what might be gained, is dubious.

gotterdammerung. the twilight of the gods.

may be not yet. but in time.

jargon. applied to life. slippery slopes or precipices.

is an empty house better than an empty heart?

how does one try forget what one does not even remember?

and how does one make un-happen, what has not happened?

remarkable successes have a way of turning into crushing failures.Similar Posts:

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There is no reason to write any more, of course. All the reasons have gone away long ago, only we have been fooling ourselves into the need to write  by running the same old songs (which we do not  even need to hear anymore) in our head, on a terminal infinite loop. And writing used to give a sort of completeness- no, maybe a vacuum in which we could pour the contents of the blisters formed on memory. A reverse, alternate universe kind of happiness which would come by dint of the absence of sadness. Maybe that was how, we the terminally, fatally unfortunate, came to be the vanguard of the search of ecstasy- not just the chimerical feeling of happiness, but the more well rounded and intricately crafted shape of fulfillment.

But now there is no sadness, has not been there for long and hence there is no need for this search to be continued. The factors essential for survival are always with as, aligned, and in place, but we delude ourselves into thinking that we need more and more and more of things that we probably could do without. So let us give it a shot.

I quit.Similar Posts:

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Psychedelic orange parkas in the heat of Delhi,
And electric green sweaters in Mumbai-
Disguises presented to the world,
The cold winter of indifference,
In scorching summers of truth.
Reading stories, human audio-books,
Or living life,
Human cinemas, we balance snails on knife edges
And read T S Eliot
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends!!

Not with a bang but a whimper-
Sounds familiar?
Writing is release, telling stories not so much,
And we are not good storytellers, anyway,
Tongue-tied pleaders,
Begging for redemption,
Somewhat smaller than life,
And too ugly to be forgotten.

Too easy to be remembered,
And too unrepentant to be thought of,
We write our stories, and leave them,
Yellowing rolls of parchment among grey cobwebs,
Seeking forgetting, and remembering seeking-
We are abstruse, and clumsy and cantankerous,
Ever living in lines of forgotten poets,
Easily remembered, and fading before the end,
We embark on voyages, and when finished with futility,
Depart.Similar Posts:

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He is not himself these days. He does not jog anymore, and two days of sickness have taken their toll. High fever and hour after hour sleeping with cramping bodyaches have almost made him believe in brandy. As it happens, the fever abated in the afternoon, and he will again drink beer. And hell with the consequences.

He wants to make a new life. To make a clean break with all things yesterday. Even with all things this past minute. He wants to be like a branch cut of and transplanted somewhere else, in unaccustomed earths. He knows that the stuff that is in the genes, the makeup of the DNA will follow him even there. But, probably falsely, he believes, that he might be able to grow again. Maybe even flourish.

He wants a new life. He does not want to relive his old life, no. But maybe even that is partially incorrect; he doesn’t really want a whole new life. He just wants his life from here on to not follow the pattern of the past.

Nouns, once they have persisted enough, become so much like expletives- people, places, things…all of them grow to become mocking in a distant future. Maybe not all people, not all places, not all things. But many, too many for comfort. Even those nouns who were associated with wonderful memories, turn into taunts later. And those associated with uncomfortable memories- well, they are always taunts. Each of us fights his or her own Mahabharata. And as always, there are no winners or losers, in the end, there is always a Pyrrhus left, in all of us- a madman who looks at the carnage all around us, the shambles of what was meant to be a life- and laughs in bloodthirsty cackles, yearning for more and more destruction.

He just wants to go to the sea. It is a noisy and dirty and ugly companion, who smells of wet salt and urine and the filth of a city of a million denizens who pour their waste into it, but is never mocking. The sea sometimes does get angry, very angry and rages against it’s binds, trying to break the puny stone walls built around it, it will often spray him with it’s ugly, smelly, dirty water if he get’s too close- just enough to remind him how much it hates him- but it will never mock him. It just reminds him of that vast expanse that is still left in front of him. A sea of opportunities? That is drivel only Shakespeare could write, but a sea? Yes. The sea will consume everything- even him, when he chooses to enter it.

He just wants a chance to live his life in a new way, the rest of it. In unaccustomed earths.

PS: The phrase Unaccustomed Earth was used most famously by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in one of my favourite passages:

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (Selected Works: The Custom-House, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun)

Later the phrase was used as a title for her book by Jhumpa Lahiri.
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Still, thoroughly disgruntled, I stayed on for the convocation ceremony, got myself thoroughly plastered in the post-convo party- in a bad way, spent the rest of night running through whatever remaining conversation there was with some of the people I had spent the two years at XL, and ran through another bottle of whiskey. And next day, puking and panting, I left for Bombay to join my new job which I was very doubtful about.

It’s been nearly one year. The new job is now old enough, and though it still doesn’t pay me a million rupees a year, it is something I turned out to like from Day-1, it’s taught me things, has earned me the respect of my colleagues and reportees; and a footing from where I can not talk to people and confidently say that its not all just gyan that I accumulated in two years of XL and one year of work. And, even though I was very unhappy when I left the campus, I was not sure I wanted to be back there anymore, I have been back there many times, probably more times in the past one year than any of my other friends (I stopped counting after four times in four months).

I did not go back to XL initially for XL. I went there because my job took me in those parts frequently, and my best friend was placed in Jamshedpur and I would spend my weekends with him. And I would visit campus sometimes- just go, have a coffee and smoke at Dadu’s, make a couple rounds of the JLT (never spend time sitting there, idling- didn’t do that after first term), roam a bit around the Learning Center and come back (the first visits happened in April and May, when there was no one on campus).

I kept going back to Jamshedpur as and when time permitted, and most times I would also visit XL, sometimes to meet some guys from my junior batch whom I knew- sometimes just for a coffee at dadu’s and back. Neither here nor there kind of visits. But I did go. And the past three months I have not been there. Work, other travelling, other commitments in life have all conspired to prevent any visits to Jamshedpur. And my best friend is no longer there. And the junior batch is also going now, so next I go, there will be no one I know in that town, except the profs. No more all night booze sessions, no more roof-top parties, no more evening jogs- one year after leaving XL, I know now with a finality that there will be no going back in the way the two years were spent there. No more wet-nites neither. So many of those parties spent serving and imbibing drinks- and it all boils down to this- I still hate the racket made in wetnites- but could I have just one more please?

Ohh, and I found my OMAXI tee today. It was lost somewhere in the jumble of stuff when I shifted homes, but it is back, and it shall be worn again with pride, whenever I get time to roam around. Because even though I hated being parts of groups, it was kinda cool. Even though I hated noisy parties in large groups, those were kinda nice. And I am sure those who are going to be checking out of XL now would also be thinking the same- could I have one more please?

I will be going back to XL again, this month or the next month- some plans are being made. This time there will be no familiar faces among the students, but they will still be XLers, there will be Dadu’s where I will sit and sip my coffee (without the chocolate powder, please), maybe even have an egg maggi, and get the gossip about things.

And I will do it again, and again and again. Because now I realize that I was not right to be disgruntled. Nay, I was not really disgruntled. For most of us, XL now is like a love- we can have fights, we can argue, we can stop talking for a few days. But we do not stop loving each other, because we are each made of each other. XL has bits of me in her (her…as one of the current batch aptly says), and I will always have bits of XL in me, where ever I go- because I will always be an XLer. Things earned there will never change. Twenty years down the line, I will sit down for drinks with those guys- we will still go “PIYO BC!” and Ek-Do-Teen-Chaar will always be shouted, even by the most genteel of us…and I will always want one more day there…one more wetnite, one more cup of coffee at Dadu’s, one more terrace party, one more breakfast at the Regent (it will NEVER be the Sonnet for me)…ohh, and would FLIX please screen Gunda again?Similar Posts:

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so rational being that i am, i try to analyze it. of course there is much time left. the next plane i fly on is not going to crash. the next train i travel on is not going to have an accident. and the next time i cross the road, someone is not going to try to harvest me for their roadkill. that, of course, is daftly intuitive, you know all that else you cannot carry on living. and so i know that. and still this nagging feeling- so i try to quantify it. there might not be much time left-meaning…there might be 15-20 years still? i will settle for 20, if it is possible. there will still be so much to do, but 20? for a short time, yes, 20 more years wouldn’t do any harm.

so…20 years. and how will it happen? i am not daft enough to believe in plane-crashes or road or rail accidents. no. it also will probably not be a case of violent termination of life. not because it can’t be. i just don’t see any goon pulling his sixshooter or katta or automatic on me. nor a terrorist. if i have to go in 20, perhaps the most likely candidate for my (untimely, i still insist) demise, will be the little white men- the white sticks with brown strips on their ends. and i will pass happily perhaps.

but twenty years- only twenty…there is still so much to do. the job has just started. the parents are barely settling. the books have barely been started upon. the novel and the poetry have hardly been written. the world has hardly been travelled. why, i have never been out of the country! and the girl i am wooing has still to be wooed. i have not even started a family yet!! and what if there are no twenty year, not really…but just twenty days? what will i have missed out on? the party will have died without me ever having been part of it, the sights will be seen, but not by me. the book will be written- hopefully, but i will not be the one writing. the poems will be recited, but my expression will no longer be in there. the feathers will still float on melodious winds, but the colours of the music will no longer be there in my life. rather, my life will no longer be there in the colours of the music, because i will have gone, lost. ash scattered in the waters of a murky river will be what i will be. and the girl will have found someone else…hopefully someone who will tell her jokes which make her laugh harder, will bear her temper tantrums better, will sometimes make her cry, and then wipe off the tears too. someone who will not just live with her, but someone who will make a life with her, someone who will take her to deep purple concerts, who will revive her love for country music, who will make her understand the language of jazz once again, someone who will sing for her in a voice less off-key than mine…someone who will understand her, but more importantly, someone who will make her understand herself; someone who will have a lot of time…twenty years are nowhere near enough.

the little white men, the little white men…the lighten my life so much and they poison it so, but they still make life worth living, even if they shorten it a bit. the little white men. the cause of so many disasters and i still cannot let them go. at least the girl understands. i wish she would make up her mind quickly. i think it was a dream what i had today, but there really might not be too much time. and then what do we do?

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (by The Master- Yeats)

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You want to be simple. Normal. And you are more complex than a system of Chinese boxes. There is always something new. Like your admission of craving normalcy.  I want to be complex, and perhaps am just normal.

What does one do when one has made oneself unfit for what one craves? How do you end a story which has grown around you to involve you? How do you write a non-tragic end to a story in which you are yourself a character?

Nights are complex affairs, even in cities where you can barely see a mouthful of sky- stars form intricate patterns with other stars which you can see. And they are interwoven with the gazillion stars you know you cannot see. Are they similar to factors which govern your life? And what if you tell yourself, that you are the only factor which governs your life? That you are no mere star but a blazing sun? And what happens to the lifeless planets around you?

Stories, stories and poems. How do you know which ones are true? And what is the truth from what you would like to believe? How is I Love You different from I Think I Love You? Isn’t the first as great a camouflage of confidence as the second a farce of desire?

What if I pick consequences?Similar Posts:

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2. read till 2 am in the morning.

3. wake up at 11am on saturday.

4. ask the bai to cook chicken and rice.

5. order two beers.

6. watch a movie on laptop, forget to eat lunch till 5pm.

7. order another two beers. read a book till twelve.

8. remember to eat leftover lunch as dinner. then sleep.

9. repeat on saturday.

10. wake up 10 am on sunday. omg i have a 1pm flight to catch.

11. hastily pack and reach airport.

12. realise you remembered to take three books you will never read on the trip, but forgot to pack your shaving kit and socks.Similar Posts:

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Why are people lonely? Or maybe what is loneliness? Is there an absolute like loneliness? Is it not more of the togetherness of others? Just like there is no dark, there is only the absence of light?

If that is so, what do we call a blown out lamp? Absent of light or lonely? Sometimes darkness holds a strange glow- like a worm from science-fiction, illuminating itself by its breath.

Self-perpetuating, perhaps that is what such a glow would be called. For a finite period. So. A contradiction. But a nice idea, if not a clever one. So what do we call loneliness which feeds upon itself, increasing its intensity from the lack of resistance?

And what is your face in the dark? Hallucination? That is not a nice word. Almost sounds fake.

When we have left the world behind us, we are lonely. When we are brave, we say it is solitude. Where do we draw the line between bravery and mercy upon our souls?

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Does anyone cry when seeing a movie?

Why is ‘as time goes by’ so important? No one ever left me waiting at a railway station?

Why do I always wonder why there is no man in your life?

If she can take it, I can.

What is my religion? I also am a drunkard. That doesn’t make me a citizen of the world. It just makes me cry at nights.

A fight for love and glory.

Ilse. I am waiting for a woman. She is never coming. Here is looking at you, kid.

I forgot. There were to be no questions.

This might be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Of all the gin joints in the world she walks into mine.

Is that cannon-fire is that my heart pounding?

Not easy to forget. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

Why don’t we get married in Marseilles? That’s too far ahead to plan.

Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.

The last train. It leaves in three minutes.

Some stay here for years.

Oh you must remember this…as kiss is just a kiss…

I have to talk to you. I saved my first drink to have with you.

I didn’t count the days. Well I did. Mostly the last one. A wow finish, with a guy standing in the rain at the rail station because his insides had just been kicked out. Can I tell you a story? Has it got a wow finish?

Yes, its very pretty. I have had a story once. As a matter of fact I have had a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlour downstairs…Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid, they always went.

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SS: You know, in many ways you are an asshole, but the girl who marries you will be really lucky (she did say that and no exaggeration!!)

Me: (immediately going on one knee in moving auto, autodriver almost swerves off the road): SS, marry me.

SS (hits me on the head so many times with the flower, poor thing gets all crushed): you ARE an asshole.

Me:( Consumed with laughter, and in danger of falling out of auto!!)

Some people just can’t take jokes when they are on then.

Oh well!

PS: I now know that the post before this was the 300th post on this blog. I have been blogging for nearly 6 and a half years now, and have written blog posts which have been 2 words long to posts more than a thousand words long. Some of you have stuck there right from my original blog (Unformed Words) to this one, with all the changes in between, some of you joined in the middle… (ok..for the four subscribers of the blog’s RSS feed..lets make 2 and 2  :) ) Thanks for staying there. hope you read and keep reading  :)Similar Posts:

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‘To die, to sleep;’ is so much more than just a phrase at so many times. Death is not without its attractions- even though it offers no guarantee of peace. But there is always an ersatz serenity about it on the surface- a make-believe sort of peace, death seems like a raging black stormy sea covered by a very very thin peel of ice. But in the blackness, maybe there are answers as many as there are questions.

How many ways to go, to fall into that deep sleep to never rise again- violent, non violent, sleepy, calm and assured, prolonged and delayed, or sudden and abrupt.

Slashing the wrist veins is as good a way to go as any, if slightly messy.

But if you are dead, why be bothered with the mess.

Sit on a kitchen chair, lay your hands on the black glass dining table, and gently run the steak knife over the veins in the crook of your wrist. Watch the ruby red stream spread gently over the huge expanse of the black table that will seat thirteen, slowly and slowly covering the whole table like a mirror- as a gentle euphoria takes over with the blood loss, and a sense of rest comes in, even as the eyes begin resisting the lids’ attempts to stay open, and reflect. Or just go to sleep.

They say when you are dying your entire life flashes through in front of your eyes. Is that true of people dying by their own hands, those who commit suicide? If it is true, it is not fair. Why should a man betrayed by life have to be tormented by it even at the moment of death? It is the most cosmic sort of mockery.

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First up, the reading. Has been going on full throttle, so much so that I am in the middle of some 4-5 books right now. Needless to say, the ones requiring assimilation are getting read less, the ones requiring less assimilation are shuffling up the queue. So, 2666 (Roberto Bolano) and Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) have been put on hold after some 200 pages apiece. But then, they are going to take some time, ‘cause they each have nearly thousand pages. Both are immensely enjoyable books, but definitely not recommended reading I you are looking for some Harry Potter or Robert Langdon type entertainment.

The Master and Margarita ( Mikhail Bulgakov) has been finished. An enthralling read, reading a few pages of it convinces you of all the reasons why it is considered one of the greatest novels of the past century. It is a book that can be enjoyed at many levels- at once a hugely funny read, a biting satire, a sensuous romance and a philosophical incursion into faith, and of course, the reason it is most famous for- its rewriting of the legend of Christ and Pontius Pilate. A must read.

Two other books I am reading and will hopefully have finished by this weekend are J M Barrie’s Peter Pan (originally called Peter and Wendy) and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. For those not in the know, J M Barrie was the guy on whom this movie was based, marking one of the best roles of Johnny Depp.

(Apropos of nothing, how many of you knew that Barrie is credited with popularising the name Wendy, after he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan? Confession: I didn’t.)

I swore that I would not buy any more books- but on my trip to Jamshedpur, I just HAD to visit Books and Beyond (what a cost center has that place been to me, whenever I have been to Jamshedpur- right behind 60ml, The Host and Ganga )- and I bought FOUR books. Three I have mentioned earlier- The Master and Margarita, Peter Pan and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The fourth book is Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Other Plays. Ibsen was deservedly the greatest playwright of the last century, and probably the greatest after Shakespeare, Shaw and Wilde. I had read The Doll’s House earlier, and am really looking forward to reading the other two plays in the book.

On the book buying spree, Hilary Mantel’s Booker Winning novel Wolf Hall has been bought, and a few pages read, though it also is on HOLD status. Meanwhile, I have nearly finished rereading The Bourne Supremacy, and it has been some experience. Having watched the movies so many times in the recent past (whenever mindless entertainment had been needed- which is nearly every time I travel), I had forgotten how incredibly complex the books were. But the book I am really looking forward to reading is The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, the last of Stieg Larsson’s Milennium trilogy. Someone PLEASE bring it to India soon. Oh, and I nearly forgot, I have been reading some of Pablo Neruda’s poetry (I chanced upon a volume of collected poetry at Landmark a month or so ago- and the book is pure joy, with multiple translations of many poems, with a lot of the poems in original Spanish, followed by their translations). Now whatever pitiful Spanish I learnt during those one am classes in college is not enough to read and understand Neruda (I wonder if even English is enough), but the poems are brilliant, and the book is a veritable treasure house for this long time fan.

I know that’s a LOT of books, but hopefully they will be done soon, and I will write about some of them in this space. Meanwhile, another blog is on the cards, and if it happens, I will be th first one to let you know.  :)

Well, that’s about it for now. Do keep in touch.

P.S: I do mention hectic travelling to come, but the ad nauseum hyperlinking done above indicates an extraordinarily vella man. And such it is, today, in office. But to follow the links, if you have bothered to read so far. Who knows, you might get interested into reading some of the books.

P.P.S: Of course, the other book I am looking forward to is Nabokov‘s The Original of Laura. That will be my first Nabokov novel (I have not read Lolita nor seen the movie/s), and already the controversy surrounding it has set the literary world on fire with lots of people invoking the case of Kafka and what not. The debate is perfectly delicious. Promises to be delightful.Similar Posts:

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busy SV Road. Now who would have figured THAT!

# A ‘gaggle’ of geese. Ain’t that a beautiful term now, for a flock of animals. right up there

with a ‘school’ of fish.

# I think that if I am quitting cigarettes or alcohol for the Rs 5-6K it would save me per

month, I am starting down the wrong track. I had originally planned to quit around the time I

become 30 or when I marry, and right now both are a long ways off. Besides, from smoking or

drinking, the pleasure derived cannot be monetarily evaluated, else I would not be spending

some 600-800 bucks in auto/taxi fares every couple of weekends, travelling to C’s home to

enjoy three beers, which after all, cost only 240 bucks (that, of course, is apart from the

killer chicken C makes). Besides, being stubborn as a mule, I have never had any problems with

addictions- I dont smoke or drink or want to when I am home, and figure that I don’t have any

problems with quitting. When ever I have resumed after breaks, it has never been because the

old body demanded things.

# One reason I have not quit my job despite all the uncertainties is that inspite of

everything, I look forward to going to work in the mornings. After the ritual cribbing for

five minutes, at having to wake up at six in the mornings (which, I still hold, is beneath

contempt for a person who seven months ago, used to go to sleep at that time), around seven

thirty when I leave for work, mostly I am looking forward to the day ahead. Of course its a

different story in the evening when I come back, but still… To think that one of my friends

called me a workaholic, and is probably right- who would have thought it a year ago? I guess

we learn new things as we go along, even about ourselves.

# I really like the song Thoda Thoda Pyar from Love Aaj Kal, and cannot listen to it enough. I

think it is because it seems obvious that everyone involved in the making of the song was so

enjoying the song, themselves. Same is the case with Twist. I think involvement with your

creation is very important, in producing good work- and that applies everywhere. Mind you, I

am not going so far as to call it art-I am just saying I enjoyed it. And contrary to all

expectations, I remember even enjoying the movie. But then, I did not have to pay 500 bucks to

go watch it in a multiplex.

P.S. : The blog has a new look, which (so far) seems to be more navigable and easy on the

eyes. I was wondering about shifting to Joomla or Drupal, but if this serves the purpose, it

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