Cold you

You were so cold while you lived, you're so cold when you're dead,
If only I knew sooner that it was all in my head....

The loss of the second basket

Why do all the bollywood movies(of today) made on youth have a confused, directionless soul playing the lead, at least in the first half? No, I have not seen "Wake up Sid" yet but I've heard that it's no different. Our generation might look a little lost when compared to the earlier generations' but are they really to be blamed for this?

Everything in the next paragraph is completely figurative and a little personal(basically personal, hence figurative) so I would suggest you to skip this part if you don't know me well.

Well, last week I went to the market and bought some eggs. Since I was carrying only one basket, and I had heard it's not a good thing to have "put all your eggs in one basket", I decided to buy another one. When the handle of the first basket came off because of the astronomical no of eggs I have put inside, I coolly started looking for the second one. To my horror I realised the basket was stolen. Our parents faced such problems of having to carry all the eggs in only one(that too broken) basket so often that they never got confused when faced with such a situation. But we do, because we know that there is always another basket available: sometimes found, sometimes undiscovered, sometimes found and then lost again(like my stolen basket).

We, the youth of today are dangerously used to having options in our life, at every point of it. The loss of the second basket did not make my choice easier, even though it looks so. Repair the basket? Throw the eggs? Throw myself down from some hilltop? The more I try to convince myself to simply carry the eggs in the broken basket, the more weird options I see available.

PS: While asking for directions at life's important stages, can't we have someone similar to a traffic policeman, who can simply point in the right direction and say "signal se left and then the next right"? Just a thought.

The final goodbye

While one of the last few good souls was saying its final goodbye,
The ignorant me was hundreds of miles away, wondering why
The world suddenly looked more evil, the people more sly.

Blabber on...

I met one of my 1st year juniors, SM today. OK, a 1st yr junior in Engg college parlance is someone 3 yrs junior to you, the same way a final yr senior means someone 3 yrs senior to you. When you speak of a junior, you assume yourself to be in final yr and while referring to a senior, you consider yourself to be a 1st yr student. At least this is how things were in my college.

This is roughly the 40th-60th minute excerpt of the 2 hour conversation we had over beer. "Roughly", I said.

SM: Well saying this seems odd, but I want to fall in love.
ME: With whom or what?
SM: I don't care. I see so many people falling in and out of it everyday. I umm...I just want to experience it. At least for a day, preferably with a girl and as soon as possible.
ME: You know what you are talking about?
SM: I sure do. I am talking about programming my emotions.
ME: If I hurt you now and ask you to hold your tears until next monday afternoon, would you be able to do that.
SM: No
ME: Then you can't programme your emotions and as a direct consequence of it, can't plan to fall in love either. But there is one thing I am pretty sure of.
SM: That one day I will?
ME: Precisely.
SM: What makes you so sure of one thing and so unsure of the other?
ME: Hmmm...it's like predicting that 2 of the 10 molecules of a given radioactive sample is going to disintegrate in next 6 months. But if you ask me things like, "which 2", or "which one would be the 1st one to go", I will have no clue.
SM: But don't you believe, everything that can be sensed, can be programmed too?
ME: I do. But our capabilities, our programming capabilities to be precise are limited, however advance they may appear to you. Mathematically speaking, we do not know how many parameters are there, and how do they interact with each other to generate one particular emotion. You may say it's just hormones controlling it. But my question is what controls the secretion of the hormones in the first place. How do our brains decide that a particular quantity of adrenalin would be optimum for a particular emergency...

...And we blabberred on, while "Nothing else matters" changed to "I wanna be a rockstar" in the background.

Q n A

Last month, when I was in Mumbai, I met a cousin of mine who is around 20 years younger to me. Talking to her was like being on the show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where she was the host and I was a contestant with no lifelines. I kept answering her questions patiently but when she used the word "black" for describing someone's complexion I thought I must correct her. What followed was a hell of an interesting conversation, though I don't remember it entirely.
Me: You mean dark complexion.
She: What's the difference?
Me: Well "black" sounds awkward and besides, it's racist too.
She: What's awkward and what's racist?
I explained both the terms to her.
She: If I say "white", will that also be racist?
Me: It'll be but not as racist as saying black.
She: Why not?
By this time I had become extremely uncomfortable. Had it been a grown-up asking me this question in the course of a debate or argument,I could have said a thousand things because the focus in those cases is not on answering the question. Your goal is to confuse the person you are talking to by saying something really clever to win the argument but when you talk to a 8 year old kid, it's a completely different ball game, trust me. The focus is not on winning the argument but on telling the kid the right thing. You can't mislead them because of your lack of knowledge. So for a change, I honestly accepted that I didn't know the exact answer to her question and stayed silent.

Well everyone keeps asking me if they would be alive to see the day when I would honestly admit not knowing about something which seems really complicated to me. I sometime feel like telling them that the only thing that sounds complicated to me in this world are questions of 2 words, asked by 8 year olds.

A day of unanswered questions.

1. What are nightmares seen during the day called and what about daydreaming at night?
2. Why do I see so many people unhappy around me when everyone says he is fine/good/excellent/great blah blah in response to how is he doing?
3. If great minds think alike, do I really have to be mediocre to innovate?

In defence of insomnia

There are some feelings we experience only in hindsight. I remember my dad had a very peculiar way of appreciating my mom's cullinary skills. Whenever she made something that tasted really yummy, he would say it's good but not as good as it was made on some previous date. One day i asked him "why then you do not say it to her on that day itself". Which was once replied with, "how do you know something is really good if you have not seen it getting worse on subsequent attempts". I did not quite understand it. But I was so young then...and I used to sleep so well.

Insomniacs also experience things after they had occurred. If they wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and ready-to-go, they know that last day was a day well spent. If they wake up with red and/or swollen eyes, they know it had been a normal day. If they don't have to wake up-you have to be asleep to wake up, right?- they are thankful that the day(and the night) is over.

Sometimes we are happy, which is good and normal. Sometimes we are not very sure of what makes us happy, which is weird. But then sometimes we are so clueless about the cause of our happiness, we fail to recognise that we are happy at all, which is normal again. Normal people always miss out on those mysterious, hidden, undetectably happy moments. Insomniacs never do. They always know it the next day. Every morning I feel great, I think of my dad, smile and say to myself, "he was so right"!

PS: Does it also happen when we are really down and depressed without an apparent reason? I don't think so. I, personally could never hide my sadness from myself.