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.

Going or Coming…

Text message 1: ’Yeah, I am leaving tomorrow...Hope to see you soon…bi..tc’

Text message 2: ’Yeah, I am coming tomorrow…Hope to see you soon…bi..tc’

Not much difference between the two messages except for the one word. I was going back to India on a weeklong vacation and the messages were sent to two different people in two different countries expressing two different emotions by the same person (Me) at the same time.

What caught my attention was the fact even though there wasn’t much difference between the two messages, still what they conveyed was more than different. What made it so (as suggested by a friend in another text message) was this word called ‘perspective’. A word which drives the way this world thinks. I dwelled a little more on this and smiled to myself for the fun in this supposedly ‘serious’ and ‘intellectual’ word.

Now the funny / interesting part in this whole presumably otherwise boring monologue is the confusion which comes with the word called Perspective.

So, what was I doing?

Was I leaving, was I coming, or was I/am I simply lost?

The world does indeed seem to be a circle, no matter how much you run, no matter how much you try to escape you always, ever so always come back to the same point.

So even if u ‘go’ it’s very likely that you will be coming back to the point where you started your journey from or if you ‘come’ back chances are that probably you had to ‘go’ a long distance for it.

But how easy is it to ‘go’ or how difficult is it to ‘come’, what does it take to achieve either one of these (they seem to be like Siamese twins if you catch hold of one, the other is automatically held)?

Since some time now, I have been telling a friend to let ‘it’ go and start a new journey. But sometimes I wonder, if the earth is round and all roads to lead to ‘heaven’ how can one person ever let ‘it’ go or start that new ‘journey’ when in the end one will have to come back to the same starting point. Moreover, if all the roads lead to heaven then what is the point of taking a whole new journey, you might as well continue with the road you are treading (they will anyways lead to the same destination).

It’s known to many that I have Thantophobia, and sometimes when I am overpowered by it I wonde, if we all had to go back to the point where we started from then why did he show us this beautiful world. Isn’t it sadism that you give one the power to explore and discover? Then, as per your whim and fancy you snap it away. Wouldn’t it be better had we all been pieces of furniture, devoid of any senses, so when the pain of everything being taken away overwhelms it wouldn’t have matter.

It’s almost like sitting on this terminal now waiting for my flight, knowing very well that this journey I am about to embark on wouldn’t be last forever and very soon I will be back to the same terminal (ok, if not the terminal then the same airport) albeit my direction would be opposite to what it is right now .

Like everything that ‘goes’ has to ‘come’ back, and everything that ‘comes’ back has to ‘go’ once again.

Bus Route No. 425 – And a story to tell

As I sit bored and idle in this room of a hotel in Muscat, my mind keeps going back to the recent times and I start to put words to thoughts for this long impending post.

I had always planned this, a string of abuses and curses for Bombay – The melting pot. I had to get it out of my system, for I thought that was one city which had wronged me, made me suffer and responsible for all the fuck ups.

One bus ride and I realised how wrong I was.

‘Ek 4 Bungla’, I asked the bus conductor and took a window seat, very happy that I was leaving the ‘God damn city’ within the next 24 hours. So happy, that I started looking at everyone with contempt. It was almost like ‘Hey! You lesser mortal, just a few hours and I won’t even look at you’. And with this contempt my eyes wandered outside to the bustling traffic and then to the ‘famous’ larger than life billboard of ‘The Hot’ female clad in a saree (this lady had been a topic in many ‘professional’ and ‘non – professional’ discussions).

‘So, is this the only thing that I will miss about this city?’ I asked myself. ‘A girl with green eyes, half draped in a pink saree looking at me, suggestively suggesting a few things’, I introspected.

My phone rang and my reverie was broken. ‘Where the fuck are you, I have been waiting here for the past half an hour’, barked a friend who had been waiting for me at ‘my’ chai tapri. Definitely another thing that I would miss about the city, I thought. The girl on the billboard took a backseat and I wondered where else will I be roaming around the city at two in the morning, looking for sotta and chai with no worries of not finding an auto or being stopped by the cops / goons.

No place else.

Where would I be getting my work done with a smile, make the best of friends with a handshake. Forget the stress of the day’s work and have fun in the night like there is no tomorrow.

No place else.

‘Hmm….I just may miss this city a little bit’, I contemplated.

These may come across as shallow and flimsy, but often these shallow little things remind leave you with a deep and lasting impression which can never be expressed in words (or maybe I am lost for words).

My bus stop came and I got down, bidding adieu to the ‘BEST’ services.

(And then the time came)

I took my boarding pass from the check in counter, a coffee and a muffin from the coffee shop next to the counter, found myself a corner to sit and wait.

This is where it struck me, now that I was leaving Bombay for good, I suddenly felt a part of me will be gone…lost forever. This is where I realised how much the city meant to me, how much I had fallen in love with it without intending to, how much I owed to this city, how much did it help me grow – both as a person and as a professional.

It is not every city where you lose a job and find another one in the next nine days. It is not every city that makes you sleep on a cold and dirty floor with your bag under your head and then gets you a house in the best of the localities.

When you find your bearings lost and gone, you were down and out it was only this city that called you to live it up, once more and to forget everything.

It was here, in the final moments of my stay that I fell in love with this city, the city which I so loved to hate. But maybe I had fallen in love with it long time back, but never saw it (like it happens with a camera when the subject crosses the focal distance it gets out of focus, this is one example I love to give to my friends whenever I mention about my love for the city).

Now, when I sit back and go back in time and remember the times (good and bad), it dawns on me that this city taught me how to live, how to work against all odds and work some more, against some more odds.

Bombay – the good, the bad, the ugly, or whatever you are, it was you who made me love YOU.

It was you who taught me that it was an honour, being part of ‘The Melting Pot’; it was only you who could make me say this.

Me - The Dog

So, it's that time of the year when the sewers are over flowing, there is no auto rickshaw on the road and you walk feeling as if you have just pissed in your jeans. No hard feelings, no cynicism I just hate rains, I simply hate rains.

Hate them so much, that I start to hate everything and everyone around me including Me and myself. This I feel is actually a good thing as it helps to clean out the system of all the hatred I have/had and start afresh (I still hate rains).

So, I have spoken and irritated a lot of friends (Intellectual Masturbation), Colleagues (Scratching the Surface, Not a Journalist) and done a lot of other things (not worth mentioning) on my blog. I think I won't get a better time and a better season to write this post.

So here I am, ranting away to glory once again..

I am a complete dog, a dog who not only barks but bites too....a dog who has rabies. I have done strange things in life to get my work done. The best intentions were always to just get done with the job, without hurting anyone but these best intentions were always over powered by the intention of doing the 'job'.

I don't have a guilt feeling, neither is this some sort of a confession, just sharing a thought which came to my mind (like the other posts). In this era of saving arses, I have always tried to save mine. Yes, sometimes it so happened that others got theirs in the line of fire because I had to take off mine.

So, if it was a poor spot boy who had to face my wrath as the elusive shot was just not getting canned, then sometimes it was one of the contestant who needed to be 'briefed' to say the right line.

The poor boy/guy wouldn't use the slang and swear words, I had to plainly turn the camera off and tell him, "Dude, if you don't give me good masala I won't be able to play you on TV. You better stop being a pansy and gimme some nice interesting bites. "

I changed his image completely, from a simple docile boy of 21 to this short tempered bad mouthing contestant. Another case of me saving my backside in trying to give my bosses and the audience good content to watch on their television sets.

Then there was a time, when I acted like a completed Bastard in getting this Inspector (maybe sub inspector) suspended, the guy just wouldn't give me the information I wanted. What do I do, I record him on the sly and show it to his seniors.

A couple of incidents here and there, a couple of incidents which I don't want to mention (too gross to be mentioned). The most recent one being of the "Episode Shoot", there was this mother of a kid (one of my contestants). A brain wave came to my mind. We have had too much of sweet moments on the show so just to make it spicy, we decided to twist it a little and make 'our mother' a little psycho (a character who scares her only daughter etc etc). I did that and we managed to establish the desired. But a week has passed and I still don't have the guts to look her in the eyes. It's scary because some appreciate me and say the 'great' job I have done, but when I see her I start to look for a way out.

Now, that when I think about them they just make me hate myself even more. I think it's the season which is doing it to me, walking on the road and being hit by those slimy little umbrellas (since I don't carry one, I keep bumping into them).

Let's hope that this season gets over soon, let's hope that the system is able to start afresh.