"True story" :-D :-D :-D

via An Irony Called Life (facebook)

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The Birthday Blues

"Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new. "

- Sammy Hagar

Okay. So I was born today. Yes, today 24 years ago I came to this awesome planet and made it extra awesome with my awesomeness.

Okay, that was lame.

But tell me one thing, what is all the whole fuss about?

Take this for example. There was this Prime Minister we had in India, a very ancient but somewhat respected one. That is a rare feat out here, none of the politicians are respected much not in the real sense of it. Fear induced respect at times may be. But not the real thing.

This ex-PM hated celebrating his birthday, but since he was a public figure it was a big deal. His party members made it a point to make it headlines in all the leading newspapers and channels. On his last term of PM'ship he stated that his birthday wont be celebrated this time around.

He said, "I never really found the reason to celebrate every single birthday throughout out pithy pathetic lives. It might be out birthday here today, but it could also be somebody else's divorce anniversay or the day someone lost a leg, or when somebody lost a loved one. What is so grand about today, just because we were born today? Doesnt that only mean that we are now a day older and more closer to our death than our last birthday??"

Well he was famous for stubborness, so nobody could push him to cut the cake in the usual grand out door do. So they just did it without him, as a tribute. A reading of excerpts from his famous hindi books and articles. A play based on his life's journey so far etc. The usual.

But no cake cutting by the birthday gentleman himself.

A year later, the party lost general elections, the PM got ousted from his seat. And he never had to suffer through another public fuss over the day he was born. I think he must be just glad celebrating it with his family and close friends. Thats he wanted always right, judging from whatever he said to the media.

Ironic.

Well life is full of such baffling coincidences. I'll try and avoid them on this topic. That politician was 60+ years he has had a full life with loads of accomplishments and surely he must be satisfied a bit with it. Here, I am one-third his age, I have started my roller coaster ride. And I dont want the Irony Goddess to come striking her hammer so soon on my joy ride.

So, just to please her if not anything else. I swear:

• I will cut the cake
• I will pick up each of your calls
• I will try to answer all your prying questions truthfully (flexible on this a bit though)
• I will try not to be pissed at people who never call all year and when they call you to wish happy birthday, demand if you have recognised them by their voice or not. (seriously, why do people do that?!)
• I will reply to all the texts personally and not mass forward the templates.
• I will attend to all your RT's and posts on my facebook wall.
• I will enjoy the day to the fullest and also make you all feel the same way too (this I will ensure personally!)

Thanks in advance to all of you. You all are very kind to remember. Feels wonderful to have so many wonderful friends around!!

Thou Art Awesome ;-)

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Question: Do you realize just how messed up you are? Answer: Yes, I do!

"The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not exist for any other man -- and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men."
- Howard Roark,
 'The Fountainhead'

Yes, I know. I haven’t written anything here for a while.

And if at all I do its in long intervals. About lord-only-knows what topic, at lord-only-knows what day, and especially lord-only-knows why.

It’s not that I’ve given up on blogging, no I have not. I enjoy this, I really do!

Life’s just been coming in the way too much, lately. And people around me know what a roller coaster ride it has been for the past four months or so. New place, new city, new job, new people. Couldn’t actually find the time, not that I was at lost on what to say, or was in shortage of things to talk about. I never am!

Things were a bit too cluttered, needed some sorting out. But have cleared it out now; got a nice healthy stable routine. It’s all good.

Except…

Sometimes, for some people, making do with some lame routine just won’t do. The drag of living in monotony and doing the same thing day in day out without any novelty in it proves a terrible downer. They always are on the look-out on something to bring out the zeal in them. Something that is theirs, and nobody else’s. Something, they could call their own. Their own private territory.

For me, it is writing.

Cheap thrills? I suppose so.

But who is to blame anyone for that matter? Not one soul on this planet wants to have a life without meaning. Nobody wants to leave this planet without leaving a mark. Everybody wants their name to be remembered for awhile even after they reach the pearly gates up above. Nobody wants to be forgotten. No one wishes to fall prey to the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome we all have as a species. Why do you think all those scientists and geniuses put their own name to their theories and hypothesis or of their favorite cat’s or even an aunt for that matter? They wanted to be remembered. At least for some time.

I am rambling now.

This brings to my topic at hand today, a very innocent question to me by somebody a few hours ago:

“You talk rash. You don’t think before you speak and say whatever comes to your mind. You speak loud and laugh louder, and you walk like you rule the planet. You don’t just do what’s asked of you, you have to question everything. You know everyone and everything about them; everyone comes to you with their issues while none of them know the first thing about yours or even know if you have any. You know everything all the time, you have the solutions to everybody problems. But I have never seen you ask for anybody’s assistance; give them a chance to help you. You are way too cheery and ‘happy happy’ all the time. You go ahead and give some the most mature intellectual long speeches that I have ever seen anybody give; and then go around and eat ice-cream with a FORK like a 4 year-old!

Do you realize just how messed up you are?”

My honest answer, pal:

“I do. And if all that you said qualifies me to be messed up, then I'm darn glad that I am.”

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The Catalyst For Change

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

- Anatole France

When I was about to leave home for the first time for college, most people around me were of the view that something of huge importance is about to happen in my life. Somehow this single act of getting out of ‘the nest’ is about to change me, my way of thinking, likes and dislikes, even way of doing things. They said, up until then my life was within the very safe protection of my family. Where I didn’t have to ever worry about being alone, uncared for, nor getting my laundry done and neatly ironed. At that time, it all seemed like every other long lecture that the wise elders used to give; some of these used to go longer and more boring than those that began with ‘when I was of your age’. I never could understand the compulsion for adults to give these repetitive telecasts of the same subject again and again, on an uncomfortably frequent basis. I never will until I reach their age, comes their immediately reply if I were to foolishly present this question to them. Never expect a straight answer from them, you’d never ever get it.

The thing is, even after months and months of getting into this college I couldn’t figure out what would be this mysterious catalyst within these four walls of the campus that was going to change me so drastically. Yes, I was alone and had to do everything by myself. Mother wasn’t here to tend to my needs and to provide me with her delicious food. I had to make do with whatever we could find here and try to survive on the stuff they called food and expected us to swallow. Yes, this was all new to me and so where the people here. But I was always able to make friends wherever I went and soon there was a huge mob of people that knew me and that I knew. So there really weren’t really many places around the campus town where I’d ever find myself lone for the remaining four years of college yet to come.

The college I went to was 400 kilometers far from my hometown Mumbai. So it was a one night of travel to go to and from there to home, so usually it was sometimes weeks or even more that I go to eat mum’s food. And throughout my time away from home, and even now, that’s probably thing that I miss the most. The food wasn’t that bad in the hostel, but as most things in life the monotony of it killed its novelty in time. Fortunately, the roomies that I got were all also a bunch of indolent, bamboozled, languid buffoons like me. And darn did I have a helluva time with all of them. We were a group of solid 16 idiots, give or take a few at any point of time. The best thing about it was that we met during the first weeks of college itself and we stayed together through most of it. Had millions of fights and gazillions of arguments, but as I’ve seen in most guys. None of these squabbles lasted more than a week, after the initial violent outburst. Guy friendships are simpler and less maintenance than with the female specie.

The Past

"We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice."

 - Stephen Covey

Waking up in the morning can be a really grueling thing to do sometimes. You open your eyes at almost the same time as you do every day; its a routine to you now after doing it since the day you were born. Plus you have this mysterious biological clock inside you that all these womens magazine keeps talking about in their every other article. Your whole body feels heavy after the nice rest it has had all night, and now is gearing up for another busy day ahead. Some days you wake up abruptly from a nice dream and you try hard to recall what the whole thing was about, but you find it hard to do. Some days you wake up thinking about the same things you were thinking of when you went off to sleep, mostly some romantic tryst with someone special to you. People might spend their whole day gossiping and throwing hatred at everybody around them, but they always end up thinking of loved ones before dozing off. Somebody from both past or present, or even someone they wish to have in their lives in the near future. 

Reminiscing in such thoughts is such a wonderful feeling in the first few waking minutes. Not always though. Some days you wake up to something not so pleasant. You have a lousy dream. Or even someone around you talking to somebody else and tidbits of their conversation leads you to recall some part of your past that you really are trying very hard to block out and keep trying desperately not think of. But now after listening to these conversations it is inside your head, and there is no escaping it. You end up thinking about these unpleasant moments in your life of which you’re too proud of, your utmost low point. Now you have no choice but to spend those first few glorious lazy minutes of the day stuck in your not-so-glorious past. That is so not the way anybody wants to start off their day. 

Human beings are the most blessed, and probably the most cursed, one of nature’s children. And the reason for both is the same, the strength of our minds or rather more specifically our ability to remember and feel. A stray dog might not recognize the kind old lady that had given it some bread to eat when it was hungry last winter and will run away from her when she comes to pet it a few months later, but it will always remember to pee in the self same spots without fail like clockwork to mark his territory. Thats mostly due to its brain is hard-wired to sticking to a routine, than to remembering any seemingly non-consequential data about some withered old member of another species. Sometimes I feel they are so lucky. They do not have to remember anything from the past or deal with the emotions created as a consequence of remembering them. They don’t have to feel guilt, shame, anger, frustration, angst or sorrow. All they really need to worry about in life are the three basics for their existence – food to exist, shelter their hide from the harsh weathers and sniffing each others’s butts. 

We on the other hand are not that fortunate. We remember. Each of our actions, reactions, feelings etc is all locked away in the seemingly endless recesses of memory space inside our head. And our memories are capable of bringing out a wide array emotions like joy, sorrow, content, angst, anger, peace, guilt or just the plain old dreadful nagging feeling called regret. All these feelings can be dealt with; once you’ve spent it all out of your system, it is over and done. You just need someone to blame it all on. The people around you, the cat, the dog, and the stupid lazy lady down the street, or the all time favorite, the government. Most of them just need a little venting off, and time. Then poof, it’s gone.