The crawly in my blanket

'Before Sunset' by far has been the scariest thing I saw this week. For the minority who may not have seen this masterpiece, please do not do so. I have seen it several times but it is one piece of art that can fill me with joy, anguish and fantasy at the same time. The scariest part of the movie is when Jesse describes his marriage... he says how he started out wanting to follow this ideal self of his, rather than the honest self.. he thought that respect, admiration and trust were enough and if he could be this ideal version of himself it didn't matter who he was with. Love would happen... its been some years now and he is miserable. He feels he is running a nursery for his 4 year old with someone he used to date once.

U see I have been living with the same idea for several months now... that it is me that matters. I need to be who I wanna be and then it does not matter who I end up with. I'll be able to give and receive love nonetheless but this guy just scared the shit out of me.

Its funny coz over the last several months I have been warring with the realisation that love is that something magical... its that wrinkle in the bedsheet that fits perfectly with the edge of the mattress for it to be folded under. Its that snug exact length of an arm you would like to tuck around yourself while going to sleep every night. No elbow jutting out... no finger in your face.

I do not want to beleive that its an exact science. And its bloody terrifying. I have been swimming in what ifs... what if I do not find my crazy baby in time? what if he does not like my kind of sex? What if I can't talk to him like I have done with some people in my life... just the way one connects with random strangers at times...

There is another funny thing that scares me that I'd like to confess. My job entails I keep meeting my BU Heads. And somehow there is this one man who seems to like certain qualities in me. Like the fact that I listen. So to cut a long story short, I had a dissgreement with him on a decision he took and I made it clear to him... in the next couple of hours we met 4 times and each time we disagreed. He obviously enjoyed the intellectual jogging and told me as much. So towards the end of these couple of hours... he cracked a joke and all around laughed including me, and I responded with a wise crack and in that one moment... our frequencies were so in tune that he physically moved towards me... to slap my back or hug me, I don't know... I could feel my eyes widening with a mixture of fear and shock and he realised just in time that we had an audience and pulled himself back. I don't know if it was visible to others, but I was shaken a little. I don't think there was anything sexual in that sudden overpowering impulse he felt, but its scared me nonetheless.

I am scared of the way people can feel around me. And specially intelligent ones. They seem to have this need to be understood and I am someone who can listen deeply. Its a very tiring process trust me. Its very hard work... to listen. And I am making a pattern out of people talking about things they wouldn't have told anyone. I share snippets with some relevant others outside and they are shocked at people talking to me about all that stuff. Someone said it gives me a lot of power... but maybe... I don't want that power. I just want to be me. This whole adult world sounds and feels very alien to me most times and I don't know if I wanna play this game of listening and reaching deep any more. Honeslty... I get a sense of being violated. I get a sense that people use this ability of mine to be able to listen to them... so deeply sometimes I become one with them... their pain becomes mine and their anguish burns in my heart. It is difficult to explain to most people. And it all can be so horribly misconstrued by everyone. I begin to threaten people and the whole cycle of destructive behavior around me begins. Or they start projecting all their desires on me and expecting the world. I don't have all the talents in the world and I end up being blamed for that. Someone who could make them feel like heaven in the beginning is suddenly no good any more.

The only solution therefore seems to join them... and behave like I am just one of the many insensitives around and you'll get no different from me than from anyone else. It seems like an ok enough defense mechanism, which will so surely make me very unhapppy.

Anyway excuse me for this has been a desultory conversation. I just poured my heart out and it's splashing around rather erratically rt now.

Carry the notion back to me

Let me feel the mystery
Find you that histrory
to read it out to you
and see the dream dawning in your eyes
Will you write my dictionary
and translate for me
the unknowings and undoings
I'm meant to be.
I'll write you a poem till then
to fill the time within
as the sun burns its gold...
Will you help me find that window?
I can not see
Will you burst the bubble?
I can not breathe
The battle of me with me
Will you be my referee?
I carry my soul out each day
fearing it ebbs like essence.. away and away
I'd like you to be the custodian of my soul
and feel invincible
look down upon the world
all haughty, with disdain
So will you take my soul from me?
Carry the notion back to me.
Set me free
for enough if it left might not be.
the exhaustion of the violence of this world,
the cynical voyeurism eats away at me
I'd rather you would make me bend
set the ball rolling till
the string finds the other end.

The curvature of pessimism

Standing in the centre of the road.
feeling cornered by the cumpulsion of choice, a chore.
Which side to take?
The sky up above is bright and shiny
The breeze is light
The god damned noose is too tight
For I want everything blotted out of my sight
Would it be unbearable to just stop?
To not look, not sleep, not breathe or live.
To not have to answer any questions
or ponder galore on unrequitited lore
or be worthy of the question in the soul
to be or not to be or Am I just this or more?
I don't want to exist any more.
So I am laughing at the impossibilities
The ludicrous irony of intwined insensibilities
Yours with me and mine with yours
I just don't want the equation anymore.
For too much goes to nothing
Too many lenses for the light to filter
And each ebbs at its color
I'd rather not play the game anymore
To look fore, want more.
I'd just rather not be
Then wake up and find,
This nightmare is where each day will be.

Early Saturday and I have had a good night

I have had those moments when you come home and switch on the TV, which happens to be the significant other in my life rt now... and everything sucks. The serials are all too melodramatic... even the good ones are trying to give the really 'cry'ee ones a screw over. So finally you are bleary eyed and contemplating just how much you would love an enlivening conversation rt now. You are hungry and tired and hungry for that zing in life... that spark somewhere that makes you feel like your life just turned into a ferrari engine.

And they say that they are showing a movie called 'Love and other Disasters'... and the moment I see Brittany Murphy on the star cast, honestly I am put off. But well I just give it ten mins... after which I have to go to bed and sleep with myself. And I am caught up. I am truly really caught up in the whole thing. Its an amazing movie... I had this orgasmic joy spreading through me because it is specially a Friday night when you have nothing to do that you pray for such moments... that you'll get to see an amazing movie that will just turn all that you are feeling about life on its head.

and come out of it like you were with a friend and you just had a conversation where you got everything the other said and they knew you so well it was you they spoke of all the time. Brit humour rocks!! I wish life were like the movies sometimes...

And by the way... what is the most irritating thing on the telle these days? Guess..? Ok. Its this: 'This movie has been edited and is suitable for family viewing in India.' I wanna say Fuck you!! Its like someone's told me that here's your cake but I took all the essence out! Its like showing you the Monalisa without one eye. Its incomplete... every scene and dialogue is there for a reason. Its a part of the fabric. Its a part of the maker's dream and overall I think its just cruel.

Anyway, I hope that IPL world cup or not, they keep showing amazing movies. Also, will someone tell Star Movies to not show 'Double Impact' when they can't think of anything else? Its on everytime I switch to their channel now.

To talk of better things tomorrow brings Wolverine!! I am hoping it will again be one of those things that I can discuss with friends gesticulating wildly with over bright eyes! I love ze movies. :)

Poets of the Fall - Roses

"Roses"

I've walked the distance, I paid my dues
and tried to have a go at what I thought I knew was real, held no appeal
I've been to places, I've seen the tidings,
I bought a book of rules for every coin that I could steal
And so I came to gaze upon the stars, when they were yet unborn
And consequently, tear at my old scars, and the mask I had outworn

So when I'm crying alone
Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone

Grow me a garden of roses
Paint me the colors of sky and rain
Teach me to speak with their voices
Show me the way and I'll try again

I've heard the rumors, started fires, I sowed a sordid lot of plays for keeps for what I need, behold
the demons that I freed
I've tried my best at wearing the hard hat, but
healing doesn't seem to happen when you hide away the seed
And so I came across the medicine man, and he showed me what I'd forlorn
For if I'm stayed it happens by my own hand, and my own voice full of scorn

So when I'm crying alone
Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone

Grow me a garden of roses
Paint me the colors of sky and rain
Teach me to speak with their voices
Show me the way and I'll try again

Without you I'm nothing at all
And life has the face of a morbid game
With you nothing seems impossible
It all seems to fit the frame

So when I'm crying alone
Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone

Grow me a garden of roses
Paint me the colors of sky and rain
Teach me to speak with their voices
Show me the way and I'll try again

I love the song... see if you like it too here!

Felt taken for granted. It hurts with this one. Because just too much has gone into it. And the fear is that I am the one who has somehow made it ok for it to happen. That I have allowed it to happen to myself.

Slit wrists

The NEWS channels here have amazing TRPs. One among the plethora of frequencies scrambling to give you some piece of action is this 24 Hour horror show called Aaj Tak. This modern televised version of Manohar Kahaniyan repulses me to such an extent I can lose my appetite for days after an exposure greater than 10 Mins. So as I continue to out do all past pangs of morbidity, I dare myself to watch the channel. Well... there you have yours truly scouting the frequencies and landing on the desired one.

Guess what they are showing? Try. I said really. Try.

Its an interview. A 3 year old child sitting in a semi dark room so his face can't be seen is being patiently prodded and questioned by a lady whose voice could be better than them angels talking in your ear.

You see the deal is that this boy's father murdered his mother. So? Well the meaty bit is that the kid happens to be the only eye witness to the gory crime. He has seen his father kill his mother at the tender age of 3. He does not even understand what happened or is happening. He is struggling to frame sentences... says any word that comes to his head because he can't really communicate. Kids that age can't. He does not understand the questions so she asks him again and agian... painstakingly patient... prodding him to get into details of how his father pulled his mother or what was he holding in his hand when he hit his mother...

Human Rights Commission in this country must have died. And so must the ever aware junta who watches so much news or our fables activists. You see we create more hoopla when Richard Gere kisses Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness rally. Our activists are up in arms demanding Gere's arrest and imprisonment. No one comes forward to protect the innocence of a child who can not decide for himself that it is not in his best interest to talk about how his father was killing his mother as he watched on... on the national TV. He must have been thrown to the wolves by money crazy relatives who grabbed this opportunity of making a quick buck. The television channel's TRPs must have gone up coz they play a story 200000000 million times a day to ensure everyone knows.

The irony is Aaj Tak has been consistently awarded the Best NEWS Channel award for 3 years now. If this is how we define NEWS as a nation... we deserve it. We who are overtly so snobbish about gossip and gore... are all glued to our TVs as they rape the innocence of a toddler on National TV.

I have written to the Human Rights Commission and am waiting for a response. I will let you know 'IF' something happens. I will also be leaving a letter of condemnation on this channel's site. And I wish there was some way I could tell that woman trying to gain the trust of that baby so he would open up and talk more masala, that she should just kill herself. She is no better than sick paedophiles who abuse children.

Lesson learnt. I'd rather not be informed than be inundated.

Answers don't answer anymore

It seems sometimes that all this search is in vain or I have some chemical locha in my head. It is just such a tiring experience to live, I almost wanna give up. I wanna crib crib crib and crib about life and how my boss sucks, and that my friends seem to all have gotten busy with their lives and I feel like I am floating... not really going anywhere. Its like a car without headlights... staircase without the landing in sight.

Writing like this..? No one wants to read someone's cribs in life. I know that. I mean our own lives have gotten so heavy to carry its just not possible to do that for some one else. Then I wonder if it would not have been better that I'd rather be a bird or animal on this planet than be human...

Some say I should be grateful for all the good I have around me. Clothes on my body, food on my plate and a roof on my head with a relatively high level of confidence that I will not get murdered tonight by some random burgler. And I still can't shake that heavy feeling in my heart. Its almost like I can't breathe all that deep that I want to.

It does not help that I have had a big fight with my room mate and her attempts at making peace sound even more pathetic as all I sense is some selfishness there. I distrust het to such a level that I can't believe she will do anything at all that is not motivated with some selfish concern. Not a great feeling to have for a person you have been living with under the same roof for two years.

I am a person who in any situation will first think about how the other person might be feeling. These situation might also be one in which I get rudely woken up at 2:30 AM and still feel what might have motivated the other person to do so... So if my boss says something really rude... I'll think may be he is not having such a good day or probably he is saying it for my own good... or maybe I did something to make him say what he did... I can get so deathly empathetic in such inane situations I can't beleive myself.

I now know that this does not come from some deep lack of self esteem etc etc... for many years that is what I thought. But now I know that this is not the case. I am just someone who has this process to relate to a situation... through emotions of the other party. Its all good just that most times it leaves me without a defense machanism. I take whatever shit people give me without reacting to it. Always giving them the benefit of doubt... thinking there must be a reason behind their bad behavior and that once I get to understand that... I will look at the situation differently.

Over the past few months somehow... my faith has gone considerably to the dogs. The faith that essentially all human beings are good at heart and we should not judge what lies beneath with what happens on the surface. I find myself turning into this cynical being who reads motives behind behaviors, because it has been made evidently clear to me that people will consider you worth your salt when they feel you have a patch on others in the worldly ways. So you need to be this smart soul who knows how to navigate through shark infested waters because everyone is looking for shortcuts. If you know the way... well you will have a lot of followers/supporters etc etc because they all can then ride on your back and make you feel good about it.

I somehow dislike the parasitism which seems to be the norm. To get to things quicker and faster whatever be the goal. And you are a looney if you don't conform. So if I offer something to someone with an open heart and a bright smile, they will take it for sure but keep waiting for when is it that I come to their door step asking for a withdrawl from the favour bank.

Another drawback to the situation is that I am overly sensitive to the vibes and undertones of conversations. I hear the undertones more than the words... need to or how will I read the emotions... My information gathering gets hijacked and I can't help reacting or not reacting to the emotional undertones...

I end up damaging my peace of mind and my confidence in my ability to take care of my own interests and protect myself in an adverse situation. So I have started fighting now. Fighting people. I tell them what I like and don't. Somehow you get a lot more respect that ways than when you'd take care of what others might need. You might be liked but most people will take you for a wuss unless proven otherwise.

World is nothing but all mirrors around us and these eyes actually don't show us anything but ourselves. I can't beleive for a moment that the other person could have any malice or some evil for me or any intention to hurt me with their words (except when angry). And others can't beleive that I actually don't want anything in return but just to be taken at face value because I mean what I say.

And if someone really bothers to listen, I am telling you all the time how I feel... But for that you will have to look beyond the mirror of your own self and really look at me.

To end it all... its just too tiring for me to have this constant battle with this world around me where I might not be taken for what I really am and am under pressure all the time to be something everyone else sees in themselves because that's the only thing that makes them safe.

I am an altruist. I am some one who will not shy away from sacrifice if I beleive that to be the way to go for higher good. But it seems this world does not need people like me. I am an outcast or am included only when someone wants to talk about all their deal... very very rare and few actually listen. And it is such a joy to be listened to. My actions are misconstrued... and then people walk around feeling smart they paid me back in a fitting currency.

So the only way to be is to hold back... not give or trust. Not have empathy. And play it safe. I so wish I could do it with the panache I see it being done with around me. I am so poor at the rules of this game and it seems this is the only one being played rt now.

To dream...

Would I rather dream and fail at it or not dream at all? Would I stay hungry and foolish or be the street smart kid who doesn't take risks? Would I be cloaked in my clothes as I walk out each day or stay naked at the heart? Would I look at you and clamp the door shut or would I stand on the door waiting for you to come inside, knowing fully well you may just walk past and away? Would I hold alight the dying candle and risk the dark forever or snuff it out and save it for a later day and time? Would I walk out in the woods on a cold dark night in search of the light of answers or stay back inside wondering but staying put and safe? Would I choose living a little or just a little living? Would I give my heart and soul or keep them? I wonder...