The wake up fall

           And in a flash he was over the top. For the first time in his life, he was suspended in mid-air 20 storeys above the nearest road, albeit only for the moment it took gravity to register the presence of a body which required its attention. It soon set to work on him with ruthless efficiency. What flashed before his eyes during the descent were not the adjacent glass windows or his out-of-context, thoughtful expression reflected in them. It was her face, which he pictured with an impossible vividness. Past seems clearer when you realize you have no future.
             He remembered the number of seconds she had waited before smiling when he had popped the question, the only instance in his life before now when his heart had stopped beating. He remembered the exact angle at which she had looked away when she said 'yes'. He remembered how soft her hands had felt when he first touched her, and how she had halfheartedly tried to withdraw it before succumbing to the touch of his lips. He remembered the name of the paan ki dukaan which had sheltered them when it had rained unexpectedly on their first date; the number of times she had blinked looking into each other's eyes during their first candlelight dinner. He remembered how she had smiled as she handed him her wedding card. He remembered how , this time, she had looked straight into his eyes, daring them to betray his disappointment. But he had managed to stayed calm. At least till she had left. He cried only a little for boys don't cry. Unlike girls, their hearts are not supposed to break. Only a wimp of a guy may possess a brittle heart. And he was not a wimp. A fool maybe, but certainly not a wimp. And then, he remembered some more.
             He remembered someone who were so devoted to him, that he had long begun to take them for granted and had, therefore, forgotten to consider them till that point. He remembered his parents. He remembered his mother who had dutifully got up at 5 in the morning, everyday, for the 25 odd years he had known her, just so that he wouldn't have to sacrifice his sleep to keep up with life. He remembered how, as a kid, his dad would unfailingly tell him bed-time stories every night and now, how he, as a 25 year old, would feel too tired to even eat after a tiring day at the office. He remembered the smiles on their faces on his first day to school; smiles of unadulterated love, his most priced treasures at one time, its true worth lost to him over the years by his own selfishness. He remembered them cry when he had been hospitalized. And he realized suddenly that men, too, cry sometimes. He tried to imagine their grief when he would be no more;and failed.
             Suddenly, he wanted to live;he wanted to live for his parents. Suddenly, he was afraid. He cried out loud for dear life, without realizing that gravity is deaf and death, unforgiving. He looked down and saw the ground coming to greet him with all the patience of a raging bull. He realized, now, that he would be dead even before he could think of anything else and, therefore, this would be his last thought. He closed his eyes in submission. And then, he opened it before he could hit the ground. The sun was well above and making its presence felt through the half-open curtains. The tears from his face were falling onto his arms and becoming indistinguishable from his sweat. He had turned back from the edge of the roof the previous day due to lack of courage for the cowardly act, but not without a resolve to try again. Now he knew he wouldn't be going back. Ever.
           Life always gives us second chances for it realizes and acknowledges the fact that no one is perfect. All that remains to be done, is to wake up before hitting the ground.

Time and Again..

Hickery dickery dock,

The mouse ran up the clock,

The clock strikes one,

But I still ain't done.

Hickery dickery dock.

          I've many vices. I may claim a few virtues too. But punctuality, certainly is not one of them. Time and me have been at loggerheads with each other for as far as I can remember. It goes back to my school days when I would turn up 15 minutes late every day with remarkable consistency. As my school leaders and teachers were creative enough to think of a different punishment for every day of the week, the consequences, though physically exhausting, were never dull. The routine was fixed and the punishments had more or less become a part of my timetable. Squats on Monday, murga on Tuesdays, rounds on Wednesdays, one-legged stand on Thursdays and my-pick-from-the-four on Fridays. On rare occasions, I would manage to avoid doing rounds, for Wednesday being assembly day, would have the entire morning section of students assembled on the school ground and I would quietly slip in the crowd, usually unnoticed. I was caught in the act a few times, on which occasions the rounds doubled in number and would also become the mandatory punishment for that particular Friday as well. I believe, that was how I was introduced to the concept of taking risks. The exercise kept me physically fit as well. To sum it up, my lack of punctuality in school did me more good than not.

As I grew, so did the gap between me and the clock. By the time I was halfway through graduation, 15 minute delays had expanded into half hour and 1 hour delays. The punishments too had "matured" by becoming less physical. Being late ,now, would mean missing the lecture which would, otherwise, have been spent fighting a losing battle with my eyelids in the first half and celebrating the defeat in the next. The resulting free time, now, had to be spent in the gymkhana playing carom and table tennis. Something I never really minded.

Let me declare at this point that I do not always do this on purpose. I've nothing personal against adopting punctuality in spite of all the good things that have happened to me for the want of it. In fact, it is the one virtue (yes, a virtue) I've constantly striven to achieve throughout my life. Every trick in the book has been tried. Setting alarms, speeding up the clock, all forms of motivation (internal and external) have all failed miserably. Time simply seems to deflate its importance when presenting itself to me. 5 minutes appear "more-than-enough" to cover distances as large as 5 km, on foot, until I actually discover that they are not, by which time I would already be half an hour behind schedule. Once the after effects, if any, of the lag, are dealt with, a resolution is made and the discovery is forgotten, only to be rediscovered another day. Examinations, somehow, have remained untouched by this predicament so far, which leads me to believe that, as always, it's all in the head. Apparently, this one's pretty deep in it.

Having almost given up, quite understandably, on my efforts at being punctual, I decided to use my hyperactive imagination constructively for a change and have come up with a couple of convenient reasons that would explain this stubborn vice of mine. Convenient because, they have been edited in a manner which would project me as the helpless victim and not the culprit, so that I would feel a little less bad about missing the last train or having to skip lunch on the not-so-infrequent occasions that I arrive late in the office. One of them, is that, I was a celebrity in my previous life and I was, by virtue of my social status, entitled and expected to be late and, apparently, my habit somehow seems to have outlived my physical death. Another one, and my personal favorite, blames the only instance in my whole life when I had arrived before time for my failure to keep up with it. My birth. I came into the world just 8 minutes shy of the 10th of October, which, I like to believe, was scheduled by the Gods to be my actual date of birth. My eagerness to be born disrupted their schedule and they decided to punish me by always keeping time one step ahead of me. Now how can a mere mortal like me go against the will of the Gods??

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Never truer than with me. As the clock strikes 4, I go to bed, at peace with the foresight that I am going to be late for office tomorrow.Again. After all, its entirely His prerogative to get me on time.

Doodling brilliance

         The last post took me around 3 days to compile, and , as a reader, I would say, it has been my most dissatisfying "work of art" so far. It is infinitely simpler to write about things that are actually in your mind as opposed to those which you force inside it for the sake of maintaining a logical train of thought. I find it so much more easier to write about how changing seasons always make me nostalgic, in one sentence, and the gujju patriarch who had once sat next to me in the train, staring intently at a one page wedding card for the entire time it would have taken me to finish two chapters of a Harry Potter book, in the next. Unforced thoughts seldom follow a comprehensible scheme of things. They are as random as random can be. At least, that is the case with me. I am already beginning to lose track of the purpose with which I had started writing this post.

          When it comes to literature, continuity doesn't come easy for the creator. But the consumer expects continuity. In the end, and not always for the best, it is the writer who usually goes against his own literary instincts and ends up creating "bestsellers" that are way beneath his creative abilities. Is coherence really a mandate for literature? Yes it is, one might say. But isn't beautifying the language an art in itself?

         I think of all the brilliant creations of literary geniuses rotting in some forgotten corner of the world, censured, by convention, as "unfit" for mass consumption, merely because their creators lost out in the battle for coherence, and I say it is time we, as readers, jumped the cause-effect barrier, at least once in a while. Let us expose ourselves more often to beauty created by the language alone and not by the content. Let not our minds be slaves to logic and comprehension. Let not our choices be driven by the desire to be sensible. Let us be free-thinkers in the true sense of the word. Let us give doodles a chance.

P.S:- If you think this post is pointless, it probably is and, therefore, you need to read it once more ;)

The Interview(Part 2)

The online aptitude test was the first obstacle on our way to employment. Three sections, 120 minutes, a few gags (courtesy, a bug in the software) and lots of forced smiles and consolations later, half of us were on the other side, aware that the worst was yet to come. And indeed it was. To be honest, the interview wasn't half as bad as the excruciating wait which preceded and followed it. In retrospect, the interview itself was comic at some places. My "technical" interview for a software firm, for instance, found me answering questions on topics as "relevant" as Sourav Ganguly (apparently the interviewer was a big fan, and ,therefore, i can only assume he was a Bengali), bird flu (the then swine flu), airplanes and faltering pilots :O ..(And i had thought they were hiring me 2 code :P).

By the end of the day, my stomach and head were announcing their respective plights with competitive intensities. I was beginning to wonder whether all this was actually worth it.And then suddenly, the results were being announced. There was no more discomfort. No more pain. Hell, there was no stomach, no head. Only anxiousness. Followed by happiness. And relief. And, therefore, more happiness.

Never fails to amaze me, it doesn't, this trickery called "mind over body", which is just that. Makes me wish I could turn this otherwise symbiotic relationship between the two into a master-slave thing once and for all. And isn't that the very purpose of life according to the self-proclaimed lantern-bearers of the world? Or is it simply the way of life? Or are they the one and the same? Am I beginning to sound crazy? :O As the answers get increasingly unpleasant, think I'll stop :P

Even this sudden splurge of happiness was not entirely unadulterated. A few unfortunate and more fortunate ones had not made it through the last round. (Wonder what my head and stomach would 've had to say about that? :-?). I realized that day how difficult it is to be happy and sad at the same time.

A word of advice: When you need to be happy and sad at the same time, better be sad. It makes perfect sense to do so. I'll probably explain the logic in some future post.

But, in the end, I had managed to pull it off. My first interview. That and the show of emotions. A perfect end to a day made perfect only by the end. It was 1 a.m. by the time I reached home. My head hurt badly, but my heart seemed to be having the time of its life. And I went to bed slightly happier with the knowledge that I would be feeling even better in the morning. :)

The Interview (Part 1)

10 minutes and I am already missing my blog. But an uneventful life
harldy helps when you are attempting to write on worldy topics. Life,so
far, has been a blur. Too many landmarks down memory lane for any one of
them to seem special. Let me start with the incident, the outcome of
which decided the current course of my life. My job interview.

It was around 3 years ago. The 25th of February 2006. They were
the first company in our college for that academic year. News of them
coming had spread throughout the college months back. As a result,
college lectures, which for us back benchers,so far would mean doing more important tasks
like sleeping or discovering ways of how origami could be put to use to generate interest from the opposite sex, were spent wrestling with
Shankuntala Devis and R.S Aggarwals. (George Summers had won hands down
in the first week itself :P). I wont pretend it was not fun, but nothing
beats waking up half-asleep and red-eyed with an empty notebook to face
the professor on the rare occasions he does stray into our territory.

So one fine Saturday morning, even after months of intellectual kung-fu, we still walked undecidedly through the gates of the college where our
interview was scheduled to be held. The atmospehere was more 'picnicish'
than corporate. I think the lawn of the college was to blame for it. It was too lush and too green to have a corporate look or create a serious atmospehere. As expected, we slept through the pre-placement talk, so very reminiscent of our college lectures. Those awake were busy staring at the guy sleeping open-mouthed for his snoring was impossible to ignore,so I was told later. After the talk, like some unsaid understanding, the entire hall emptied into the magnificient college toilet . Once we were relieved of our physical tension, it was time for the mental torture to begin......to be contd.

Transition..........

Funny what time can do to you.Here I am reading my own blog after a year and a half like a total stranger,not only to the contents but also to the state of mind which incited them in the then me.I cant even fathom the reason behind the fancy titles except for the fact that they ARE fancy.Maybe time will return it to me one day.When it feels like it. I cant continue stretching the previous topic now for the above reason and I seriously doubt whether even the two-year-younger-me , the original author of this blog, had foreseen a conclusive end to this topic either.

My concerns now are more worldly. So says the less-intelligent part of me,that thinks it understands me. I say less-intelligent for it has often been more wrong than right. Therein, comes my right to wrong. ;). Atleast the title of the blog still stands :P. Hopefully, I'll be more regular now (and more comprehendable :P) and it will be my turn to miss my blog and not the other way round.

The never-ending road to Utopia.....

One very fascinating aspect of the human mind is its never ending search for contentment.Its like a hole with which the earth was born with:to fill one you create another.Apart from the basic needs of food,clothing and shelter,none are essential to survival.Yet you find millions of human lives motivated by factors other than these 3.I personally believe that the brain is to be primarily held responsible for wants other than the 3 basic needs,in which case,the body plays a more important role.to be continued...........