Duh!

Takes more than a quarter of a century to realize that life is war, that only indifference can bring you peace.
Seriously, how dumb can one get?

A third eye

I wish had the writer's eye. You know, the one with which they seem to able to see their characters for what they really are. Make statements about them with such confidence that you know they must be right. I'd look at people from far far away, a dispassionate, critical look and then make pronouncements that would be it.

She'd always been satisfied by life's generalities, i'd say. Of course she wanted things. She wanted some degree, some job, some friends, a family. But never anything particular. Why then did she hang on to this particular particular with everything she had? And more importantly, did she have the strength to see it through?

And then, i'd see through the eye and pass judgment. I'd say, she'd never fought for any particular . Not because she couldn't, but because she never wanted to. She had it all in her, untapped, waiting for a worthy cause. And now, that lifetime of peace would help her in war.

Or, i'd say, she'd never fought for any particular because she wanted peace more than anything else. At least thats what she told herself. But the truth was, she was afraid. Of defeat, of hurt, but most of all, of victory.

And that would be it.

FAQ

Fact
Did you know (why do all facts begin this way? No that was not what the did you know was for) that convenience was actually a philosophy of life? To put it more formally,

Thou shalt follow the path of maximum convenience.
(go to great lengths to do so, if needed)

No right and wrong, no opinion, no judgment, no ego. Just convenience. It is an art, seen to be believed.


Advice
Use with caution the power to tell people what they want to hear. You just might be setting free someone who by all accounts should be rotting in jail for the rest of her life.


Question
Can a chick ever get back into the egg? Having broken out of its safety, having experienced the joys of running barefoot in the grass, having discovered wings and flight, having found chick-buddies to share the world with, having learnt to hold its own against them, can a chick ever get back into the egg?

It aint over until its over

If you ask a man who is

- about to be hanged
- has the noose around his neck
- has the black cloth over his face

whether he would want to watch a movie by making two holes in his back cloth before the trapdoor is opened, recent experience shows that he will say yes.

Applies to women too.

Born free

Some people are meant to be bred in captivity. Guarantee them the basic necessities of life, and they will flourish in a controlled environment. The uncertainties of the unknown, the dangers of the wild are not for them. Survival for them is not a struggle, it is a fundamental right. And as harmful as it could be to release such a person into the wild, it is equally harmful to hold captive someone meant for the wild.

The other side

Hard-hearted I may be
But silver tongued I am not
What you see is what you get
I beard the burden of destroyed lives
Of destroyed hope I can not.

Hard-hearted I may be
But with a silver tongue that heals
Telling you what you want to hear
So however deep the cut may be
Its my conscience that bleeds.

Untitled

Like a rock she stands
Firm, unyielding
Throwing back whatever the world throws at her.

Oh why not be a lake instead?
Unprotesting, but unchanging
Swallowing whatever the world throws at you
With only a burp of a ripple to show for it.

A prince. And then a pauper.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players

And the Director has lost it. All through rehearsal, he has groomed you for a certain part. You go on stage, you play it brilliantly, like you were born for it. Then suddenly, without warning, he thrusts you into another role. One you don't like, don't understand and were quite happy not playing.

The play is a big mess. The Queen, used to taking tough decisions and living with them, now has to live with someone else's decisions. The soldier, whose has not been responsible even for his own life, and has been quite content to be led, is suddenly responsible for the whole kingdom. The King is torn between the Queen and the Kingdom.

But, they are actors. They will manage. They might fumble for a while, forget lines, slip into their previous roles, but they will learn. Understand. Improvise. Some of them might someday get really good at their new role, like they were born for it. Some will always feel out of place. But all of them, for a long time to come, will curse the Director and wonder why He couldn't stick to the script.

Thats the way it is?

There is something about the calm acceptance of one's destiny. No fight, no protest, no banging your head against a wall, at most an unacknowledged wish somewhere that things could have been different. Cool, calm, composed, moving on to bigger things. Carrying no scars because really, there never was a battle.
Yes, there certainly is something!

(May sound monkish, but it isn't. Not that you don't care, but you care only so much)

Something in between

I don't like grey. It is too much of choice. It is this shapeless, flexible mass that I can mould any way I want. And without any absolutes to guide me, I am lost. The mass ends up as a little bit of everything, a mirror of my confusions.
And as if I don't have enough of grey matter of my own to mess around with, some one's black mixes with my white to give, yes, more grey! So much so that I have given up hope of seeing anything in black and white again.

42!

I am not there yet, but the hope is that someday all the pieces of my life will magically fit together to form a beautiful pattern. (Beauty of course, lying in the eyes of the beholder, in this case, me). But why is that not enough anymore? Why are moments no longer adding up to life? Why am I after the bigger picture?

I know the answer to that one. And it goes like this. Ahem. Lets say, optimistically speaking, that i am dead 50 years from now. Again optimistically speaking, I go to heaven. And still optimi... you know what, from now on, i speak optimistically unless explicitly stated otherwise. So I'm in heaven. There being nothing much to do in heaven i get to travel, meet other souls, exchange life stories and in general, eat a lot. (Souls do not put up weight, do they?) During my travels lets say I bump into one of those factory fresh, starry eyed wanna be souls and it wants to know what life is all about. What do i tell it? That its about climbing tress and jumping into rivers and in general being yourself? Or that its about touching other lives and letting yours be touched? Or that its about pushing yourself to be the best you can be? All good, none good enough. What is that one thing I can tell the rookie that will make it want to sell itself for a slice of life?

Those of you who thought I actually had an answer, shame on you!

There are some days...

- when rearranging your CD collection gives you a sense of purpose in life

- when wearing a sweater makes you feel protected

- when shared laughter over a silly joke bridges over the deepest divide

- when a song sets you free

David wins over Goliath. And you live to see another day.

Gimme your lunch, or else...

Human beings expand to fill the space available. Not physically, like gases, but terrirotially. What i want to say can be best expressed in Hindi. Jahan chalti hai chalate hain. Imagine each of us as a goon (complete with a oily bald head and a twirlable moustache, if it helps) out to spread our influence. We crush until we get crushed. What stops us is not a sense of right and wrong, not boundaries, not fences but simply a bigger bully.

Do we ever grow up?

Too much democracy?

Its a duel to death. You fight his strength with skill, his skill with strategy. But what decides in the end is not how well you fought, nor your cause. What decides is whether people see you as a murderer or a martyr.

Who am I?

Am I a log floating in the river
Flowing where the water flows
Going where the wind blows
Convinced that higher powers are on my side
Content to sit back and enjoy the ride
Knowing but not caring that one day I will end up in the sea?

or

Am I a fighter with an axe
Making my way as I go
Meeting everything that comes with a blow
Getting bruised along the way
Hurt and hurting because that is the game
Knowing but not caring that I my end before the fight does?

Who yells wins

To the silent ones,

The world listens to the one who yells loudest. If you do not speak up, it means you do not have an opinion. If you do not yell, it means you do not respect your opinion enough.

Eat or be eaten. Its that simple.
(Thanks B, for that and for a million other things)

Pop goes the New Year

It may be to a different beat,
But march I do.

Not to be

I've found something else i don't want to be. I figure if i keep at this long enough, I'll eventually be what i want to be.
I don't want to be included in the log that people seem to fear and respect so much when they say "log kya kahenge". I do not want to dictate peoples views, actions, lives, definitely not indirectly, definitely not as a nameless, faceless mass that cannot be argued with. I do not want to be the reason Mrs Subramaniam's daughter cannot cut her hair short. I also do not want to be the reason Mr Sharma stubbornly refuses to take his errant son back into the family. I definitely no not want to be the reason Srygdh abandons his plan of murdering his wife and running away with his secretary. Not that i am for his plan, not for a moment, but I'm not comfortable with that kind of power. I cannot walk around knowing that one encouraging nod of my head and the next thing i know, poor late Mrs Srygdh's ghost has taken up permanent residence in my bathroom, moaning about how her life was incomplete because it ended before she could get her daughter married.
Seems to me there is only one way to not be what i don't want to be. And that is, to stop letting log's opinions dictate my life. Once i do that, i automatically lose the right to disapprove of any one's life choices. I'll be so far down log's morality scale, I'll be out!

Murder she wrote...

(I could kill. But instead I write. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.)

Why do I have to choose?
Why does no one review my code?
Why is it that each time I expect (and hence am prepared for) my neighbours dog to bark my arrival, he is safely inside? More importantly, why am I never prepared when he does bark?
Why am I not the way I am supposed to be?
Why am I not the way I want to be?
Why are the two so irreconcilably different?
Why is my hand in a cast for an operation on my finger?
Why is there not a single coffee addict in office?
Why is there no beach in the world where it snows?
Why am I always always always in two minds? (Does it mean I'm twice as intelligent?)
Who do I feel better even after writing crap?

To fly or not to fly

I sat down to write something but then remembered this poem we were taught as kids that says it so much better than I ever could.

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till thy little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.

How do you know you are strong enough?