The art of being lonely

Loneliness is a strange (b)itch, for there are times you just want to be alone and then there are times when the mere thought of being alone sends you to the underworld.

Being alone in the house and talking to yourself or being with a crowd and still talking to yourself both accessories of being lonely. Funny thing about these conversations is the horizon it covers, from acting like the superhero of the movies or looking at the ceiling and discussing (with yourself) where life is taking you.

On second thoughts when being lonely starts to take you to the point of wiping off everything about your existence from the planet, you want the misery to get over and you close your eyes forever and ever. It doesn’t get worse than this – the misery still doesn’t get over instead it sticks to you like a crazy witch.

Sometimes when you see others laughing around, having ‘fun’ you wonder what is it that you are doing wrong? Why is it that you cannot be like them? Why is it that just like everyone you cannot have ‘fun’?

You start to think if there is something that is defective in you/about you, as unlike others you are just not able to be happy or avoid the torture of being alone. If people can find people, if people can be having a good time being with people why is it that you are the exception.

Some time back I realised that this is not true. We try to be a part of the crowd, surrounded by people but we are actually nothing other than islands of our own. All of us clones of each other or rather lonely clones of our lonely selves.

Humans of this century talk of bringing countries close, cultures closer but strangely as countries come close and cultures closer, ‘the US’ beings to drift away. Just like the trees who stand next to each other on the sides of the road – looking at each other, breathing each other yet lonely as if they were the sole cactus in a mile long desert.

We the humans seem to have perfected this art of being lonely just like the trees did centuries ago..

Shooting Star

Of all the moments that I have had,

there were a few I lived for, there were a few I died for.

I wish to go beyond the times when these moments will cease to exist, the times when these moments will stop for me.

I wish to seek, who I desire in those moments

I wish to go beyond that passing moment.

the moment which makes me desire who I desire.

I pass that moment, just like the passing shooting star

For, I burn, in this milky way, just like that shooting star.

And I burn, just like the milky way, I burn like that shooting star.

One day, I will see the universe I crave for,

there would be a day I would see my desire

I will see that world in which I wish to live,

I will see the way to live.

Maybe I will leave everything to see that desire

Maybe I will the forget the mornings for you

maybe I will forget the evenings for you.

Because I burn like that star, the shooting star.

And there I go, much beyond these moments to get what I desire.

And I burn, just like the milky way, I burn like the shooting star I saw last nite.

And today, I am not with you

we don't share those moments

the moments which we lived for, the moments which we died for.

It pains, but the pain doesn't pain like pain.

Neither my pain nor what we shared is anything less than the extraordinary.

What you have for me is no less than what I have for you.

Still, I burn, I burn like the shooting star..

I burn, just like the milky way, I burn like the shooting star for you.

About the times when you cannot express

If there is anything wrong about this post, it is the name itself.

There are people who are lost for words and then there are people who never ventured out. There are times, when this second category tries to experience a new kind of feeling and end up making a complete fool of themselves. They had an idea to achieve something, and the idea like a dangerous parasite develops into something which was the last thing on their mind.

Not only do they self destruct, they end up hurting the world around them. What can be worse than being told that you are ‘insensitive’ and ‘immature’? Probably realising the fact that it comes from the corners of your own completeness.

I guess, it happens with everyone at some point of their lives.

No stranger to a feeling like this, I sometimes wonder why is that when you really want to make an impression you end up scaring away people. Under the surface, you are trying to break through the rusted façade of your own being. And then comes that inherent inability to not being able to express.

End result – instead of breaking the shell around you, you end up breaking the trust which you so craved for.

No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you wish to be at the best behaviour, chances (specially with me) are that you will end up falling short of what you had set out to achieve.

It’s like a dream, that keeps waking you, again and again. A dream in which all you do is scream silently – with no one to hear you, no one to see the pain. A dream in which you keep dying, not once, but again and again. I ask myself how can it be possible. Without fail, you always end up being the retard, end up being the joke yourself.

What kills you, brings you down on the floor is the realisation that you are just born with it – the ability/handicap of not being able to express.

It didn’t matter much, but suddenly you have this silly craving to make yourself known. To be appreciated for what you feel and see (what others might not have).

A sense of admiration often gives birth to a desire to be admired. Half awake, half asleep, half ignored, half ignorant, you start following the horizon. You keep following the desire to be at a place which doesn’t exist, you keep living in the fool’s paradise where everyone can say what they had to/have to say.

A jolt brings you back to the reality of life, you have been the same. You wonder, if you really belong to the world where people tell people what they have in the deep ravine of their hearts. Rightly christened as expressionless and emotionless by the people around you, you feel like going back to the world of machines and robots – the world where you belong.

And then, you see a ray of light coming from a tiny hole in the cave, a light which flickers against the winds. You are left wondering what to do – to believe or remain an infidel. It coaxes you, it teases you, it pushes you, it shoots you down and then, it ignites that desire again. You wish the light would stay even if the winds make you fear otherwise.

The light would guide you to that horizon, which can definitely exist amidst all the chaos and the imperfections no matter how the winds blow, no matter what the world thinks of you.

You wish your completeness remains with you.

Long live the revolution

Hail the lord, hail the freedom,

hail the power, hail the chaos.

Hail the confusion,

Hail a fool’s democracy,

hail the revolution, hail the revolutionaries,

Hail these buffoons, for they are here to stay.

You live in a world of your own,

You speak of a world of your own

A world…so away from the world.

How can you create something of your own,

When your vision doesn’t see beyond what it is made to see.

Hail this vision, for this defines the region.

You don’t thank Him for what he gives you,

And you speak of rights and fights

Ignorance for sure is bliss,

Had you known what is to be,

You would think twice

Hail the ignorance, it helps making you a hero.

You live in an ocean of your own vices,

Now neither the boat, nor the tide can help you.

I wish to be you, you wish to be nobody.

Do you even realise,

Or you are too intoxicated in your hollow pride,

Hail this pride, will help you on this path of self destruction.

A rich brat, a spoilt child.

And you call yourself responsible ‘reformists’

Did I miss a ‘point’, or you forgot to think of the ‘point’.

What is that you want, what is that you need?

Isn’t it important, to make the story a little sensible.

When will this lost and delirious clan realise,

In fact, when will the writer realise they being ‘lost and delirious’

For the sheep never has a path of its own,

the horses never run their 'own' race.

They Never learn,

they never learn, they never learn.

Long live this revolution.

Out of focus - my xperiments with the Truth

This is the first of its kind post on the blog, the pictures have been clicked with a varying ISO speed, different apertures and a very confused ambitious and an experimental mind.

The blog generally doesn’t have such updates for the simple reason that I don’t think I am good at it (I generally don’t like talking about things I am not good at).

The photographs have been clicked with an absolute blank mind with the sole idea of they being out of focus. An idea which comes from the opinion (personal) that most often than not, the most beautiful things in life are often out of focus.

They didn’t make much sense in the begining but I guess the beauty (‘beauty’ here is very relative so what might be beautiful to me might be the most atrocious thing known to mankind for you) came out when I tried to make sense out of the non sense I had clicked. It was the blankness, and the fact that I could interpret them in so many different ways that made me put it up here.

A dear friend once said that I should be able to make a ‘connect’ with all those who read my blog (if I want to blog at all, otherwise the purpose of blogging is lost).

I don’t know how much of a ‘connect’ this post would make.

It’s there just because I liked the idea of the idea.

Back to College

So, I am on the other side of the fence now, back once again to college but in a different avatar. No longer can I afford to bunk classes, no longer can I afford to sit on the last bench and sleep through the screening of a ‘film’ which was made by a mad maniac much before my great - grandfather could say ‘film’.

This idiot of a person apparently created history by filming himself hogging ham and bacon. More importantly, stranger was the fact that my teachers and some of the front benchers said that this mad man revolutionised cinema through this piece of ‘art’ (my reply often, obviously in the college canteen, would be, if that was art then my maid is better than Picasso).

Anyways, let bygones and stupid teachers/students be what they are, nothing but bygones and stupid teachers/students.

It’s time to talk about the new experience.

This stint seems to have changed me as a person, I seem to have become more mature (somehow I now realise the need to shave rather than avoid it till the time it starts to itch), I am more disciplined (these days I’m only late by half an hour for work) and certainly more organised/presentable (I wear only formals now, so what if I often forget to wash them).

But other than these flimsy materialistic things, there are a few other things which have changed.

It was only today while invigilating I realised that I was walking like a wooden caricature with a stiff upper/lower lip. I was peeping into every ones answer sheet as if it was my birth right to see who was writing what. Imagine, a few years back I tried doing the same and they labelled it as ‘cheating’. For the first time in my life I talk about the importance of grades in a class (personally, I still don’t believe in ‘grading’ and ‘marking’ students) and how important it is to the development of a human being.

A teacher is generally christened twice, once by his parents and the second time by his students. Parents do it for the sake of calling the tiny little wobbly thing something or he might end up being called a chunnu or munnu for the rest of his life. The students do it for various reasons - sometimes they do it out of disgust, sometimes out of anger, sometimes out of fun, sometimes out of love and sometimes just for the sake of doing it.

My creative best to this day is calling our Visual Communication teacher a ‘Polar bear’, I say creative best because not only was it supremely innovative but also had a definite and very sound logic to it. There are many (few of them my very good friends) who worshipped him but not me, maybe because I was never able to catch his ‘balloons’ (in the man’s own words he didn’t teach, he just threw balloons at us which we were suppose to catch).

For the uninitiated who are wondering why would I call somebody a Polar bear (somehow I love writing this paragraph), that guy not only looked like one – he was fat (and that is an understatement), and as white as snow but was as ferocious as the animal itself.

I remember in the final viva, the guy literally raped me in front of an external examiner (as I was not able to comprehend the Osho gyaan, he was trying to give at that time). At the time of final internal assessments, I don’t know for what joy the sadistic Bear took my trip (and he took one hell of a trip) in front of the whole class.

That was about him. I am sure, Polar bear would be busy hunting more innocent lambs like me and there would be many christening him with other creative names, just to vent out the frustration of not being able to reciprocate his wrath.

I did it to him and I am sure somebody right now would be thinking about my new name in this old business of throwing and catching balloons.

So, life seems to be taking a full circle now, it has gone back to where it started from. Many would agree with me, that there is no time better than the one you have had in college (even though you deal with people like Polar Bear). I seem to have been given another chance to be there once again, let’s see if this side of the fence is as interesting as the one gone by.