! I think it's funny). No but seriously, these are not topics of public interest, or one where we all have a say in.

If one of you smartasses is now reiterating the same old - it's for me! and what I wanna say regardless of anyone hearing. Well, then this is massively confusing. So you wanna write things for yourself and not for others, but you want to say it on a public forum all the same. TIRED AND BORED. Still confused.


PS: If any of you actually clocked on those links for those pictures. Seriously, sympathy, you have a lot of time - get on Twitter. Oh and respect, for your general interest and curiosity in random people and their pictures.

And to feel you're alive>Bombay my lover, my whore

I finally felt something today. As in, I feel love everyday and I feel pretty every other day, but something beyond just those scrawny everyday me and something originally and uniquely me. I couldn't stop smiling. And hear you me, it happened twice in this week. So amazing how it all just comes staring back at you one day, from nowhere.

It's all a big wad of mashed up paint inside my head still, but I want to write. I want to fucking write. And you know why? Cause I felt like it twice this week. Like this whole sea of stories inside me that I want to scream out to the world. That if I could just sit down with a quiet empty house and just write it all out today. Not get up, just bring it all out. Just keep feeding me the sun.

Just saw Dhobhi Ghat, I was so moved. Such that I could still cry for her. It was so beautifully sad. So magnificently sad. I couldn't believe it. I was clenching my teeth and my nails kept digging into my partner's arms, I couldn't take the sadness. And it doesn't have an end, such is life. It was all these people coming together and then get separated. Just like that. We think too much. We like results. We definitely likes our "Whys?" As in, to that, why? Some things just are. Not good, not bad, they are what they are. And then its gone. Just like that, such is life. Chaotic, meaningless, beyond reason and logic. I loved the feature film. I could just cry now. Like I said Beauty. And I thought I'd just lost it. I thought ever since I moved this city I had stopped finding beauty in things and today I did. And it inspired me. One.

I also just finished "A Million Little Pieces". After very long, a tad too long, I read a book the way I read books. I couldn't keep it down. I couldn't stop stop thinking about the story. It was about a man who was alcoholic and is in a treatment center trying to quit. It was about addiction. It was about weakness. About being human. But also it was about taking responsibility. It was about putting yourself to test. It was everyone's story. I've seen "The Elegent Universe" but really this is the theory of everything. Tao te Ching. You should read, or this post will forever be a puzzle to you. Or life. I dont know. I really dont. But I need to write. Two.

Experiment 1: On Changing Your Story

This is not an experiment, well sorta. This is optimism put to test. This is every part of me swearing that I'll try and every part of me wishing it works.

Sometimes love rips you apart. Sometimes love is the only thing hurting. Sometimes you want love so bad, you scare away love. Sometimes love changes you. Sometimes love makes you want more. It makes you cruel. It makes you nauseatingly faithful. Sometimes its more bitter than sweet, but always what you really want.

Sometimes your whole being becomes a paradox. Sometimes you want things, you don't realize you already have. You have the smartest lines and you know you're being foolish. You can own him and then end up doing miserably pathetic things to have him touch your hand when you reach out.

Real love never feels it's going to break, and for that reason, real love will go to any means to make each other suffer. Real love is bad for you. Its so sinful and so self absorbing, you become a void in yourself. Real love defines who you are then, and then on the afternoons your real love hurts, you don't know who you are and what you are around people without it.

Real passionate love is very overconfident. It will play your mind and your heart. Love is like the ghastly drill machine which goes straight to your core and messes you up. Its like a slap across your face and shows you what an extreme person you can become, you self praising kind soul you. Real love terrorizes your mind. When you love so bad, your mind refuses to believe it can end and thats why you're never really scared. You'd be frustrated, you'd be so mad you'll start attacking walls with your fists, but you'll never be scared.

And thats why real love never compromises. Two people in mad passionate love never really make up. You be an ass to him and he'd be just as big an ass to you. That's what happens when you've made up your mind on 'this is the guy I want to annoy the fuck out for the rest of my life'. It's ongoing and its tiring but its never done.

Real love is an entity in itself. Two people in love are like mutually dependent parasites who feed off of each others happiness, energy, aura and sadly, sadness. Real love is a helpless spiral. Upwards and downwards.

Love is funny and love is unreasonable. You have lived twenty five years of your life, not knowing that this one person exists. And then one fine day, from nowhere, one crazy dreamer walks into your life, no different than any other crazy dreamer you've met before. And something about them messes you up. You enter a no exit trance of a one point agenda - of having this person. This one person, who you know in your heart had a one in billion chance of ever meeting you in this life, that one person will start owning you. And you're helpless. You can think you're in control, but you're not, at least not in your own. Not his either, just some strange vision you weave together.

Love hurts. Oh my god, love hurts. Its not a hurt of toppling from the stairs which hurts only physically, scabs and vanishes, leaving behind a funny bar story. Love hurts from inside, its a soul hurt. It aches and its the suffering of not having your senses to work. It makes you mad.

Love also distorts your understanding of language and generally accepted semantics. Few words which are just like any other million words in the world that you've read and spoken and even joked about in the past, those same words turn into monstrous glass splinters who crawl up your eyes and refuse to be ignored. They're the sly vision itching insects which remind you of their presence at all hours. Words hurt. I wish words were more tangible and physical in their appearance. Like a glass vase, on which if I was mad and couldn't stop thinking about, I could break it, throw it out of my house and have my satisfaction of destroying the evidence of its existence. But not words, nope.

Love is not a choice. Love is over powering, over whelming and once you've loved, you wont rest until it feels the exact way it felt that one beautiful taxi ride.

So here I am. Having my love own me and trying to own my love. It needs work and it needs nourishment and its needs a lot of love. And if anything I know about myself, I know I'm full of love. I love love.

I have always believed that only a truly happy person can make another person happy. And "I'm not happy" uh, that's my story. And that is right. It's a story. It's just a story. I've made myself believe it and act it and live it. I reckon, I can make another story preferably more fun, more happy, more beautiful and make myself believe that, live that and act that.

It's really simple actually and I can explain how I got to this. A while back when I used to meditate regularly I used to read a lot (double past tense). Meditation is a lot about breathing and how it dominates your being, right in the centre of your body with just a coming and going of a whiff of a air. Breath overpowers how you feel. And whenever you feel something emotionally or physically, your breath is the first thing to get affected. For example when you're cold, you breath becomes short and narrow and you take lesser air in, and your body wants to occupy as less a space as possible. The theory goes, it can be reversed. When you're in a really cold environment, you must stop yourself, and breathe as calmly as possible, long breaths with enough pauses and your body starts relaxing by yourself. That is how the old Sadhus in the Himalayas can be covered in snow and be as calm as the southern lakes.

And so that is my plan. I'm going to make Happiness come to me. When I'm happy, I eat a lot, I smile a lot, I love interesting facts on TV, I make fun of things and not judge them, I keep in touch with my family, I talk to my friends a lot, I meet my girls, I gossip, I write, I read, I crave tandoori chicken, I dance and sing at the top of my voice, regardless of which house it is and whose party it is, I listen to my music, I watch my movies and I love my theater, I laugh louder and with shameless lustful spite at times, I think less, I'm more easy going, I dress better, I complain lesser, I feel warmer, I'm bitchier (yes, I like it that way) and again, I eat all three meals, sometimes even four.

So now we're working backwards people. I will do everything I do when I am happy and it will come to me. Of course. Cause you know what? There is nothing to be so sad about. Shed. Shed. Shed. Shed. Surrender.

And since none of my best friends live in this city.. are you listening chinky, priya, nidhi, ishaan, shivangi? Damn you all! I'm going to be my own best friend and give one tight slap to myself, and be the sexy bitch that I am and shed this righteous, sacrificing, cutesy girl get up, who likes things clean. I don't give a shit about cleanliness dude.

So back to be the default me, this typified custom model is just not working dude. Not working. Love can be maddening, crazy, tiring, come one, come all, I can take this. Cool as cucumber. Calm. And patient. And happy.

Donning my hippy socks and tune out the world earphones now. Hare Krishna everyone.

Re-examine

I want to change things around. I feel stagnant. Not like I always feel nauseated when I am stagnant, just this is not the time to be stagnant. I feel like a bystander in my own life. Maybe I'm a bit of a control freak. Once again, maybe I watch too many movies. I feel like time is going by. I want to travel. I hate living like I'm supposed to be living. I hate conforming to so many rules, be kind, be honest, be as great a person I can be, and still not feel happy. I don't know what I want. And maybe thats what troubles me.

I used to think I'm passionate about writing. But the more writers I meet, the more unsure of myself I feel. If writing really was my passion, how is it that I've written 11 pages of my so-called book some 2 months back and never touched it again? The summary of which I did another 6 months ago? Then maybe my book isn't it. Or maybe I don't have my story yet.

I feel confused. I feel I'm in a perpetual trance of everyday things. I truly love the people in my life. But maybe thats not all that I want. I love bombay. But I dont love any place for too long which makes me feel tied. I want to go to fucking italy. Please someone take me to italy with them.

Ok, stop, pause, everyone. Breathe. I'm making a new plan. It just came to me, while writing this. Fuck everything. I deserve every bit of happiness in this world. Now this is what I'm going to do. I just got a raise. So.. I'm going to save every month and by my next birthday, September, I'm going to leave this country. I've always, always wanted to live in different countries. If I don't do this now, I cant do this ever. I have to, I need to do this for myself.

I have to do this.

And now, I have to save - no more splurges. I have to think of a country which talks to me the most. I have to prepare.

I think I've finally nailed what I've been irritated about. I have a vision of myself living like something, somewhere and I cant wait to start it. But I'm waiting, without a date, I feel like I'm working towards a non-existent goal. My life and my purpose is blurry around all this waiting.

I don't anymore want to wait around for anything, anyone. I cant wait to start this life and I figure at 25, half of my life has already gone. More sad than happy. And who said, the balance has to be this off? The clock is ticking and I need to get going. Thats the only thing good for me. An unhappy me is an annoying me. An unhappy me is everything I don't want to be.

One wait leads to another wait, and before you know it, there is a whole checklist of your ducks that need to be in a row. If I can wait for someone and their plans, wait, what about my plans? I at least deserve a date. And I hate pushing for a date, people need to respect other people's dreams and dates..umm.. time I meant. Yes, people need to respect people's time.

I'm also really hoping rupee value goes up, oh and also, I'm hoping I get a fucking job in another country. WOW. That's a lot for me and my poor little bachelors of a degree.

I need to stop talking now. Wokay then.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Sometimes, I'm sick of myself. I have some limitations which end up clouding my strengths. My goal in life is just freedom. See, this is hard to express, but let me try.

I don't like supervision. You can ask my mom, she'll swear by it. I also have a female-ego. Yeah, sue me. So, all in all, a man supervising me, ticks me off so bad, I develop tendencies which are life threatening, threatening his life to be clear. And so this line manager system woudn't work with me. Also, I absolutely love sun light. Please do not imagine scorching heat that you face when you're commuting in a cab and are laced with sweat. Cut some slack, let me paint a picture for you. Imagine 11 AM Sunday Morning with an empty house. Imagine your windows are open, and the balcony door is ajar. Imagine tiny shorts and a white ganjee. And now imagine icy beer in a beer mug in hand. A spicy tandoori chicken tikka for snacks with cuchumber. And a nap on the sofa with sunlight pouring in. What a beautiful way to enjoy nature? Ain't it. But then you're robbed off of it. The maximum that you can do this in your beautiful house, is 3 weeks. That's all your job will allow. One may argue there are weekends, but the weekends are stressful themselves, in dividing time between family, friends, chores, catching a movie, reading at least a couple of pages of those books dusting away in your closet. In fact, I need weekends to recover from weekends. So in effect, I can only really enjoy just 21 days out of 365 days of my year. And not just this one year, year after year after year.

How depressing. Yeah, fuck that shit.

I have momentary lapses of motivation when I read others' blogs/FB updates on how their project is coming along great now, and how they were up till 3 AM working in the office and taking it all in the stride. And I think, hmm, see Nainy? That's the way of life! Everyone has to pay for their fun and work like an ass. But like I said, its momentarily. It wears off, and I think that's just fucking stupid.

So here's what I wanna do. I want to learn and take classes - on anything for that matter, skate boarding, kick boxing, tai chi, reiki, sword fighting, coding, swimming, carving, italian, urdu anything. I want to write. I want to travel. And I want to NOT feel that I only have 21 days off in my year. I also DO NOT want to feel stressed about not being able to find enough vacation for my brother's wedding.

It's not like I don't want to work, but I don't like being chaperoned. I want to work location independent. Did I mention I also hate so much money dependency?

The whole system is wrong. I wish I could go back to olden times and while the time machine is at it, also put me somewhere in Europe. And then I'll be at one place say in a spanish dance Studio, work for couple of months, pack my minimalistic little self and move to another country say Italy and wait tables in an idyllic day cafe in Rome.

Just writing about this makes me happy. I hate how everyone around me thinks it's too idealistic. It is actually simpler than it sounds. And of course, it is fair. So much more fair that this economy blah blah world is being to us.

Oh god, when can I start living?

The Ploy of the Cubicle

And what I discovered is, it's not even a damn cubicle. Cause if it was a cubicle it would have had atleast 3 walled sides, giving one some perception of privacy. These modern cubicles are a desk with people on etither side sitting in a one-hand-distance fashion. Its really something. It's my first in a cubicle and also my first time in an Ad agency. I reckon there will be many firsts here (mean look).