So I met her again today. She says she's got a new part in this TV thing. She was happy too and smiled much as she talked. Then slowly the conversation shifted to some other things... some subtle drops of her gaze as she went on gave me a feeling. I quite could not catch what it was. I don't think I caught on to anything at all for some passage of time. It was as if a feeling bubble had burst open somewhere within me... something that till then had been steadily growing but had been too transparent for me to see... what an irony! It only became apparent when it could not be contained any longer and burst open on to my conscious from the sub-conscious.
And then, I saw it. I saw it for a moment but it could not be mistaken... like the way lightning illuminates everything in a black dark night... and then you are blind again. But you know what you saw. I saw her soul.
It was empty. It was heavy. It had makeup on it. To hide the real thing... from the mirror every morning I guess. I asked her how she was... and she laughed at me saying silly you already asked me that. She looked at me laughing and stopped dead. She looked at me and said... 'What?'. I said... 'How are you... really?'. She knew. I knew. And for some seconds we went numb. Almost like her soul could just have been lying besides the napkin and coffee cups on the table. Just another thing to look at.
Then, survival took over. I could taste the restlessness and the misery around her. I could touch the mad rush of thoughts in her mind... telling her to take control. To stop it. Not go any further... how its never of any use to go down this path. We've all sold our souls and what we've got back in bargain is too important to let go of.
So I told her about my job change and the moment passed. I chose not to speak of the loneliness. Or she of how meaningless it all is at the end of all and everything. Beneath the spoken words were layers of sentiment of paralysis. Of this reckless inaction. Morbid darkness of our very human existence usurped by this pretence of civilisation. Clones of patterns of approval everywhere.
May be then... I should be happy about the fact that I find it so hard to fit in. That for days I cannot relate to nothing or nobody around me. Makes it all a little less violent for some time.
Monday, December 29
Sunday, December 14
Get back on my feet... I do.
So its been a long hiatus from my dear blog spot. And I think he doesn't mind. I always did get a lot of space from this guy here. :)
So its been some thinking, some reading and some vegetating happening here all this awhile. So have discovered some new aspects to me... seen to it that I get to know the person I spend the most time with (me!) better. Seen to it that I like her and feel for her and ensure that her well being is priority with us.
So for all of this its been an interesting ride and I am glad for it. I feel this sense of peace within that is not so common to feel late on a Sunday evening. The battles and demons of the week to come quite often than not manage to poison this part of the week for me.
I see that the reason for it is hope. It is this idea within that the coming week is when I may just be putting in my papers and be ready to leave and move on. I am ready to move on, to take on something new and this time around I want to ensure nurturing for me in the process. I want to take a chance at finding inspiration and feeling my heart soar. Oh what a feeling that is!
I was speaking to Mom today and told her how I'd felt like this race car without head lights for some time now. I'd felt like I was going somewhere but not really sure if I was getting anywhere. I told her that good it happened so because now I know where I'd like to get to and the risks I am willing to take to get it.
I know that I cannot work or exist without inspiration. I need a higher ideal to move towards, to have meaning in whatever I do. Call me a control freak, but I need to know where its going and why. Call me an idealist, but I need people around me to inspire me with their own excellence. I am not ashamed of this dependence either now. I think in these past few months I have understood how deeply I cherish such people around me. I have come to fully recognise their power over me. You give me something striving towards excellence and you've got me hooked. You don't have spend an extra second motivating me... I'll fail that is for sure but I will rise up again and again and again... There is nothing else that makes me so happy.
A small digression. I was watching those CSI kinda stuff on AXN today and then the 'So you think you can dance' stuff. I was thinking why is it that I love to watch some of those movies again and again... why I like to watch these serials? I realised that no one in these stories is in a job they don't like. They are always at the top of their game and come up aces against odds always. Its the consistent excellence and the portrayed brilliance of what they do that I love. It is this touch of divinity that we all aspire for, isn't it? The search is to find that one thing within us that will take us closer to this goal. I realised that it is only true excellence that validates our existence to us. That in reality, another's opinion does not really ever matter. It is always our own. We may not be aware of it always though.
It is in this search that our true happiness lies and all that we need to and will care to learn. This is the path of the individual and no one else can walk it for any. The people who then really make a difference to us are the ones who lead us to this path. They are the ones who inspire and make us believe that its possible. They believe it for us before we can. True essence of love. The reason why we find it most in our heart to love in whom we see the greatest potential.
Here's to hoping that the year to come will bring with it ideas and hope, warmth and love and most of all inspiration to all of us. Make all of us get closer to our own divinity. Amen!
So its been some thinking, some reading and some vegetating happening here all this awhile. So have discovered some new aspects to me... seen to it that I get to know the person I spend the most time with (me!) better. Seen to it that I like her and feel for her and ensure that her well being is priority with us.
So for all of this its been an interesting ride and I am glad for it. I feel this sense of peace within that is not so common to feel late on a Sunday evening. The battles and demons of the week to come quite often than not manage to poison this part of the week for me.
I see that the reason for it is hope. It is this idea within that the coming week is when I may just be putting in my papers and be ready to leave and move on. I am ready to move on, to take on something new and this time around I want to ensure nurturing for me in the process. I want to take a chance at finding inspiration and feeling my heart soar. Oh what a feeling that is!
I was speaking to Mom today and told her how I'd felt like this race car without head lights for some time now. I'd felt like I was going somewhere but not really sure if I was getting anywhere. I told her that good it happened so because now I know where I'd like to get to and the risks I am willing to take to get it.
I know that I cannot work or exist without inspiration. I need a higher ideal to move towards, to have meaning in whatever I do. Call me a control freak, but I need to know where its going and why. Call me an idealist, but I need people around me to inspire me with their own excellence. I am not ashamed of this dependence either now. I think in these past few months I have understood how deeply I cherish such people around me. I have come to fully recognise their power over me. You give me something striving towards excellence and you've got me hooked. You don't have spend an extra second motivating me... I'll fail that is for sure but I will rise up again and again and again... There is nothing else that makes me so happy.
A small digression. I was watching those CSI kinda stuff on AXN today and then the 'So you think you can dance' stuff. I was thinking why is it that I love to watch some of those movies again and again... why I like to watch these serials? I realised that no one in these stories is in a job they don't like. They are always at the top of their game and come up aces against odds always. Its the consistent excellence and the portrayed brilliance of what they do that I love. It is this touch of divinity that we all aspire for, isn't it? The search is to find that one thing within us that will take us closer to this goal. I realised that it is only true excellence that validates our existence to us. That in reality, another's opinion does not really ever matter. It is always our own. We may not be aware of it always though.
It is in this search that our true happiness lies and all that we need to and will care to learn. This is the path of the individual and no one else can walk it for any. The people who then really make a difference to us are the ones who lead us to this path. They are the ones who inspire and make us believe that its possible. They believe it for us before we can. True essence of love. The reason why we find it most in our heart to love in whom we see the greatest potential.
Here's to hoping that the year to come will bring with it ideas and hope, warmth and love and most of all inspiration to all of us. Make all of us get closer to our own divinity. Amen!
Saturday, December 6
Deep dull red
I hate getting into the Bombay conversations these days and dear God as long as I am alive and same I refuse to call this place Mumbai! It sounds alien and so not home. I have been thinking about what home means to me for some time now. The blasts and everything that happened made me realise the emptiness of so much around me. To me home means safety, love, warmth and inspiration. And after all that has happened I don't feel any of these. I feel a dull pain within... like a constant inside. Does not change, does not go away either. Just stays. Its fear and anger and the sense of loss all frozen solid.
I think we can't really make our children wear bullet proof jackets when they go to schools. The idea that I may live in constant fear for my loved ones is to not live at all really. I want to go back to my childhood. It was somewhere a more innocent and safer world to live in then. I don't want to bring my children up in a world where I don't know where we are headed as a race. I see destabilised economies, people losing jobs and livelihoods, rabid people killing each other, greed and power the motivation and no real feeling... whatever there is is somehow just not strong enough rt now.
I feel upset to look at our contry and how vulnerable we are. The so lil confidence we as a nation have in our decision making... how we will never be regarded as tough coz we are always the soft nation to the world. My friends went on a tour of south east asia and came back determined they will not go anywhere looking for a job. They felt the backlash was too strong against Indians. I feel rightly so. We have chosen the leaders who run this country. And our nation's true character is reflected when the true colors of these people are exposed as soon as they get the invincibility of temp power. The lengths people go to to keep it is a chronicle of our debacle as a nation of epic proportions. And so much for the values we stand for.
We are like a diploma technician from a lower middle class income group, trying to make it too soon too big coz his diploma happened to be in Computers and its a skill in demand. We have risen too high by our own complacent standards... behaving almost like we never expected to achieve this greatness or to be known around at all. And too happy for it... all bursting at the seams trying not to show it.
My worry is if somewhere we have accepted that we were never meant to do a proper engineering in computer science and that we may becapable of more... the cutting edge work has been left for others. That somewhere we behave like 'koopmanduks' (frog in the well) and are too happy to see things have improved 2% over 200 years (exaggerated example). We sing the song of our own 'oh so unexpected' success so much that we have missed out on the real standards of excellence. We have reached a stage where just being able to think about change and improvement is good enough and justifies the greatness we feel. Like an autistic child learning to write. We talk too much as a country. We are so 'new money'.
We don't have any standards we follow. Our benchmarks are stupid and shallow. We don't do worldclass coz we don't believe we can. So cricket is the only sport that reall matters to us as a country. We have been world champions in chess for forever now but will never put this guy on a pedestral like Dhoni.
You see we are so typically Indian! We just can't appreciate any good we do... we always focus on what we din't do... the lack of confidence eating in to us making us a country of short cuts, corruption and bribes. This very lack of faith in our own ability as a nation, contributed to greatly by our leaders, utterly despicable standards of higher education, makes us want too much too soon coz happiness is so scarce in life here.
I was speaking to a friend today and realised that I have never before felt such a sense of hopelessness. I have always been a prennial optimist and thought that things will all turn out ok in the end. This feeling has been very important coz it defines me as a person and comes from a deep safe place within from where inspiration springs for me.
I have lost this place somewhere. I am feling truly cynical about this world and its people and the future of our race... Its a very strong feeling within and is a dark place to be coz I can't find hope. I have not felt something like this before.
And so I feel that the only thing I can control is my own life and happiness. I want to be as close to my family as possible. I love them and I want to focus on them so I can build as many happy memories as possible. I want to get inspired and inspire them to achieve more in life before it all ends. On a day like today, when I come back home and miss them terribly... with a nagging thought somewhere saying...who knows? this may be the last week I'll live... does not let me rest in peace.
I think we can't really make our children wear bullet proof jackets when they go to schools. The idea that I may live in constant fear for my loved ones is to not live at all really. I want to go back to my childhood. It was somewhere a more innocent and safer world to live in then. I don't want to bring my children up in a world where I don't know where we are headed as a race. I see destabilised economies, people losing jobs and livelihoods, rabid people killing each other, greed and power the motivation and no real feeling... whatever there is is somehow just not strong enough rt now.
I feel upset to look at our contry and how vulnerable we are. The so lil confidence we as a nation have in our decision making... how we will never be regarded as tough coz we are always the soft nation to the world. My friends went on a tour of south east asia and came back determined they will not go anywhere looking for a job. They felt the backlash was too strong against Indians. I feel rightly so. We have chosen the leaders who run this country. And our nation's true character is reflected when the true colors of these people are exposed as soon as they get the invincibility of temp power. The lengths people go to to keep it is a chronicle of our debacle as a nation of epic proportions. And so much for the values we stand for.
We are like a diploma technician from a lower middle class income group, trying to make it too soon too big coz his diploma happened to be in Computers and its a skill in demand. We have risen too high by our own complacent standards... behaving almost like we never expected to achieve this greatness or to be known around at all. And too happy for it... all bursting at the seams trying not to show it.
My worry is if somewhere we have accepted that we were never meant to do a proper engineering in computer science and that we may becapable of more... the cutting edge work has been left for others. That somewhere we behave like 'koopmanduks' (frog in the well) and are too happy to see things have improved 2% over 200 years (exaggerated example). We sing the song of our own 'oh so unexpected' success so much that we have missed out on the real standards of excellence. We have reached a stage where just being able to think about change and improvement is good enough and justifies the greatness we feel. Like an autistic child learning to write. We talk too much as a country. We are so 'new money'.
We don't have any standards we follow. Our benchmarks are stupid and shallow. We don't do worldclass coz we don't believe we can. So cricket is the only sport that reall matters to us as a country. We have been world champions in chess for forever now but will never put this guy on a pedestral like Dhoni.
You see we are so typically Indian! We just can't appreciate any good we do... we always focus on what we din't do... the lack of confidence eating in to us making us a country of short cuts, corruption and bribes. This very lack of faith in our own ability as a nation, contributed to greatly by our leaders, utterly despicable standards of higher education, makes us want too much too soon coz happiness is so scarce in life here.
I was speaking to a friend today and realised that I have never before felt such a sense of hopelessness. I have always been a prennial optimist and thought that things will all turn out ok in the end. This feeling has been very important coz it defines me as a person and comes from a deep safe place within from where inspiration springs for me.
I have lost this place somewhere. I am feling truly cynical about this world and its people and the future of our race... Its a very strong feeling within and is a dark place to be coz I can't find hope. I have not felt something like this before.
And so I feel that the only thing I can control is my own life and happiness. I want to be as close to my family as possible. I love them and I want to focus on them so I can build as many happy memories as possible. I want to get inspired and inspire them to achieve more in life before it all ends. On a day like today, when I come back home and miss them terribly... with a nagging thought somewhere saying...who knows? this may be the last week I'll live... does not let me rest in peace.
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