Naye saal ka pahla jaam.. Aapke naam..

We need to be good at summarizing. 2010 was a good year.

Met some of the most interesting people. Wrote mind-numbing SAS programs. Cracked some of the super-awesome jokes of the year. And became aware of her. Which basically defines 2010 as the year of awareness.

And here is the last phrase for the year without any explanation - 'Do you feel entitled or do you feel grateful'?

I had this realization. That if I toned down my sense of humor a bit, I could be irresistible to gals.

I also had some more realizations. I am talking too much these days. Worse, I am text messaging much these days. I think its a consequence to my innate weakness of pleasing everyone.

And have I talked about my inability to sleep for months now. I think its the general view across my friends that the days are gone that you could sleep and start a day afresh. For me, its the hyperactivity of my mind I guess. Its like a TV that I can not switch off.

I am also trying to fight off my desire to be at the center of affairs. It makes me feel pathetic.

I now know for sure that my ignorance has been my strength all this while. There were times where I did things because I knew that not doing them were not an option. But now the awareness of alternatives have diluted that drive.

Living life in extreme is quite easy. Caring completely and not caring at all is easy. Its fine-tuning life that is difficult.

Random lines
1. No comments. Only compliments!
2. For laughing at my jokes.

Context?? naah. Unnecessary dilution of borrowed originality.

Anyway, I write after so many days. And I am playing safe. Not good.

Anyway, I did ask her. Originally the plan was to ask her as if it was the most natural thing for me to do. But I think I am born honest. I knew that it was weird and I said that it was weird. Crap! I can literally write what not to do when asking someone out.

Anyway, she is such a class act. Makes me feel like a kid.

But I am little less restless now. In fact, I am a lot better.

And for this two-three months, I have worked with these guys. Not kids. All grown-ups. And it was such fun. Seriously. They deserve a special mention. You know when people see you and they draw a smile..isn't it just so so great when you know that they are actually happy seeing you. I can not describe the feeling.

With the team that I have I should be a pretty happy man. And may be I am. But as Agent Smith says, 'Human beings define their reality through misery.'

And so what do I want to do in life? Such questions demand ambiguous answers. I think I just want to be a tough act to follow.

Swami Vivekanand writes in his autobiography of traveling Kashmir and feeling intense anguish on seeing the desecration of innumerable temples by invaders. He fell at the feet of divine mother in a Kali temple and asked, 'How could you let this happen, Mother? Why did you permit this desecration?' In response, the Divine Mother appeared in his heart and admonished him 'What is it to you, Vivekanand, if the invader breaks my images? Do you protect me, or do I protect you?'

(Open Page, The Hindu, Nov 28, 2010)

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

What's with these songs? Such beautiful lyrics. Were they all in love?? It makes one wonder.

Tu is tarah se meri zindagi mein shamil hai,
Jahan bhi jaaun, yeh lagta hai, teri mahfil hai.

It's been my theme song for two consecutive phases now. One, when I suddenly realized that I liked the smell of smoke. And the phase that I am right now in.

It gets better.

Yeh aasmaan, yeh baadal, yeh raaste yeh hawaa,
Harek cheez hai apni jagah thikaane se.
Kai dino se shikayat nahi jammane se.

And all the other songs have a new flavor to them because of her. I should seriously write her down before it gets contaminated. You see I could have never written last line. Before killing myself that is.

I could write a post a day for her.

So this is what it does to you. I would like to think of them as indicators. Indicators that are just trying to consolidate my resolve. I find her everywhere. I was on the airport. And she was there. For a brief moment I laughed at myself. Thinking that it can’t be and it’s just part of my imagination. But then with each passing moment, she became more of her. The way she flicked her hair. The way she smiled. The way she looked (at things around her). I actually walked up to her. Can you believe that? Of course, only to find that she was not her. I should have talked to her anyways. This one would have been my backup plan in case she couldn’t be with me. But seriously, the moment I was sitting right in front of her, I was so scared of this feeling of such mammoth force. And I was more scared because I was walking this unknown territory with my own false perception of maturity.

But she has made me aware of her in ways that no one else has been able to. Seriously.

I should just shut my trap up. I need more control. I hope the new levels of emotions I feel is not general extension of this losing-my-control phenomenon.

Anyway, should I or should I not? May be I should. The fact that I am thinking twice is a reason good enough.

It's been on very specific occasions that I have written about someone else in my blog.

I know. After almost 4 years with this blog, I have finally made peace with it. And I write this post, with a sense of belongingness that I have with old friends. Like Phaedrus had with his motorcycle I guess.

I am not going to write about blog. I am going to write about my team.
So this team that I work with. Is full of girls. And given that I have been with the company for more than three years, I have a sense of self-righteousness and lack of respect bordering to contempt for political correctness. You know as I write this, I feel like a coward looking out for ways to hide something. shit man. after years of self-evaluation the closest I find myself to is the word cowardice. Not a good feeling but finally I am aware atleast.

So this team of girls, mostly the ones who are junior to me in age and experience. I think I will never tell them that how special they have made me feel at times. (There are boys as well..but lets not waste ink here.) To the levels that I belived for quite sometime that I had a refined sense of humor. The only thing thats stopping me from recounting instances is my own belief that I can not do justice. They are special and I hope they are as happy as I believe them to be.

Anyway, there is this girl. And she seems wise beyond her years. And she is not amongst the one that I talked above about. She is so hot in her own subtle ways. She seems like someone who has got a nice story to tell. I am thinking about asking her out. Only if I did not have this very low self steam, I would already have. I hope I do.

'Contempt' seems to be my word for the year. Contempt is what I feel for the things that I deserve and the things I dont.

Anyway. Finally completed reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I would have said that I loved it but the author will feel contempt for the generic nature of the response and somehow he seems like someone whose opinion should be given some importance. So I will just say that the book got me thinking. The book was lent to me by a friend. Seriously, if you want to be remembered - lend a good book and make sure its read. Anyway, he said that it was a life changing book. And so I am not sleeping for past few days. You dont want to be sleeping while your life changes. See..I feel contempt for cracking jokes everytime.

The book discusses about a problem - 'stuckness'. And I got stuck right there. So I started re-reading the whole book. And it seemed so smooth in the second reading when I was looking for answers of specific questions I had pondering about the point of the book. I would have liked to write some more on my take on the book to give the impression that i completely got it..but now I cant, can I?

Anyway, you should understand that I wrote so much about the book here so that you would read it.

'It's an old split. Like the one between art and art history. One does it and one talks about how it's done and the talk about how it's done never seems to match how one does it.'

Just watched some dance videos from college. It must feel so high - dancing. And here I am - getting high on writing SAS programs (it made me think). It’s not too bad I hope. Anyway, I feel so saturated nowadays - the feeling that there is no new thing to be done. I hate the feeling. Someday, I will study psychology. Someday, I will write a poem. Someday, I will read all this and feel that I never had the courage.

Anyway, I also suddenly see my convictions challenged, my methods changing. I have believed in chaos of thoughts for sometime. Perfection of the evaluator. Cynical idealism. Abstract and unexplained ideas. That ‘lost in translation’ crap that has stopped me from conveying them to the others or myself. But I think I am giving it a shot now - to not being presumptuous or charitable. Someday I will not be afraid and I will be free. That last line was intentionally random.

You know I am a fighter. I am fighting the urge of deleting everything written above because I know I am writing it for you. Are you impressed? I don’t care I guess. But denial is always a proof. And that is why I am not deleting it.

I also wanted to write about something else. Yeah - you know those ‘perfect match’ sections in those social networking site? I would have written ‘where familiarity does not breed contempt’. Smells of originality?? But still stinks.

I suddenly feel like writing this. Many people have left the company. I don’t like it at all. I am very ignorant by the way. But once in a while, you find people that you don’t want to lose.

Shit. I never thought I will start a post like this. It’s become an infinite loop kinda problem. I mean I don’t want to write because I think there is no need of writing. And then I want to remember this and I say I write it down anyway. But then I want to write minimum and drawing the line for minimum is absolutely difficult.

For example, I feel like going ahead and deleting whatever I wrote. But then its been so long that I posted something. But surely I have become impatient – with myself and others.

Anyway, I wanted to write this post to talk about this friend who left the company few days ago. He said that he thought I was a ‘better him’ and I was not sure if that was a complement. But he is from IIMK and sent me songs like Romeo and Juliet and To Moon & Back. So I think it should be complement.

Anyway, I am going peripheral again. Shit.

So like few months back, we are on this resort for a team outing. And everything is almost fine. But then they take us to this dance floor and ask us to dance. And I am like.. I cant watch myself dance..how can I torture other people. Anyway, the overall idea is that it all seems so bloody forced. And the sad part is that you eventually get so used to it that you don’t even realize that it is forced.

Anyway, so I come out for a smoke. And there is this guy sitting there smoking. We have not been introduced formally. So I go few steps ahead and start my sutta break. And then after completing his smoke he comes to me and says whether he could share my smoke. And I say yes. And then we start talking. It was like in a movie.

So we start talking about life. How seeking enjoyment (happiness would have been much stronger a word) could be depressing. You know the moments that you know that you have connected with someone and you stop bullshitting and say the truth. It was such a conversation. I want to remember that for rest of my life.

And then for few days I avoided him intentionally. I am still fearful about my sexuality rather. (I just get this feeling now, that 100 years later people will come across this text to decipher the mystery behind greatness that was me, and they will conclude that I was gay!)

And then we became normal. People connected to each other by the need of a cigarette. And as they say..rest is not history yet.

By the way..the earlier part of this post was written few days before. And rest I completed just now.

And the event that triggered the completion was one of frustration. You know you get frustrated and you start solving math problems. I get frustrated and I listen to lady gaga’ bad romance. Then I get some more depressed and then I write this.

But the tragic event was the realization that I have been frustrated for few days now. I need a break. I have been on loose. I need some self control.

i suddenly realised. may be this are the most productive days of my life. or is it just this age. i am almost 25. i am in that phase of my life i guess. where finally i know how stupid i was before.. and where i kind of imagine myself looking at this post in another 10 years and saying..'aah! boy, i was annoyingly stupid.'.

i just asked the man the other day to stop bringing times of india and start bringing the hindu. and it felt good.

i guess its the age. you know you define your moral boundary sort of stuff. and i guess its the work as well. i would have said that may be i am happy but i am superstitious with that sort of stuff.

and we are watching ab tak chappan and guru in parallel. and whenever this friend of mine has the remote and guru is coming on some channel, he makes it point that we see it. and this thot came to my mind, that may be he does it to make sure that i watch it. of course, this story would have sounded romantic instead of gay, if my roomie was a girl. but i like the idea. i will include it when i make my movie.

and i am reading three men on (in??) a boat. man its funny.

I am unusually happy lately. And I hate this part – the moment I become aware of this ‘unusual’ happiness. I hope I will evolve to someone who would not crib about being aware of happiness.

 

And I wish I would have the patience and wisdom of writing down the events that lead to the awareness. I guess I am just trying to protect my individuality – you know with each passing day, you lose a part of the original you and crap of such high caliber.

 

And I should also give up the idea of always writing original and meaningful. In short term, nothing is meaningful anyway.

Well, For what it's worth,...

To me the whole sense of this thread having a back and forth over who's the Bad Guy
or How Bad were the Good Guys compared to the *really* Bad Guys wuold give the Director
and Writers a lot of pleasure. Why? Because I think that this ambiguity is precisely
The Point of the whole movie.

Each man presents himself as a Liar. A Liar to themselves about thier own character:
The Kid lies from the get go about being a ruthless Killer.
The Sheriff lies about preserving Justice when all he practices is sadistic tyranny.
English Bob lies about being a Famous Desperado when he's just a Hired Thug & Braggart.
William Munny lies about being Decent & Reformed when Greed and Revenge reveal his
hypocritical slide to become a Muderous and Drunken Monster (at least briefly).
Even Ned - perhaps the most "true blue" -lies about his abilities as a Killer and tries
to run home. How ironic it is when he needs to make his own brand of "money shot" !
At least Ned dies for a friend though even there he talks after torture.

It is also ironic that the two perhaps most slimey characters, English Bob & Beauchamp
survive to basically go right back to what they did before and never express repentence
of any sort. Their Cowardice is revealed but never punished - English Bob's beating is
more disfiguring than crippling and serves to better show his miserable true self. Both
are Ugly Men. They are Scavengers and Bottom Feeders rather than the Predators they wish
to be.

But the central ambiguity of the movie has to be that between Little Bob & Munny.
Munny is clearly positioned in the film where the "Hero" ought to be but his actions
inevitably reveal his capacity for the monstrous. Little Bob ought to be the "Bad Guy"
for his sadism - especially of Ned. But he is the Sheriff and he constantly remarks
on things on a way that display understanding of the way the Real World works around him,
his crafty judgements of danger, and finally he seems to truely not fear Death when it
comes. None of this fits with the desperate, craven, or blind arrogance we expect from
our Bad Guys.

So what's *my* take on it all?
The ambiguity of all these characters revolves around each's own personal dance with EVIL.
The Kid flirts with it. English bob and Beauchamp hide from it in cowardice but support
or exploit others' fear of it nonetheless. Ned at first denies it by rationalizing the
Bounty Hunt but tries to flee from it and dies.

Only Munny and Little bob walk upright into thier destinies without fear or repentance of
any kind. Little Bob pays for his sadism with his life, the End of Munny is not quite made
clear. Supposedly he "settles down" to what his wife gave herself to bring him to at the
cost of her own life - Reform. But it is uncertain and unproven by film's end. The film
seems to side with Munny in that Vengence brings him to his Evil Deeds but Little Bob
accepts Evil as a Necessity of Life - a tool which he tries to wield for his own devices,
but one that he ultimately fails with just as he also proves himself to the "worst damn
carpenter." He is Destroyer, not Builder. He just kids himself otherwise.

FWIW,

Andrew
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/board/nest/154589055?p=2)

good times!







Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin' can last forever, no

And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Somethimes when I play that old six-string
I think about ya wonder what went wrong

Standin' on a mama's porch
You told me it would last forever
Oh the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

14th Jan 2007. i was offered this job. three years already. damn.

2010. we are growing very old. for good i guess. i like getting old.

damn. i had so much to talk about. cant think of anything now.

i once saw this interview of devanand with simi garewal. she asked him - 'why did you leave your town and came all the way up to bombay to become an actor?'. he said - 'i dont know. i must have looked myself in the mirror.'. i like devanand. i watched him in 'guide' sometime back. the man, sure, was ahead of his time.

i am thinking about buying some books on human psychology or may be on philosophy. saw 'a good year'. thought of buying a farmhouse and a vineyard. most of the things that make a man happy are free. i would be lying if i said i want more money to be happy. but more money is always good.

what else? i have become aware of so many things lately. i just wish that this will not turn me into an indifferent person. i remember this interview where they throw a word at you and you say a word that sums your ideas about the said word. so mithun da was asked to respond to the word 'life' and he said 'incomplete'.

you see i educate myself by watching movies. but still so much time and money is wasted bcus of movies.

i surely did not want to write all this that i have written. what i wanted to write, may be, will never get written.

you know those quotes..'live each day as if it was last day of your life'. each of the blog posts that i read again, make me feel as if i had meant that to be my last post.

i will write down some more lines. so that the last para does not come out as sort of a punch line. i think i will sleep now. i hope i get a blow job in my dream.

Akeelah: [quoting Marianne Williamson] Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.


You should watch Akeelah and The Bee btw. We are all shit scared. I am shit scared that I will become a cynical, nothing-means-nothing, proud-of-being-a-pseudo intellectual-with-a-large-follwoing someday if I continue to analyse every situation so objectively (my own biased opinion, ofcourse!) and die a virgin.

I said I have become very quotable few posts ago. I get these ideas all the time that keep me awake in night. I am scared that may be my mind is at it's functional peak right now and I should use it while I can. I have said it before that I have a very short short-time-memory. The only problem is the surrounding. I am so susceptible to my surroundings.

And I have confidence in patches. There are things that I am terrible at. There are things that I am terribly good at. And then there are things that I think I am terribly good at. I have seen my hands shake talking to strangers on phone.

Anyway, where am I going with all this?
I remember about making some decisions on not watching any big budget movie on theater. especially after going through 3 Idiots writing credit controversy. We are such idiots.
I also had some life changing realization about the nature of power. With great power comes great responsibility. Everybody has heard it. But power is not static or absolute. those, who don't deserve it, will eventually be eliminated from the system. And the way you prove that you are deserving of it is by being responsible. I loved this Japanese Anime series called Bleach and in one of the episodes the protagonist is taught that 'Fear is what keeps one from winning a battle'. Its bothways. You are either scared of getting killed. Or getting yourself to kill. one of the best dialogues was when the protagonist is told that Those with power will eventually be drawn to battles. And that point in time, you can not afford the choice of not fighting. 'Jo tathasth hain, waqt likhega unka bhi itihaas'. I had read that as Skype status.

But for the time being, I am laid back. I lack faith. I dont think I can make much difference. But I know I will have my moments. And I will be up to it.