This too shall pass..

Not everyday you happen to run into people you never ever wished to , and then when you do , you want to look away right before they even take a notice of you and soon you realize it did not work , cuz apparently they recognize you so well even with your back facing them , that you come to believe the only thing that could ever work for you was to go invisible …literally.

I happened to run into one of those lunatic bygones the other day .. the one who was off my list ever since I left school.

Sometimes you approve of yourself sounding so selfish at the convenience of your own solace, that you tend to look beyond the most obvious and the simplest of things . She was the most annoying thing on the face of earth. The only reason I ever happened to know her in the first place was because she sat right behind my seat in school and one damned day, I asked her for a pen! I never leave my house without a pen ever since. Oh yes, I wouldn’t be exaggerating in declaring that cursed pen pretty much made my life a living hell.

When ideally, this woman should have never even been existing in my thoughts, ironically, she happened to leave quite a prolonged memory in my head that refused to wither away.

Even till today I would wake up in the middle of the night , just with a glimpse of her in my dreams..err..nightmares rather.
I know i still wonder what was she even doing in my subconscious mind in the first place. I must REALLY hate her.
I’m not really the kind of person who gets stuck up on people or things too hard or for too long. I let go of things and believe in moving on. I mean..that’s the way to live it. . right ? But,What went wrong here … ! what could have POSSIBLY gone wrong ?

Anyways, having said that, I’m living with this malediction everyday. Have learnt to keep up with it. No, havent forgotten, just learnt to overlook it, until this day arrives when despite my looking away in a mall, she seemed to have recognized me.

”Run Forest Run” … my thoughts exploded. Actually there were other thoughts too. . ” God, Do something – earthquake, power out , let her slip on the floor and I could just sneak out in that fraction of second , anything ”
But God didn’t listen, or probably ignored. It’s like the almighty had destined this day . It wanted me to get this whole ghostly tryst to be done and over with. As she ran towards me, suddenly I could see it all clearly, it was definitely the destiny. An immaculated pre-planned incident ,that had, had to happen and no one shall cease it. Like , even if it was a Harry Potter theatrical and I had the wand to fly away or evaporate myself .. the wand would go dysfunctional.
I was doomed.
I couldn’t believe how fast my brain was working seeing her coming towards me.
When I was done thinking of ways of getting myself disappear or vaporize..in vain though, I thought proclaiming myself an amnesic would be the way about it. I could just pretend I don’t recognize her. That , this disease has wiped off all my memories and left me clean.
Like, there’s no sign of me coming back , no way I could ever recall who she is. I’m sure she’ll buy it. But that made me worry even more… she could then try harder to bring back my pretentious lost memory and in the process,probably end up spending more time with me than she possibly was planning to. Oh goddd.. this was a trap and it was not easy getting out of it .

She had almost reached towards me . Her footsteps still could not match up my heart beats though . In only a fraction of a second, she was going to have a conversation with me which would include a lot of surprising and happiness around her .But what about me, I was going to listen to a voice I had tried so hard to forget all these years. I was going to be looking at a face for real that haunted me for nights. This can not be happening to me, but it was. What would I say. Should I act surprised ? Should I act casual ? Not amnesic , definitely not. I decided I will keep it short and simple. Like , ** Hey Hi, How have you been . I’m good. Thanks. Gotta rush. Bye. See ya later. Done . **
Yes.. that’s it . These were my words. I was preparing myself to face her but still somewhere at the back of my mind , I still thought power out or earthquake was a muchh better idea. and whoops… there she was !

“Excuse me” , she spoke. She finally did .
I looked at her , tried real hard to act surprised and said ” Hey Hi ”
Before I could start with my drill and get done with those 14 words I had memorized , she handed out a wallet.
” Hi, I think you forgot this at the last store you visited, Is it yours?” – That was her talking.
I looked at the wallet , it really was mine. Then I looked into my hand bag for double check, “Yes, it is”
She gave it to me and as it seemed like , she was waiting for a thank you.
I thought may be she was pretending this whole thing and would suddenly act all jumpy and try hug me or something.
I played along . I said Thankyou, she smiled and walked away . She was gone . Vanished in the crowd. Nowhere to be found.
OMG,what had just happened. She had forgotten me , Had she really forgotten me?
All these years I had been praying so terribly hard not to ever see another sight of her again and looks like I never even existed for her anymore.
I looked for her everywhere in the crowd . May be I still hoped, she’d come back and tell me it was a joke.
I can’t believe how easily she forgot me. From feeling so irritated and provoked, suddenly I felt so insignificant, immaterial . Like I never really left an impression on her. And ironically she was all I had to crib over all my life.

If fate was anything to do with it , I had lost . Lost in my own eyes.

When Life hands you lemons..

Disclaimer - All characters, incidents, stories, happenings in this work below, are absolutely REAL.
Any resemblance to real persons, living and NOT dead,are purely intentional .
The gravity of situations mentioned below are least exaggerated and can be taken in a more serious yet funny note.

It’s been precise 2 months today, since my life changed radically. Getting married, moving to a new house,leaving my home for good..kissing the kids in the family goodbye… Becoming a part of a new family .. the relatives..all the expectations..the judgmental glances.. the apprehensions.. the sweet memories. And in THAT confined time – also managing marriage registration, driving license, visa, bank accounts,air tickets. It was a world to see in precise 14 days and how !!! Now when I look back, I realize how foolishly worried I was about everything. Its surprising how things just fell into place.. And I’d be selfish not to mention I had a partner who stood by me in all times.
You know when they say,’When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!!’ We kinda made gallons of it .. :))

I still remember how ridiculously I had packed tonnes of luggage and realized how overweight I was at the airport ; with gazillion advices echoing in my ears, ” Carry as many warm clothes as you can” , ”Do not talk to random people on board”, ” Make sure to carry your passport with you’, I mean wtf? ,”Take atleast 30 rotis packed from home, saves all the trouble of cooking once you land for a long time. haha.. yeah .. sure !”, ” Do NOT eat beef ” Sorry Mom, i was forced into it ;)) !

This was my first ever 22hr long flight to a land I had never been to. Nothing to gloat about , but the fact that it seemed so venturesome to me all doing it by myself back then , I could almost make a joke out of it today. Its a different story that the flight actually turned out to be over 25 hr long.
So well, after managing to get myself on board,and sitting on my ass for over 18 hours, going all anxious about how its going to be there so far away from my own country, a flight announcement shook me up. Out of nowhere, the flight going to Chicago, had to be landed in Goose Bay Canada Airport ( I had NO idea what was happening ) due to some emergency.. !
For a moment, I thought if our flight was being hijacked, but that’d been way too dramatical to even think of.
or atleast that’s what my husband waiting for me on the other side would have thought of. I mean, think of it, how often do you go to receive your newly wedded wife at the airport just to find out, she never really would land. cuz the flight she was on..was hijacked ? That would surely have been the end of our so called ‘ lemonades’ :)

The guy sitting next to me , Mathew.. was an American, He and I kind of started playing guessing games.
Going positive, if it was not the hijack, what else could it possibly be – The plane ran out of fuel ? The pilot had to go take a poop ? Mathew suggested it must have been some military emergency – I mean.. WHAT ? How the hell does he infer that ?? Didn’t know if this was a regular practice, but it surely happened to us. If Mathew was any right , I came that close to be able to tell my children about how my flight to Chicago kind of landed in the middle of nowhere.. just because some American militants had to port deadly armaments on our plane due to an emergency which led to the biggest outbreak of an impacting war in our era .. ! And there I was , married only 14 days back.
The pilot, finally announced it was a medical emergency ,some passenger on the plane had to be moved to a hospital and hence the landing on the Goose bay. But wait , I never saw anyone being moved out of the plane ?
Some hoax ? Conspiracy ? It will always be a secret to us ! and I kind of like the sound of that .. don’t I :)

My flight was 3 hrs late,Nevertheless, I had landed safe, waiting to see my husband and super excited.. so well, I was almost that close to conclude it a day worth all the troubles until I figured my luggage were missing. Errr.. Both of them. Bummer!!
What is it ? Was I the target ? The chosen one ? When I was done thinking all evil, a funny thought passed by. Was I being punked? That would be hilarious! But who would be trying to pull that off on me ..shattered my hopes.
How often do you end up having a screwed up day like this, JUST when you least expect it and of all the days, on a day like THIS ?

So yeah, I’m on a foreign land..quite by myself..for the first time ever.. can’t find my luggage.. the flight is already too late… and you know what adds up to the drama . My husband .. while endlessly waiting for me outside the airport scanning every passenger’s face coming out of my flight, worriedly thinks probably I never got onto that plane in the first place. Freaky eh ? I wonder what I’d do if I was in his place..

This had to be a nightmare one of a kind. But this HAS to be a real story to be told forever also, one of a kind !

P.S Eventually, my husband found me, and I found my baggage … after each of us reporting them missing :)

A Friend Indeed

I walked up to him and said ‘I need your wallet’
He replied ‘Why? I bought you that dress already, why do you need more money?’
I made a grumpy face and attempted to walk away..he stopped me right away and handed over his wallet to me , ‘It’s all yours’,, he said and sighed ‘‘God …Women !!” haha .. Such was our love…we called each other ”just friends” though :)

He loved me ever since he held me in his arms. I could sense it. I may have been real obtuse, but I knew it wasn’t just simple affection from his side.. It was the bond that was to exist forever. Like he’d never let go of me.

The charm we shared was evident enough. Even though he wouldn’t say much, somewhere deep down, I knew we had a long way to go…I looked up to him.
I can’t believe how I changed as a person and he still stuck around… so patiently.

Days passed by, Years passed by.. It was unspoken, not talked about anymore.. not expressed outrightly..But it was deep down inside the both of us.. we knew it needed no mention. it was pure and righteous.. except that he’d always forget my birthdays :).. and i would always remember his. It was weird how the chemistry was so accepted amongst us now that i was done grilling him and he was done trying too hard remembering it every year now !!

It was his b’day again , i had baked the cake myself. It was a chocolate one.. with the dark chocolate frosting. He was too cautious abt his health these days , he would say ‘No more cakes this year. im going fat ” haha… can’t believe it is the same person who couldn’t care less eating just about anything. He was now keeping a calorie count like some pretentious on-diet feminine who has just put on a kg more in the past 3 years.
I laughed it off and put the entire big pie in his mouth .. .it was his b’day after all,one day i looked forward to every year , besides my own ofcourse :)..
Things were in place, running smooth until about a year later from then. And Something had happened then. Something very unusual. I had met someone , someone interesting ..someone who spoke his heart out to me.Someone i connected more with or so i would like to believe. He would make me laugh and cry too. He resumed my emotions somehow.
I wasn’t too sure if what i was feeling was real but then it was beautiful. Something I had never felt before. and before i could even realize it, i had a ‘yes’ on my lips and a ring on my finger .
I wanted to tell abt him to my oldest friend.. the only person i looked up to ,until now.

I can’t believe how life had changed,how priorities were different .
I felt very bad from inside but i knew i was doing the right thing..
It was time i faced the truth . It was also time i made my oldest friend acquaint to my truth.
I knew things would go on the hook, but i had to let it out. I called him up, and as usual he was at work.
I said, ”I want to speak with you, it’s urgent”. He told me he’d be over for dinner and thats when we can talk. He had no idea what was coming up.
So the moment arrived when platters were set and so was my speech.
“So what is it ? ” he said ! I replied – ” I got something to tell you but pls pls don’t freak out”
I had my hand hidden, I didn’t want him to see that diamond ring until I was sure he was ok.
““I found someone, He is amazing. and he loves me a lot and so do I. I think he is the one and I want to marry him.”"
I said all of that in one breath , and just went numb. The ball was in his court now, i sighed silently.Like i just took some huge weight off my body . I felt relieved but at the same time, i kept staring at him. I was gauging at his every single reaction.
He obviously went in shock . I could see that. He wasn’t good at hiding his expressions. He stopped chewing his food and almost went blank.
There was no utterance of a word from either sides for good 45 seconds after that. The worst 45 seconds of my life.
and then it was me again , ”I’m sorry but i have made up my mind, I want you to be happy about it pls. He is the best thing in the world and I want you to meet him, trust me, you’d love him”.. My god i was selling to him now. Listing all of his good qualities .. not realizing the more i spoke, the more difficult it got for him ..
”So you love him eh ?”
Err.. was that a tricky one ?I didn’t get that question. Did he want me to say ,’Not as much as i love you?‘, would that have made him feel any better? . God.. i never saw that coming. another sigh of breath and i was blank now.
He said ‘ Ok .lets meet him then” and he smiled .
I wasn’t taking my chances, this could mean real bad . He had to show he didn’t expect this, like this was the worst thing he ever heard. but he wanted to meet him ? This was fishy.

So the meeting finally happened, and to my surprise, everything went fine. :)
I felt so relieved. I didn’t know how he was doing really ? It’s like his approval made all the difference in my life. Like the bond i shared with him had a different meaning now. I always respected him , but this was different.
I knew he had taken a knife through his heart to have finally agreed and accepted what was happening.
I admired his courage. He was still my hero , if not my love.
It was my wedding day , and my hero had taken all the charge . I noticed,He was trying to avoid me since morning. He hadn’t spoken to me all day , he was pretending he’s too busy getting all the last minute wedding arrangements done but c’mon a word or two from him would have made all the difference but i guess i was demanding too much. I couldn’t thank him enough for being so supportive and making this work and putting his heart and soul to give a perfect wedding to me..
The ceremony was finally being conducted, I noticed him a couple of times and he obviously wasn’t looking at me at all.. something just happened that moment and i broke out. I couldn’t believe i was going away from my family and him and had come to this sudden turn where i held a bag mixed of emotions and couldn’t walk a step ahead.
As i cried, I saw him coming towards me .. My friend, my hero , my inspiration.. he came and he hugged me, it was his way of wishing me a wonderful life ahead . I didn’t care what everyone thought. I just needed his hug so bad ..like it was the only solace in the whole wide world for me.
He said ‘Never cry , I will always love you‘
and i snuffle my nose like a 3 yr old and say ” And i will always love you too Dad..”
My oldest friend , My only Hero in life,My Dad had given me the richest inheritance of love to take along.

Another Year Gone by ..

And as we enter a yet another new year , reminiscing how last one passed , looking forward to whats next, making sure not to make the same mistakes we made last year, promising ourselves new resolutions.. thinking about last year’s ones..and if we ever kept them …and almost gearing up to work on the rest of the bucket list …

I welcome 2011 reiterating the fact that this year is not like others, because its unique, its absolutely unusual and its filled with days that are never coming back again,So I better be living them…

One of my friends happened to ask me if I was happy the way 2010 passed for me? If I was content with how it went, if I wished more would have happened.. or flabbergasted with how it already turned out to be, to whom my reply was,”It was quite eventful..definitely eventful…!!” Needless to say , i couldn’t have asked for a better 2010. A year to remember by.

And what do I look forward to? Some sanity to make right decisions in life, some hopes to not to mess it up this one time,more beautiful moments to share with my partner, career growth, learn to cook ‘out of the world’ delicacies, more trips and more places to explore, read more ,keep my blogs consistent, follow sports more often, stay fit and super strength to keep up with these endeavors I drafted in my mind..

And again, despite my bright hopes and expectations, I bid myself to stand levelheaded, be ready for the unexpected, ensure i don’t hurt anyone else anymore, not be too attached to materialistic things in life, and keep going taking every single day as it comes ..

I’m Jack’s pen !

With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.
His words, instantly, were vouching for a brilliant 139 minutes of epic I was going to witness.
Nevertheless, It took me atleast 21 refined viewings of the flick to finally believe how unsuccessful I still was to appreciate it enough.

Not only will you end up feeling you aren’t getting enough of it, you’d also be capable of distinguishing this world in 3 classes – the sanes, the insanes and then there are the bone-crunchers! :)

Unlike a movie with defined goal and storyline, this movie is a wild flabbergast. It begins with a perfect pitch, demonstrating the despair of modern living in the society where world’s all the material comfort is the only measurement of real success.

The flick is versatility personified, in the truest sense of the word, tale about a man who is mournfully depressed despite all the pitfall of success that surrounds him with a decent job and a living.

”Only after we lose everything, are we free to become anything”

The movie starts with the perpetual insomnia the narrator suffers from, as he becomes a crying jag in a big bad business world.

He isn’t respected, not rewarded, well…technically not noticed only and he decides to go off the forbidden path to find his own respite. The good that the movie does to the characters is not to constraint them in the evil or the good point of views. It doesn’t portray a character in a typical monotony. It isn’t about the protagonists sounding perfect or the evil Brad fucking it all (Literally though:-P).

“Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.”

One of the things it does well is, making its way into people’s brain of self introspection and digging one to analyze what and why one really does, when- what and why one does !
Walking down the lane, the narrator happens to meet 2 most critical characters in his life – Marla Singer and Tyler Durden. It is only when the narrator begins to destroy himself; he realizes what and who really matters to him.

Tyler’s ingression in the narrator’s life is well crafted and projected as the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that the narrator has been trying to solve ever since he hit insomnia. Tyler was the key to all his apprehensions. The sole answer to every question he threw at himself.
Tyler spoke.. He spoke! To put it much in exact words, Tyler completed him.

I still force to question myself – Was it narrator in Tyler’s imagination or Tyler in Narrator’s. Well, honestly, that’s just my way of looking at it… I mean… There are those who would take it at its face value and see nothing but some jerks, anarchists trying to beat the shit out of others for some sick pleasure – and that’s quite plaintive when one refuses to look beyond the obvious.

“All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”

It still amazes me how Fincher puts the hidden signs in every second frame of the movie, for the viewers to, later read about them and, get back to watching it again. Smart trick. I don’t really know if that’s what he intended to, but he made his way into my brain at least, and never really left!

So the movie gets interesting when the narrator takes Tyler’s view on life of letting go of the fear to die is when one actually starts to live. Long live Chuck, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I take your view on my life too. (P.S God Bless my husband to be) . It is during this time when the narrator joins in with Tyler in hosting an underground fight club that was primarily started by just 2 men fighting and bleeding each other. The movie takes a more impactful turn when the club becomes even bigger until it becomes a cult. A group with non conformists, led by Tyler and the narrator, becomes even deadlier and more dangerous as the followers take a new route on life and the ones who once questioned the authority now became paranoiacs blindly following the group for a bigger paradox.

There is certain elegance in the movie that is rarely seen these days. It’s distinguishingly stylish, questioning the very apparent difference between Love and Hate.

“Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that’s your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me. “

Its by and large, a super effective film, that is a surreal manner, describes the state of mind of a man in the 20th century – unfulfilled, disillusioned, disgruntled, devoid and looking for a way out, at the same time.. its refreshing, exhilarating, stimulating, and insightful

“The things you own end up owning you”

Like I read somewhere, It is One of the most audacious mainstream movie to be released so far. Leaves you breathless, chews you up, spits you out and leave your senses jaded and disoriented. :-)

Below are some of the Fight club quotes for the day , i read them everday and begin my day. So far so good ;)

P.S – And this is what Fightclub does to you, you don’t know you read the quotes , but you did ! !

Unusual and how..

Had been itching to write for a whole week now but couldn’t really think of what to .
Honestly speaking , I almost finished writing a post on murders, honour killings, Suicide attempts , betrayals, slaughter … and then chose not to publish it ;)
I mean… enough of serious shit, how about lightening up a bit.
So I started putting down random thoughts and of things that make me feel weird about myself…

So seriously… Is it really unusual …..

1. That I totally dislike chocolates, ice creams, shopping for hours and all the other girly fancy lil things , whatsoever. I love the color purple though ;) and ya .. gossip girl is one of the best tv shows I have ever seen .

2. that I have seen the movie ‘fight club’ atleast 231 times and I still discover something new in it every time I watch it . In Tyler, We trust!!
(P.S – I’m watching it again tonight)

3. That I think giving someone flowers is the stupidest idea whatsoever. Come to think of it, the flowers go dead as soon as you pluck them. And they are not going to survive this way for too long anyways, I understand the sentimental value they hold for you, but come on, that just goes to show how you are attracted to one’s lifeless temporary beauty , from the looks of it , that you’d rather pluck them then let them live.. (Shame on you!!)

4. That I finally fell in love with a guy, and not a girl this time.. (Yes it’s a shocker, haha) and I’m soon to marry him :D and for those who question if it’s really love, go f*** yourselves. If you need to know this, you definitely don’t deserve to.

5. That I believe in vampires and their very existence of it. I know they are somewhere there around us, they are keeping an eye on us, waiting for that one chance to strangle us in a dark lonely woody place near the highway. . That’s why I wear this ring that has vervain (poison to vampires) that keeps me alive :)

6. That I once forgot the date of my MBA entrance exam of one of the renowned institutes and missed giving it. It was the paper I had been studying for almost a year. I got through other MBA entrances though. (No regrets!!) –I like to believe I would have never cleared that one anyways: D

7. that I once was so horrified by blank call we received middle of the night along with my other flat mates, that we almost called the cops.

8. That I had a major crush on one of my cousins ( ewww, I know !! ) . We were kids; I barely knew we weren’t supposed to feel that ways for siblings at all, of all the people :)

9. I laugh when bad things happen to me; it’s like my way of telling God, “Nice try, you were that close”.

10. That I feel super sleepy on a weekend night, considering I’m a movie buff and the next morning is an Off for me , but somehow I stay up late on weeknights, when I know I’m working the next morning. And then I’m found yawning and catching partial sleeps in office.

11. That I’m so bad at remembering phone nos. , I still cant seem to remember my fiancé’s no. … tsk tsk !! (I hope you still love me baby :) )

12. That I wanted to finish this list at 10 points but 10 is so normal a no. that I rather finish it on a 17 or 19 or 23 and I got so many more to tell that I gave it a pass!

13. That I don’t find happy endings in a movie or a tv show interesting even one bit . It’s always fun to see rough love stories.. bad guy falling for the good girl .. ! Damon and Elena.. I vote for u!! I even wanted Rachel to end up with Joey!! It’s the weird.. off the regular couples tales that get you brownies(at least from me) !!

14. That I feel disappearing act is the best way to counter attack; it makes the other person think that he did too much hurting. :-P

15. That I barely feel nostalgic looking at old things and pictures or people for that matter. Its mostly a lie when I say “I miss you” to someone. (Keyword: mostly). What I exactly mean by the words I miss you is “ Im glad I don’t miss you ,cuz im talking to you right now , how could I miss you and talk to you the same time, and honestly , if you weren’t in touch, we obviously chose this way, so how could I miss you in that case? ” (Ok it got a little confusing but I hope, you get the point)

16. That I can live on pasta and cheese burst pizzas all my life.

17. That I super hate gossips and more so people who indulge in it. Sometimes I feel like smacking my own friends who just want to talk for hours on others ppls’ lives. I know they do it, I can’t stop them but it makes me pity myself for dragging myself through it. .

18. That I’m not an animal lover. I hate dogs, cats as pets. They are better off in some jungle hunting their ways to live. Not in my goddamn house!!

19. That I know its 19th and an unusual no. to finish my list at. But what the heck! I had fun :)

Human Error ..

I’m in a constant tussle with my mind. And the voices tell me (like they know it all) to wait for the moment when I’d wakeup of an alarm just to realize, all my life that I remember of, was only a part of a life-like dream and then I’d be stranded like a nomad, all woken up but still lost, who knows way too much to live at peace. I had already made my first enemy.
I wouldn’t deny their notions completely though, I did have an inkling about the seriousness of these voices once in a while – I mean, think of it .. Dressed in a nicely Ironed shirt and pair of faded denims, last week I board a flight to Goa. The thrill was over the limit. I took my seat, the not – so – popular middle one. I think that woman at the check in counter was giving the better seats only to the cute guys standing in queue. I could have ruined her fancies if that was true, but then in 2 hrs, I was about to breathe the air she probably didn’t get the leaves for.
While I scanned through the magazines, I see this guy right across my row, sitting on the aisle seat. He was wearing an off white shirt, with an expensive pen in his pocket; he looked like some Strategy Manager of some big detergent company. Neatly done but looked low on confidence. He is observing this airhostess so thoroughly while she enacts the whole emergency escape training (I mean come on, who does that!!).
Either he finds her too hot to get his eyes off her. Or he is genuinely trying to conceive what she means. You (Me talking to my voices) could be right, cuz then I’d be jealous of this guy, he knows more than I do and hence his chances of surviving an air-crash, are brighter than mine.
I am always thinking of Aircrashes when I’m boarding a flight. I peek out of the window and look for another plane floating right towards mine. The view is awesome, voices tell me :) !! and then I start building up my own escape routes. I’d be jealous of this guy sitting on the seat next to emergency exit – I always wanted to walk up to him and ask – did you pay extra for this one? I’m not too sure about that, but again, his chances of surviving the crash, like the other guy, were much higher.

That’s not it, there’s more when my voices reiterate my wocky belief – I work in an industry where your best friends are a sham. Brands, Advertising, Sales – It’s an endless self-defeating goose race. If you are not good, you suck. The catch is –there’s no definition of good. Or the way my boss says it, you are as good as your last deal.
You are stuck in a shithole system and the only way to get out is by swallowing chunks of crap.
To make it worse, the voices creep you out. They keep reminding you how pathetic you are, how your existence is only a reminder to your parents that to err is human.
That you are nothing but god’s unwanted children.

We don’t fight against anyone; we just love fighting to ourselves. We pity ourselves. We want things we don’t need. We talk of things we are told to. We are very pissed off.

We are not as good as they say we are. It’s a trap. They make you believe them so that they can shut you down one day. They call it getting ‘professionally high.’
Reminds me of a movie quote, “When you take away a man’s freedom and teach him to live in a cell, he seems to lose his ability to think in dimensions – he gets institutionalized”.

Sometimes I wonder if I was really born to fly or just living about the fact that it’s not the wings that will make one fly; it’s the will to fly that will.
In either case, I’m not flying, I’m just held captive by my own identity and my voices are having the last laugh. Those Rascals. (Also read: Scoundrels)
I knew I couldn’t prove them wrong until I was wrong myself. I still remember their introduction in my head was something like this – Hi; I’m a phantom of your own imagination. I say what you think and you say what I think, deal? And I promptly agreed. I thought it was a fair deal – And then their intoxicating party began, I soon realized I was like this club who officially hired these effing DJs under a life long contract with only one statutory warning (which I so stupidly missed) – “Come what may, you can not quit it”… And then they played their music.

Their volumes reached an “are you crazy” level in the freaking head.

I think my speculation as to why THEY existed was quite right. You know when they say, lets make the dogs fight for the fuck of it, I was soon coming to believe that’s all there was to it.
It was a 70 mm wide screen to them – and they demanded 3D drama now.
But sooner or later, I had to give it to them. It’s like they had a plan and it started to make sense in its own bizarre sort of way. In the process of denial, I was hit by what acceptance is. I thought of dying in air crashes only cuz I loved life so much. It wasn’t the loud noise in the head; it was my desire of WANTING the lack of it. I wouldn’t learn to swim, if drowning was never a question. The point is – most of us are missing the point.

Chuck quotes, “Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against”, I just couldn’t agree more. :)

a day called life..

I don’t clearly remember the time, but I could safely assume it was some 11.30 in the night. My memory seemed to have gone weak; Doctors had told I was still better off than many cases he had seen of late. Was that supposed to relieve me? Doc tells me it’s due to the anxiety and lack of concentration or it could be due to over medication.. Hell yes, you are the one who wrote me prescriptions endlessly and now you tell me I’m losing it because of excess of it. Paradoxical.
He undersigns my yet another prescription, Rx Almond milkshake.
It was a doctor’s way of telling It looks doubtful but I still hope you get fine.
I still find it difficult to understand why he wouldn’t just tell me the truth. It’s not like it wasn’t evident enough.
I don’t care if people didn’t remember their names or their anniversary dates anymore in this neurological disorder. Of what I remember, my life was such; not remembering it would be just like forgetting the smell of the first rain of delhi monsoons or how the color purple really made me feel.
I try putting myself off to sleep, its freezing cold outside. I have a blanket on me but it doesn’t help. It’s like my body was losing all the temperature from within. I was shivering.
I’m waiting for him to get off his sudoku he had been trying to solve since morning. I still wonder why he hasn’t gotten bored of it already.
It’s amusing to see and believe, he still was a charmer. With a vision of an archer , brain of a hawking, his face still had that radiant touch to it, exactly the same as he had when I saw him on the first day.
I stare out of the window and the shining stars stare me back, like they are smiling and telling me, “Yes, we have been seeing it all…”
As abrupt as it sounds, I seem to have a modest memory of long ago but it was hard to remember what I was wearing only yesterday.
I hear a knock on the door; the 5 yr old girl had learnt all the manners :) I was facing the other side, and for some reason, she knew I wasn’t going to turn around and look for her, But it seemed she sensed my approval to get in.
She walks across the bed to come to my side of it. I wonder why on earth I could never register this pretty face on my mind. As I lied on bed, I could see her pink night dress and those rabbit faced furry flip flops. Why is it that whenever she came and stood right in front of me was the only time I realized how beautiful she was. I wanted to get out of my bed and hug her. But again, as I tried thinking hard, I think, it was time she tucked me in and kissed me goodnight. In that moment, I knew it was the best thing ever and I also knew I wouldn’t remember it in the morning. I wanted to live this moment for couple of more minutes, but the sleeping pills were giving me a tough fight.
As she left the room, I felt alone in an unreasonable way, I looked at the photo frame by the bed side. The picture in it, I figured, was keeping me alive (I promise I’ll upload that pic soon :P ).

A while later, I hear him enter the room… I knew he was going to ask me if I had had my medicine or if I needed anything else, surprisingly I would still wait for him to be around before I could finally sleep. My day had come to an end now.
Only if I could, I would remember all of it and cherish it forever. Afterall, the way I had dreamt of it ,that exactly was the idea of my life. But it was in the same moment that I had also come to realize.,the harder I try to keep mustering my memories, the sooner they’d fade away.
It was probably the last lesson of my successful life (or the day, in this case)– I live it now, this very moment, as I may not remember it in the morning, but in no way, that should leave me any less content or less-sufficed.
I see him standing there, a little tired, taking a support of the chair by the bed; he looked handsome in that grey hair.
I felt blessed, gave him my unusual smile like I wanted to thank him for everything. He could read my eyes; one man who understood it all when I never said a word.
I close my eyes in peace in the hope to wake up just to see him again first thing in the morning.
Not only 2 minutes had passed, when I was abruptly woken up, I saw him watching me like he wanted to say something. I looked at him but I couldn’t make out.
I asked him, “What is it?”, and he gives me that smile, just gets out of the bed, put the lights on, looks closely at the watch with his fancy glasses and sings out loud
“Happy 75th Birthday Sweety“.
May be too old to feel it, but I was flabbergasted out of excitement. He told me he’d never make me cry and here I was slipping on the tears,all the more because he wasn’t the one who’d remember the dates.
It wasn’t the 75 long years; it was the life with him in those years that made it worth.
And who knew my last lesson for the day wasn’t just about living in the moment, but it lied in the very fact that Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement.!!

Just before i died..

***Spoiler – No , its not just a blog and need NOT be taken in any lighter note ! If i had to put it in the great Chuck Palahniuk’s words : I just had a near – life experience !

It was a pretty refreshing morning. Not the ones i have everyday. This one was definitely incomparable. It was a Saturday and not just any !! There was something abt this one and why not?? I died this Saturday!
My morning was quite lazy. Woke up at leisure and thanked god for blessing me with this day. Had scrambled eggs and mango shake for breakfast. Woah !! I couldn”t stop yawning. still! …
Thought of reading a book – picked up Catch 22 – Joseph Heller. Some 50 odd pages and i was disinterested already!! It was a saturday.. there had to be more to it …! and that’s when a friend online told me abt The Twilight Zone – american television series aired in late 50s and early 60′s. Half n hr episodes , very thought provoking – horror, suspense, romance – it had it all.
The series had just enough episodes to keep me busy for the entire day. ((P.S::Call me mean, but this is the day which I claim to be absolutely mine)) So well, coming back — I You-tubed the series and got all of them online… Alas!!… It was turning out to be a perfect weekend.
Time passed by , it was afternoon already, i was hungry again. But where are others? Quite surprising when you live in a house of 19 people and no one knocked your door in past 4 hrs, absolutely a shocker. No kids drama for quite a while, mom’s not yelling at me for not taking bath yet… others are just about as calm as the silence before the storm.. or was it the one after the storm? What was i missing ?(P.S – Not that i was loving the silence ;) it was the curiosity that made me anxious) . I recalled my previous night to find a connect and i had a decent memory of it.The previous day when I had come back from work, had family dinner, checked mails,heard music , browsed internet and was off to bed.
But then what could have possibly happened overnight during my slumber that i wasn’t aware of.
My next quick action – to find out where everyone is. My happening Saturday was turning out to be “not so happening“… It had started to worry me already. I walked out of room .. and the house looked empty ! Things were in place.. but people weren’t! ? !
The half cut water melon, fresh milk on the stove, lit for boil..at least that gave some relief . Obviously, there must have been someone in the kitchen only a while back .
I shouted but in vain! Checked all the rooms, lobby , washrooms ..((P.S= This many movements on a Saturday is otherwise taken as a self proclaimed criminal offence )) I don’t get it . Where had all disappeared ??
I picked up my cell and dialed my mum’s no. It rang and i could hear the ring !!! Thank god .. it was ringing and somewhere real close. BUT, It was quite weird, because even though i could hear the ring so loud , i couldn’t figure where it’s actually coming from ? Has that ever happened to you ? ((P.S = This is the time when the narrator talks to the audience, yes YOU !! :P )) Any place you look, the moment you go any closer – the sound seems to be coming from somewhere else. As crazy as it sounds, I swear I could not locate the phone at all …!!
This looked very theatrical, obviously it doesn’t happen in real but it did happen to me – For real and left me all the more confused…
I thought of checking with my neighbors if the crowd of my house had moved there for some reason. !! So i quickly go back to my room, & changed… my chain of thoughts were quite random -I was thinking what color do i wear ? i mean.. seriously ?
I stepped out in a pair of faded denims with a yellow t shirt that had my company logo on it. It was sultry outside.. very humid and the sun goggled at me like i was the solely responsible person for the chlorofluorocarbon spread out in the air :P !! The roads looked void, like no one ever lived there. The streets were empty , not even a stray dog next to the dump,.. One of the days when i was ready to see any moving object just to believe in the life of it . Even the birds went missing that day. This was funny. I rang my neighbor’s doorbell but just as i expected, no response. The world went lifeless. and me .. Isolated ? And i thought to myself – Was i dreaming ? ?God knows how hard i pinched myself that moment , and it hurt. It did hurt bad .. I was living it.. living ( or was i ? ) every moment of it
And it struck me hard, how i so much longed to be left alone , not to be bothered ever – and now when the reality had hit me, it wasn’t quite fascinating. There was no way i could deal with this isolation. My curiosity could have only killed me if nothing worse.
My beliefs had started to tremble, it wasn’t too great about the glorious eternal time anymore. If ,even in an iota of the possibility, this was a dream..i wanted it to end right away..!
I began to think the way out and find clues. Why did it all seem like a staged drama with no other characters to act. I started to run in search for life. Day had ended , sun had settled – i had everywhere to go but the will to live had died.I had banged my head against every wall, prayed to god like never before, missed my family like a 2 yr old.
My disappointed soul refused to wander anymore, between this life and death – i feared the former more.
I entered in a building that stood so lifelessly high, walked up all floors just to fall free from above. Certainly my conscious way of telling god, “you can’t fire me , i quit” .. so i lean forward and shut my eyes. Let loose and feel the fall. While my body swung its way down so fast, it’s the hit in the end what i waited for. And just as i remember of the last thought in my mind before i hit the ground, I hear someone say slowly in my ears ” Mam, Can i get you another drink? ”

“It is impossible to tell where revelations stop and hallucinations begin”

A beginner’s Guide to Facebook

Me : Mom , Have you heard of Facebook?
Mum: “Kaunsi book??”

Me: Dad , have you heard of Facebook?
Dad: Is it your office project? I’m sure you’ll nail it :)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it (or, in above case, knowing of it at all) doesn’t go away. Think of it this way, Shakira without her belly dance, ur passport pic with an ugly zit on your nose, your fav t-shirt on 60% sale just after you bought it, Sachin suffering from amnesia and forgot to bat, or you being born mute.
Fact remains, reality goes unnoticed until you see the lack of it.

I can bet the then-inglorious Harvard drop out, Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of launching FB wasn’t his first, only god knows how depressing and fatally boring his life must’ve been to even think of it. He probably was starting to learn how to make a bomb or to abduct children under 5 or how to make weed and smuggle all over the world bt eventually zeroed down on the belief that “getting other people’s lives messed up and their privacy deeply fucked in the name of Social networking “ would make him more money than anything else in the best possible legal way.

I’m sure his psyche slept in peace when psychologists introduced a diagnosis named FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder) as a new kind of addiction disorder.
Also see : Facebook-o-somnia
Also see : Facebookly ill

As my friend rightly quotes: Back in the days, TV united our families, Damn Facebook – divided it all. While his mother still sits on that couch in front of tv and prays Anandi (Ref: Balika Vadhu) doesn’t die of that gunshot, this friend sits and prays that his fb friend list crosses 300 soon. (Seriously, what?)

Seriously look at yourself, you failed the most imp exam of ur life, Your gf dumped you, your boss fired you, your honeymoon was exotic, your divorce wasn’t! From as trivial as the drunken party you had last night to something as magnanimous as admiring Sachin play the innings of a lifetime, your one time facebook-ignorant soul now found a friend to vent itself out in the world of virtual reality.

Having said and done, this guide takes you to the next level of learning (or unlearning?) and for those self proclaimed Fb addicts who believe to have mastered it all, reality check is exactly what you need, cuz believe it or not, YOU make a great potential for a facebook rehabilitation group in the truest sense of the term, and you successfully qualify to be admitted if you fulfill at least one of the below criterias mentioned:

1. Your default homepage is FB
2. You check your FB account every 7 min or less of your life.
3. You have FB “bookmarked”.
4. You showed sincere grief when your office blocked FB
5. You have FB as your alternate window opened even while reading this post.
6. You believe the no.of “likes” on your FB status is equally proportional to the intensity of your perpetual happiness.
7. You are a fan of the page “addicted to facebook” on FB.
8. And most importantly, you think your farm is prettier than your neighbor’s! :)

And for those, who managed to pass the above test, hold that stinky smirk of yours right there, humble yourself and take a look at the following situations that are only intended to hit you hard and help you deal with it.

Guide to avoid unwanted friends requests:
Situation 1: You got a friend request from a school friend who never said even a hi or even looked at you in class, never bothered to stay in touch even later also, and suddenly sent u a request just because you got 20 common friends???

Step 1 and only step: Ignore the request and feel relieved. Do not let the guilt get into you, you are NOT rude, NOT arrogant and NEITHER ignorant by nature. You just saved yourself from adding one a$$hole who was never even worthy of it.

Guide to avoid friends in your list you always wanted to ignore:
You already made a mistake of adding someone who didn’t deserve to be there?

Step 1: Go to edit friends
Step 2: Search for this friend
Step 3: Delete him off.

Relax yourself; it will be quite a task for him to find that one person gone from his list of 347 friends. :)

Guide to avoid unwanted updates:
Have friends updating pathetic songs’ lyrics or their ugly poetic skills as their status msgs?

Step 1: Go to the news feed.
Step 2: Look for option “hide” to the right of the status, press it for once and for all, and they’ll no longer be on your news feed,whatsoever! :P

Guide to be taken seriously on FB:
This is for all you attention seekers; we all know how miserable your life is.
We know you are one of those who’d update – “I’m ill, I’m running down with fever, I’m in hospital, suffering from cold, swine flu or brain cancer.”
This is for you dumb pricks.
If you are active on FB, you are definitely NOT dying. Expecting any heartfelt sympathies can be the joke of the day.

Guide to avoid falling in trap: Partying out on a Wed or Sunday evening, drinking like a fish and calling in sick the next morning! For heavens sake – have some common sense and DO NOT upload pics from last night.
You don’t want your boss come to you & say: “I have seen pics of you crawling in gutter last night, I’m not amused or impressed, now get to work!”

Guide to avoid moaning in your facebook status: The most annoying thing one can do is update a status msg like Rahul Sharma – “is sorry for whatever he did to Anjali Mehta and really apologizes to her and he misses her like crazy and loves her a lot” . For the love of god, If you have got something to say to someone personally, say it, Don’t POST it. Neither am I interested to see your self-indulgent awfulness nor I care what you did to Anjali Mehta ;)

Guide to avoid adding single-serving holiday friends:
Some people just don’t understand that the exchanging of email addresses at the end of a holiday is just a social ritual and is absolutely not an invitation to add you to Facebook and then turn up unannounced at your house three months later.

Hope the guide helps you as much as it helped me.

P.S – The characters in the above post are purely intended to ridicule, pass a sarcasm or is direct satire towards some absolute psyched out characters in my real life.
I totally intend to hurt feelings, challenge the sensibilities and question the common sense of some of such epitomes who breathe and walk amongst us.