Conforming to Nonconformity

Is it that I don’t want to do things just because they are supposed to be done, or that I don’t want to do things only because they are the things that are supposed to be done?

Drop it.

Send him love and light every time you think of him, and then drop it.

Reconciliation

Even after 3 days now, it is not easy to reconcile with the fact that you are dead. Its hard to imagine that you have ceased to exist. That your body has probably begun its process of decomposition and that slowly you will wither out of even physical existence and linger only in memories, anecdotes and photographs. Even today as I realized that I’m running out of shampoo, my mind made a mental note of telling it to you so that you could buy one for me on your way back home. I can't come to terms with the fact that the very reason that these guests are pouring in, or that we are all here, is because you are no longer alive. Your father called out your name instead of Munawar's today. I can't begin to imagine how his heart would have cringed at the realization that no one is ever going to answer that call. Even as I think of you, the things that we spoke, or ever your mere face, I can't come to terms that it no longer exists.

I feel terrible Muja. Terrible and ashamed that I could do nothing to ease your pain, that I was here, I saw that you were troubled, and yet did not bring up the matter. That despite us being there, you felt that such extreme despair and hopelessness. That truly is a mark of shame for us. I have been a comfort to others and not to my own brother. This fleeting emotion passes away only to persistently return and haunt.

And the worst part is that there is nothing that can be done about this. We can only live immersed in this guilt and wait for time to slowly evaporate it away. I still can’t digest it Muja. If only there were some way that you would return, if only there was some way for us to show to you that not all is lost yet, that there still is hope. I know how futile it is even as I am thinking it, but I can’t help think about that. I can’t get it in my head that its now just too late to even make amends.

Ruthless Death

It all feels so unreal. That is the thing about death, right? Each second we are hoping that someone wakes us up from this dreadful dream. That we get another shot, another chance, a redemption. But death is ruthless. It has the last word and only leaves you wishing and regretting all things that were left unsaid and undone.

Even while I am here, it still hasn’t sunk in that you are no more. It still feels as if you have gone out and will probably come in a while. I can’t even fathom how your parents are coping with it. For now, we are all here, they are surrounded by people, but the real dawning comes upon when everyone has left, and they are left alone with their thoughts. Left alone to comprehend the minutest details that may possibly have averted this tragedy.

Frankly, I haven’t yet cried over you. That’s probably because I don’t have a closure over your death. It was the same when I heard the news of Safwan first, but that changed when I saw him in the mortuary. I broke down as it dawned upon me what losing someone to death means. In your case, while I am here, talking to people about you, about what you were, the things that you did and the likes of it, it feels like I am just having a normal conversation with people who know you, about you. It doesn’t feel that the whole discussion is centered on your death.

Occasionally my mind does get a grip on the fact that you are in fact dead, but it just feels so outrageous that I stop thinking about it. Your face is still etched in my memory, and that keeps coming back to the surface, the things you said, the way you’d talk, our discussion at the barbeque, you sitting outside on the porch and us talking. I wish I had had a proper conversation with you that day. I knew that you were troubled, and you didn’t want to speak when I asked you, so I didn’t want to push it. I let the matter go thinking that I will probably speak to you next time. But like I said, that is the thing with death, there is no next time, there are only regrets.

I still can’t believe it Muja. I wonder where you are right now, what is the state of your mind. Is it true what they speak about graves? I can’t believe or even digest that you are now buried underneath, never to be seen, heard or felt. I can’t believe that in less than a day you have been obliterated from all our lives, that all that I am feeling regarding you right now I will never be able to express to you in person. When people are praying to god for you, asking him to render your grave comfortable, pardon your sins, or admit you into the heavens, it is hard to process in the mind that they are in fact speaking about you. It simply feels so incredulous.

Is there any sense in asking you to put an end to this misery and come back? Ruthless death doesn’t even leave a room for prayers.

Death. Hope. Regret.

Death has in incontestable finality to it. When you hear the news of someone’s death, someone close in particular, even as each syllable of each word is being uttered, you are hoping against hope that the news changes its course midway. Your mind then voluntarily drifts towards hope, only to realize that its death. It leaves no room for hope. You are not even given an opportunity to pray for the person’s well-being. After that, every moment you are left wishing that someone wakes you up. That someone comes along to shake you off your dream, and that you get another shot at saying all the things that were left unsaid, doing all the things that you wanted to do with the person and everything else pertaining to the person. We are all used to procrastinating things, of thinking that we are going to have another opportunity to do the things that we wanted to do.

For long it doesn’t sink in that you are never going to speak to the person again, never going to hear his voice, see any of his expressions or even see the person. The person’s face is transfixed in your mind and that is all you see. It still doesn’t sink in because there is that lingering unreasonable foolish hope. It seems so foolish to hope but yet one can’t help but hope. You hope for things to return to normalcy, for another chance but nothing works. You have goosebumps all over your body at the very thought of what the person may have gone through while death was taking him away. What would his last thoughts have been, did he regret his decision, was he in pain, who did he last think of? And you will never have answers to these questions. Never a peek into his mind. And the only thing that remains, is regret.

ARYA :D

In their latest youtube video, ‘pretentious movie reviews’ guys they speak about the possible return of 1990s style-overtly romantic and value-based movies albeit in a funny humorous way, the way that Dabangg depicted the early day heroism and macho attitude of the heroes. Little did they know that the Telugu industry is way ahead of them. Can’t stop laughing my ass of as I am watching the Telugu movie Arya. I am not sure if the makers intended for it to be that way.

Vivek

He works as a freelancer in the company that I am now part of. He has been training others for over 3 years now and is a BE graduate just like me. We got talking, it was so easy to talk to him. We have similar kind of thoughts and are somewhat similar in our personalities. He told me one thing, ‘we are both here because we made some wrong decisions’. I could just connect to him with that sentence and I think the acceptance over the fact that we are both in similar situations, both trying to clear GATE and move forward with our lives is what hit the connect.

We started talking about our respective jobs, our previous jobs, he was warning me about how hectic training can get, I was telling him about my experience at BASE, so on and so forth. Of all the people I have met at Quantech, Vivek is easily the one I like talking to.

The other day, when we were getting back from the college, only he and I were in the car along with a driver. Somehow we got talking, and he started telling me about his girlfriend. It was such an endearing story. And to hear him narrate it in his plain, as-a-matter-of-fact tone made it even better.

She was in the same school as his, but they were both in different sections and both had some untold competition between them as to who would score the highest in the school. However, all throughout their schooling they hardly spoke to each other. After school, he came down to Bangalore for his engineering and she went to Kanpur if I am not wrong, to get trained for medical entrance exams. Towards the end of his engineering, they happened to get in touch over the phone and started talking. That’s when she confessed that she has had a huge crush on him right since their school days and if he would like to be in a relationship with her. He was taken aback, and he said he needed some time to think over. After a few days, he agreed and they both got into a relationship.

Things didn’t go on so well as he started feeling that he is not too comfortable in the relationship. That happens of course. When you enter a relationship based upon the other person’s feelings, not knowing what you want yourself, that is bound to happen. So they broke up. But, they remained friends and would still talk to each other.

Slowly as they spoke more, he got drawn towards her, and finally they are now in a relationship for about 3 years. i think in the meantime they have hardly met each other, because they both live so far away. Nevertheless they are in a happy, functional relationship.

He was telling me why he got drawn towards her. She really loved him, and he could see that in her eyes in the few times that they met. And he said that he would always wonder why she loved him so much. Of all the people in the world why did she love him so much when they hardly knew each other. I can relate to that feeling Vivek. He saw that she really loved him, that she really cared for him and that she is really true, and he decided that this is going to be the girl he marries. Above all, he really wonders why she puts up with his eccentricities. When he was narrating, I was wondering why she would put up with all his eccentricities. He doesn’t want to talk much over the phone, doesn’t like wishing people on their birthdays, doesn’t wish others on their birthdays, doesn’t shower praise, is very to the point every time he talks. I mean, these are the special things every girl wishes for - praise, birthday wishes, speaking endlessly over the phone. But she does. And we still haven’t figured out as to why.

He was telling me about the first time that he met her, the first time after entering into the relationship. She met him all alone in some place without informing others where she was going to. Such is the implicit trust that she had on him. Now, Vivek is a good person who I know would never take advantage of a girl. He wouldn’t even think of it. But what she placed in him was really blind trust.

I wonder what drives people to madness in relationships. It’s like our brains voluntarily switch off when we are in the relationship mode. Not filtering things before we blurt it out our mouths, always trying to find an explanation for every wrong that the other person has done, and making up excuses for his behavior in your own mind. That’s just how it works all the time.

He was also telling me how he is slowly learning to cope up with the eccentricities and the mood swings of a woman. Every woman is capricious. Every woman. I think that’s just one quality that is inherent in all of us. And a person who loves us truly, will sincerely understand that and cope with that. Just like how he is learning to.

And I think at the end that’s what love becomes all about. We accept the other person’s eccentricities and differences and keep them aside to look at how wonderful they are as a person. Beyond all, it is really important to be a good person. That is the only way one can respect another person, and if you cannot respect a person, you cannot be in a relationship with them. We are all good, awesome, sincere, eccentric, and different in our own ways. And we all want to be accepted for what we are, without someone trying to tweak and fit us to the description in their minds. We all want to be appreciated and loved for precisely how different we are, we all want to be accepted with our ‘conditions apply’ tag. And, if we happen to find a person who not only accepts, appreciates and lets us be, but also celebrates our eccentricities, it’s like icing on the cake.

Vivek also told me how driven she is, how she fought with her parents to allow her to study medicine while they wanted her to study for bank exams as they felt a bank job would be easier for her. How she is now doing her MBBS and is looking for a master’s seat in Bangalore so that she can be with him. He also told me another thing, when she was a child she was afflicted with polio, and she hasn’t been able to walk without any support. She either needs another person with her, or crutches for support. Never throughout his narration or our conversation could I have imagined that he was talking about a polio-afflicted girl. He never saw that in her, he saw all the other million things in her and loves her for precisely that. Vivek, for the man that you are, RESPECT.

Is it billed?

I am smiling for no reason today. Feeling some surge of happiness. A feeling of fullness rising from within for no reason, at least not a reason that I can comprehend. Like I have said before, I have this varying degrees of feelings influenced by no apparent reason, varying in their extremities in a short duration of time. Just in the morning I was at my lowest self, with a crushing feeling inside. Its as if its all billed for me. That for me to experience some happiness its imperative that I go through despair.

Sharing..

It was rightly said. It’s a sharing, not a showcase. Sharing because it was almost as if I was privy to some private moment of each of their lives. Something they are struggling with, or were struggling with, or experienced or something. I don’t know what. I did not understand their performance, what they were trying to say, or express. Except for yours, I could see what you were trying to do. And I loved it. I loved it when you read out the quote, when you danced and fell and rose and jumped. I have always loved watching you dance, loved seeing that radiant happy face of yours that’s the epitome of happiness. But today, I felt jealous. Jealous for the way that you moved your body, the way that you felt yourself, the things that you were experiencing and, most of all, jealous of the way that you were lost. Lost not in the performance, but in yourself. I think that’s the highest point of feeling liberated. I felt jealous, and I felt happy. So happy. So so so happy. To see you where you feel so happy, after struggling with things people know nothing about. I’d be lying if I say I entirely understood and connected with the sharing today, but what I did feel is pride. Proud of seeing where you have reached. 

Break some patterns

Help me maintain a pattern.
The only pattern I maintain is to break the patterns that I resolved to maintain as a pattern.
Help  me break this pattern, and maintain my pattern.
Not just temporarily.
Its not fair to land right back into the argument you had with yourself just days ago,
Which seemed to have sorted back then.
Patterns. Emerging Patterns.
Break some now.

The Night Sky

The sight is etched in my memory. It was an actual manifestation of the term ‘lit up by stars’. Never before had I seen so many stars. So many beautiful beautiful stars. Never before had I seen such incredible beauty. The night sky is  a beauty indeed. The sight of these twinkling stars, of so many of them made my heart erupt with a special joy. The kind of joy which is reserved for beauty alone. Our beautiful nature. How unlucky we city folks are, deprived of the joy inducing beauty of the night sky of our own account. Words can’t describe how my heart described it. It gave me goosebumps. Indeed there is joy in the least expected things.

  

Beauty. 

London Thumakda!

So I watched Queen the other night. It may come across another movie on women breaking free, and their empowerment, except that it’s not. It’s one of the most heart-warming, soul touching movies that I have ever watched.

 Notwithstanding the fact that it was shot at Paris and Amsterdam (the two places I want to visit the most!), every single frame, every dialogue, every expression, every dress that she wore throughout the movie is so real that it makes you feel as if the screen is a window through which you are following her life, in real time. Beautiful screenplay with flashback scenes interspersed in between. The backdrop which is so plain and so real will leave you wanting for more. You’ll start dreading the end because you just don’t want the movie to stop. You want it to keep going on and on, you just want to sit there and keep watching and watching. I, for one, did not want to budge from the seat even after they were done showing the credits. And you know, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. I noticed that despite the movie having ended, people were still sitting on their seats, looking at Queen’s Facebook timeline following the credits, and it wasn’t until the screen went black that they actually started swarming towards the exit doors. One other movie that I remember this happening was The Dark Knight Rises, where we all knew that it was the last of the series, and we absolutely did not want to come to terms with that. Although Queen belongs to a totally different genre, I felt the same way. I just did not want this movie to end.

Coming to the story, it’s about this girl by name Rani, who amidst a personal crisis discovers a whole new self, amidst whole new people, at a whole new place. And the transformation that you see her go through at each stage of the movie is heart rendering. We have all known this girl Rani, who is an obedient daughter, who never lies, or cheats, and prays regularly, wears decent clothes, and always consults her boyfriend on every decision that she has to take, and lets them take the decision for her even if she isn’t happy with it. After all, that is what we have all been taught to do as girls. Be an obedient daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law et al. But what happens when you discover the beauty of being yourself? When you discover the joy of taking your own decisions, living by your own, fighting the world on your own, making your own friends, and just seeing the world. The joy of discovering people radically different from who you are, and with who you still happen to connect the most is so sublime, that it’s the most difficult to translate on screen. Which is why you end up appreciating the direction and her acting even more. Every transition, expression, and every character is wonderfully sketched. Movies that you connect with become a reason for you joy, and this is one such movie, where you are left so happy, so exhilarated, that you can’t help but smile to yourself throughout. Oh! The simple joys of life.

Queen, you are the Queen! And Mr. Vikas Bahl, I can’t wait to watch your next movie. 

The eternal question

We want to be pampered, and be treated like an adult.
We want to live in a fantasy world, with a practical mate.
We want to be ourselves, and be everyone's dream girl.
We want financial security, and a hopeless romantic.
We don't want to give a shit about what people think, and we want to be adored by people.

At the core, we all want to be loved.
Loved for who we are,
Appreciated for what we are,
Wholeheartedly accepted for the way we are,
To be understood for all our eccentricities,
And be made proud for our eccentricities.
The icing on the cake would be to,
To be celebrated for each of our uniqueness.
Now who doesn't like an icing?

Many of the times we wish for the impossible,
But, we wish to be worth being impossible.

Things that make me happy: #3 P. S. ...

I just wanna tell you nothing you don't wanna hear,
All I want, is for you to say.
Oh why don't you just take me where I've never been before,
I know you wanna hear me catch my breath..
I'll love you till the end..

It makes me cry, each time. Even if I'm watching it in parts, watching it mid-way, watching it over and over again, it still does. I just have to look at him, and it makes me cry. I just have to hear them speak, and I have goosebumps. I cry, and I feel happy. Out of this world kind of happy. Its the kind of tears that you want to shed over and over again.

Pota Cabin

I felt happy, satisfied, content. Knowing that what I'm doing may make a difference in someone's life, knowing that I can make a life better, even if it is that of one person. The experience was totally unlike what I had imagined it to be. I could've done a lot better that I did, meaning I wasn't really at my best self, but it was still good. The whole experience was so heart touching. The kids, the life, the people. The place. To stay disconnected for an entire week was refreshing, it felt good.
The connection with the kids, and the happiness I felt were exquisite, but sometimes my mind would get drifted to what Ayn Rand says about social service. I don't believe it to be true, but it did keep creeping into my mind. Not at the time that I was there, but once I was back and recollection of those memories. But for now, I won't dwell on that. I will dwell on the possibilities ahead.

Things that make me happy: #2 The Moon

The Moon!
The Moon! The Moon! The Moon!
The beautiful full moon, radiating its beauty all around, across a vast landscape. Radiant, elegant, mesmerising. Never have I seen shades of grey so beautiful. Shades of grey, interspersed with blue, white, red as it plays hide and seek. Peering from behind the clouds. Oh so beautiful! I think you are at your most beautiful when you are half-hidden behind the clouds. The kind of beauty that makes my heart leap in joy, and laugh inside with an indescribable feeling, unadulterated by any other feeling except for Joy. I can't help but smile to myself like a fool as I watch u from this door. You have the kind of beauty that truly makes me laugh with joy.

The Prestige

What is it that makes me happy? Yes, what is it that makes me really happy? That I wouldn't mind doing it all day?
I feel really silly answering this question, but its true. Its watching movies! It really makes me happy! Lazing around, watching movies back to back really really cheers me up. A good movie, a movie that you connect with, whose dialogues play with your head, and whose actors you just can't imagine them being someone else. That makes me happy, that wakes a joy within, makes me momentarily forget all the worries weighing my head. Wow! I'm so pumped right now. :-D

Fickle

My mind is fickle,
Fickle heart is my own,
Only yesterday was there a pain so soul crushing,
And today its somersaults for reasons unknown.

Things that seemed inconquerable yesterday,
Today matter no more.
Come tomorrow, it will seem mountainous again,
Another day, and its hardly a pain.
Switches so quick,
Between extremities it is.
I don't trust it any more.

Right time

I believe that many a times, landing a job is a matter of luck. It’s a mixture of various factors of course, but one of the most important factor, is Luck. I now attend the demos given by various candidates who are applying for a position in our tutorials. I am kindest to them as compared to all my other colleagues in terms of asking them intimidating technical questions. The reason being I was in that same position not very long ago, and frankly they weren’t this stringent and strict during my demo. That is to say that if I were to give my demo now, my chances of getting selected wouldn’t really be high. I was interviewed at a time when they immediately needed faculty. I am not downplaying myself here, for I know I am good at what I do. Nor will I go to the extent of saying I am better than my colleagues, each of us have our own strengths. Also I am learning and improving myself as much as I can, each day. But my chances of getting selected, if I were to be interviewed now, aren’t be so high. The reasons are many. For example, the department is well staffed right now, there is no immediate requirement, and the atmosphere in the department has changed considerably from when I joined. My demo wasn’t really great; I didn't think I'd be selected.But at that time, they needed staff, and they were willing to give me training. My language was good, I had a good voice (in their opinion alone), I was confident and my content was good, and so they were willing to give me training. But I doubt that I would’ve been able to answer all the probing technical questions that they now ask. I hadn’t answered many even then, but they weren’t very stringent about all that back then.

So, what I mean to say is that no matter how much we deny Luck is a factor. It is about being at the right place at the right time.