Aaj fir teri yaad aayi

"Kisi ko ghar mila hisse me, kisi ke paas dukaan aayi,
main ghar me sabse chhota tha, mere hisse me maa aayi."

                                                      - Munawwar Rana

Doston ke beech tanha rehne ki fursat kahan,
laut gaye jab sab ghar, to teri yaad aayi. 

Naye shehero ki chamak bulati rahi humein,
paaya jab andhera, to teri yaad aayi. 

Haste chehro ki bheed me khud ko bhula diya,
dhoond na paye jab khud ki pehchaan, to teri yaad aayi. 

Jashn ke shor me sabke saath hum bhi chillate rahe,
hua jab bhi sannata, to teri yaad aayi. 

Duur makaamo ki hod me, la-haasil is daud me, hamesha waqt ko dosh diya,
thak ke rukna pada jab, to teri yaad aayi.

Ab hoti hai tabiyat kharab, to koi nahi haal poochta hai,
aaj hua thoda zukhaam, to fir teri yaad aayi. 

- Kartik

On the move

Why am I always in such a hurry? It isn't just me, is it? Everyone is running. I should've stopped... as they say, to smell the roses. All we ever smell is the stink. All we ever see is the filth. And we choose to live with that. And then the day comes when we can't stand the stench any longer. So we choose to move on. 

As I move on today, I can't help but reflect on what I leave behind. And no, it's not the stink that I remember. 

True, there were falls to be had and hurts to be endured. Some wounds festered and a few healed over time, but the scar tissue remained. But today, none of that matters. In hindsight, it never really mattered even then. I was a fool then. Maybe I still am. But at least not in the same ways. I would be fooled again. I might fall again and get my knees scraped. But not in the same places. I'd be wiser. The wounds hopefully wouldn't be so deep then. 

As I move on today, I remove the poultices. But no, it's not the wounds I remember. 

I walk past the garbage dump and take a turn. Preening out from the fencing is a shrub of roses in full bloom. I had walked past them everyday without ever according the sight much time. 

Before I move on today, I stop. And I go closer, bend, and then get down on one knee. Today, I smell the roses. 

And so it began

‘Wake up, beta. We don’t want to be late now’. With these soft words whispered into his ear, his mother gently shook him up. He got up with a start from the edge of his parents’ bed. Rubbing his eyes to squeeze the sopor still filling his body out through them, he squinted up at his mother who was holding the toothbrush ready in her hand. With a quick glance around the bedroom, he saw his father in the far corner sipping his first tea of the morning.

As the young boy, barely a few months over three years, silently walked towards the bathroom, a strange unexplained dread started filling him. Now that he was fully awake, the horrific memory of events of the previous morning came back to him. He shuddered to even think about it. ‘What if it happens again today’, he thought, and his whole body was gripped in consternation. ‘No, they won’t make me suffer like this again’, he heard another voice inside his head say. And he prayed to god with all devotion that it was right; that, perhaps, they weren’t so heartless. They were his parents, after all, and from what he had heard, parents were supposed to love their children. And so he prayed hard, without knowing that his pleas were wasted on a god who doesn’t have any powers outside stories and myths. It would be many years later, and not after this particular morning, when the boy would finally realize the futility of prayers and stop believing.

His mother understood, on seeing her child’s sullen face, that she had a tough task at hand. Having undergone the same pain the day before, she had cursed herself for putting her child through this excruciating rite of passage. But she knew that it had to be done nonetheless. She even had a plan in place to make this transition easier.

‘We are going to the zoo today’, she announced cheerfully to her son.

Still not quite trusting of his mother, the boy’s face conveyed an expression which betrayed both fear and hope. Only when his mother diverted his gaze towards the fancy t-shirt and blue jeans she had laid out for him on the bed, did a smile start playing out on his lips. His worries were all in vain, he thought, and swiftly forgetting the terrors of the past, he got dressed and ready just as his father finished his second tea.

Once firmly seated in his mother’s lap in the front seat of his father’s white Maruti 800, he couldn’t wait to see the cheetahs and the bears and ride on the toy-train at the zoo. ‘What a great start to the day’, he reflected, wondering if the tigers would be asleep at this early hour.

They had been on the road for hardly ten minutes when he started feeling that something was amiss. The same cloud of dread started hovering over him again, threatening to pour all over his happiness. And then it hit him, with all the force of a violent torrent.

‘We are not going to the zoo!’, he mouthed under his breath, and started grappling to free himself from his mother’s lap. As the Maruti slowly came to a halt, he could not believe the extreme treachery of it all when the damned gates of the hallowed school premises loomed up in front of him. Adept hands came down in swift motion and replaced the fancy t-shirt and blue jeans with the white shirt and grey pants of the school uniform. It had all been a part of the plan all along. If he was at home, all he had to do was shed some tears and stir up a commotion, and his grandfather would have come to his rescue. ‘Let the boy be. Why force him when he doesn’t want to go? He’s much too young to be going to school anyway. We’ll send him when he’s ready’, his adoring grandfather would admonish mother and father.

But now, he was trapped in the car. He struggled at first and put up a fight, pleaded and whined, and then resorted to crying desolately in the end.

And so it began.

The six of us

[ A conversation dated 26 December, 2011 ]

Hyde: This is fun.. It's not so bad after all.

Bane: Oh yeah.. So you don't miss me at all then.

Hyde: It's not like that, man..

Bane, getting a little worked up: Oh yeah? Then what's it like?

Hyde: Forget it, man.. You're still trapped there.

Bane: No no.. tell me. I want to know.

Glum, who was sitting silently in a corner all this while, chips in: Hey Bane.. For what it's worth.. I miss you.

Hyde: Shut up Glum, will ya? It's not about you. Okay Bane, I'll tell you. It's not like I don't miss you at all. It's just that I had imagined that I'd be stuck up in some shitty place with no friends. But truth is, it's not really like that. I'm having a good time here. And maybe..

Bane: Maybe what?

Hyde: Maybe I'm not realizing it now. But I guess I'm having it even better than it was with you..

Bane: You smug bastard.. I knew something was amiss..

Hyde: Hey, I still visit once in a while.

Glum: But Hyde, it's not the same now, not without the trio. Why don't you get it!

Hyde: Why do you keep butting in, Glum? Let Bane speak for himself. I'm pretty sure he's not missing much without me. Why don't we just get moving with our lives. And Glum, you should be grateful for all the good times you shared with us and just learn to let go.. Can't be living in the past now, can we!

And now, emerging from the shadows, Darko: Ah! True that. Pearls of wisdom.

Bane: Oh, so you're still lurking around, Darko. I wonder what kept you from rearing your evil head for so long.

Darko: Oh Bane, come on now. This is how you greet your old friend.

Bane: Friend, you say!

Darko: Ouch! You strike right where it hurts. I never left. You were the one who neglected me then. And now, I don't need you. Because you know what, your story is over now. Hyde is here now and he takes good care of me. Isn't that right, Hyde?

Hyde: Not now, Darko. It's enough already dealing with Glum here..

Darko: Blame not me for Glum's problems. You gotta deal with it yourself. I can't help it if doing what I gotta do makes Glum the way he is.

Glum: I can go away. But you do know yourself that Darko needs me. And so do you. You might not see me for a while, but you can be sure that I'm only hiding in a closet somewhere, ready to come out and play any time.

Darko (with a smirk on his face): Ha! Guess it's high time you actually came out of the closet, Glum.

Bane: Okay Darko, we don't need your caustic jokes now.

Darko: No no no, my dear Bane. Now is the most opportune time for it.

Bane: Don't you..

Hyde: Let it rest, Bane. He can't change who he is. And neither can we. It's best we come to terms with reality as soon as humanly possible.

Darko: That would be best for all of us. And let that stupid Hart know that too. He's the one who needs this advice the most.

Hyde (laughing): Yeah.. you're right.

Bane: Where is Hart, by the way? Wasn't he too supposed to be here? You did call him, right, Hyde?

Hyde: Yeah, I did. But you know him. Never really complies with what you tell him. But don't worry, he'll hopefully figure out soon what he wants.

Darko: And I need to see K. too. It's finally time to have a sit down with him. Questions need to be asked. Answers must be given. We can not put this off any longer. Till then, adios amigos.

Hyde: So long..

Guitar Man

he listened to the guitar man and thought he could be one too
he found meaning in his words and dreamed of writing too
sometimes grew inspired and penned down a few
most of it was crap and none of it was new

he tried to sing along and add some music to it
that didn't help much and he ended up feeling like shit
the spark was there but he wished for more fire
searching for that light to get him higher

they said he was a nice guy and that's what he thought too
he believed them but knew not all of it was true
for deep down he felt under-compensated
waiting for something that was much belated

he longed for his friends though he had friends here too
spending long nights trying to make the perfect brew
having until now only watched the hawks that flew
he realized that it was now his turn too

Sleepy Saturday

Ever had one of those days where you sleep right through them? I mean, you've had a long hard week of work. Okay, not that much hard work, but still a long week. The Manic Monday, which you entirely spent going through the clutter of a few hundred mails which had gathered in your mailbox over the weekend. You didn't even read all of them, but cared enough to just mark them as read. The Torrid Tuesday, on which you actually finished up that piece of work you were supposed to do the previous week. And the Wishful Wednesday, which you spent with conceited ideas about the grandness of the work that you're doing and delusions about the meaningful purpose of the sedentary life that you lead. Then the Truthful Thursday, when you actually realized that you're an inconsequential speck in the universe and what you do (or don't do) doesn't mean shit to anyone else. And lastly, the Favoured Friday, when all you had hatching in your mind were plots to leave early from work, so you can go get sloshed in some shady corner of the city. Well, you get the drift...

And now you have Sleepy Saturday ahead of you, with nothing much that you've planned to do. Of course, you had plans of catching that movie and finishing up that book. But then, eventually you do give in. After only twenty minutes into the movie or fifteen pages into the book, dopiness overpowers you. And you let it do so since it's simply so blissful. Slam the laptop screen shut, or fling away the book... Okay, now I don't really do that. I safely keep aside my precious laptop after putting it on hibernation, or carefully place the book on the bedside table after placing the bookmark, and then I get on with it. Switch over to the dark side, if you know what I mean.

Fast forward n hours (who cares how many hours you slept), and you are sitting up in bed, fully energized, raring to go and conquer the world, and that's when you glance at your watch. The entire day has passed and now you have only the whole night ahead of you. And you obviously can't go back to sleep, because...well, now you can't sleep. It's like being left high and dry with a boner and all you can do is take matters into your own hand. That's what you might actually do to while away time once you've woken up like this in the middle of the night. Obviously, you're hungry too, so you cook up a quick omelette to nibble on and brew a cup of tea for yourself. The chai is an absolute must because that's the first thing I want on waking up, irrespective of the iniquitous hour I wake up at.

Then you finally get round to watching that movie you wanted to, go on to watch a couple of tv series episodes too, check your gmail and facebook to find other nocturnal creatures out there, get bored and shut down your laptop. But the night is still young and you're still not sleepy enough to go back to sleep again. Ah, what else is there to be done in the world, you wonder. Might as well try writing something which you're pretty sure will end up as a superfluous rant. And congratulations, you've succeeded at that.

Should probably get on with the book now and wait for Smug Sunday. Oh, it's here already!

सितारों से आगे जहां और भी हैं

मंजिल  मिल  गयी  है  तुम  को, अपनी  मंजिल  की  राह  पे  हम  भी  हैं
मंजिलों  से  आगे  कारवां  और  भी  हैं

की  थी  जो  शुरुआत  तुम  ने, अंजाम  की  तलाश  में  हम  भी  हैं
इस  कहानी  से  आगे  किस्से  और  भी  हैं

थोड़े  तन्हा  तुम  हो, थोड़ी  तन्हाई  के  नशे  में  हम  भी  हैं
तन्हाईओं  से  आगे  मुलाकातें  और  भी  हैं

नींद  ना  आई  तुम  को, जागे  हुए  से  हम  भी  हैं
सपनों  से  आगे  सवेरे  और  भी  हैं

The Joke

Someone tells you a joke. It’s a good one. So you laugh, obviously.  Others have a good laugh too. You laugh because the joke seems funny to you, primarily because you have never heard it before. Till this point, all is well with the human race and its kind. Probably barring a few with loose bowel motions and blocked toilets …

The next day, he tells you a joke again. Your instinctive reaction is to laugh. You haven’t even digested the punch line yet, but the smile is already there on your stupid face. Maybe because your face isn’t the only part of you that’s stupid …

But wait, you’ve heard this one before. His band of castrated followers is already in roaring splits of laughter, congratulating their leader on his impeccable sense of humour, clapping at the very novelty of the idea behind the joke, and wiping away tears wrenched out of their eyes from laughing so hard.

And so it goes … day in and day out. He repeats the same jokes at every opportunity that he gets to open his mouth. The jokes soon become cruel. The neutered men laugh. The women laugh too, obviously. You give in, and laugh along with them. What a way to benumb your brains, and that too without any help from recent movies starring Salman Khan.

And you wonder, maybe this is how he castrated the others who then joined his coterie. By repeating his same stupid jokes to them every day.


With all due respect, your jokes, as Venus Williams once rightly said, “... are like my penis, everybody has heard about it and they laugh uncontrollably. It's not so funny after it's shoved down your throat daily, though.”


Edit: Obviously, Venus Williams didn't actually say that. I was kidding.

Serena did.

भीड़ में अकेला

दिल तो बस धड़कते ही रह गए

भीड़ में बस अकेले ही रह गए

लभ रहे खामोश, नम रही आँखें

और कहनी थी जो बात, वो तो कोई और ही कह गए

तनहाइयों में आपको ढूंडते ही रह गए

सूनी इन गलियों में भटकते ही रह गए

ख़त्म हो गए रास्तें, मंज़िल फिर भी रही दूर

और काटनी थी साथ जो उम्र, उसे अकेले ही सह गए


पीछे जिनको छोड़ आये थे, वो याद बन के रह गए

जो हमारे थे पास, वो बस बात बन के रह गए

तय कर लिया था कितना, और कितनी थी राह बाकी

बस कदमों के निशाँ हम गिनते ही रह गए


लफ्ज़ों के जाल हम बुनते ही रह गए

सुलझने की कोशिश में और उलझते ही रह गए

ऊँचे थे ख्वाब, कम पड़ गए थे हौसले

और पार करना था जो समंदर, उसी में डूब के बह गए


दिल तो बस धड़कते ही रह गए

भीड़ में बस अकेले ही रह गए

webcomics and me

With a lot of free time on my hands, I have been reading a lot of web comics lately. So I thought of doing a quick compilation of my favorites. Now, don't worry.. this isn't going to be a review of each of them. It's up to you to explore them and take your pick depending on your tastes and ahem.. your level of intellect.

xkcd obviously takes the prime spot and it seems sacrilegious to mention it in a list along with other earthly entities. Doing so would be a direct insult to the great man Randall Munroe himself.

Here's a list of the others I've been following:

• Abstruse Goose
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
• PhD Comics
• Dinosaur Comics
• The Testimonial Comics
• Questionable Content
• BROWN sharpie
• brainstuck
• Indexed
• left-handed toons
• A Geek Story
• Not Funny

Now, coming to the part for which I'm actually writing this post...

There's this one strip from smbc which I particularly liked. It features an artist, a scientist and a mathematician. But hey, why isn't an engineer's perspective there... So, I just added one last panel to the comic to complete the picture.

good shit, right?

Conversation between a Believer and an Atheist

This exchange took place between Human 1 (abbreviated as H1) who is a believer, and Human 2 (abbreviated as.. yes you guessed it right, H2) who is an atheist, on an idle Thursday afternoon in the air-conditioned premises of an undisclosed location.


H1:
Listen to 'Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol'
Nirvana
awesome lyrics

H2:
dude!!! How the fuck are the lyrics awesome?

H1:
Because it doesn't need to make sense
It is just written the way the mind works
the GIT-GWC thing is funky

H2:
First up, it's not even a song. Obviously, he's in a drunk and drugged state. Its just a jam session they are having and he just keeps rambling and ranting on the go. Making up the words and just saying out what comes to mind (although you might say that shows his 'awesome' creativity and poetry that he can make up these impromptu lyrics)

H1:
Yea, agreed, maybe he is drugged, but we don't know for sure. And if you listen to it carefully, it does make sense on the whole. It succeeds in creating an effect without the words actually saying it. And if not his creativity, I admire his guts to actually turn this into an actual song with guys like me liking it.

H2:
Agreed, it makes sense, the same Cobain ideas are repeated here too.
First para: is about injecting drugs (use once, discard syringe, press down the injection).
Then again: no creativity left and his same suicide crap.

But seriously, what guts are you talkin about?! He didn't mean it to be a song... just recorded a jam session. Putting it in an album doesn't mean he's got guts.

Accept it, he was just a useless junkie like every other drugged bum on the streets.

H1:
Its not suicide crap, in this song.. its about just being stupid and vulnerable.. and speaking out what you are thinking without any pretence. I don't see any scope of creativity left to squeeze in when you're not pretending.

And maybe he was a junkie, maybe he was useless, but he had the courage to shout it out in front of everyone.. he wasn't just your regular junkie limited to the confines of his room, trying to fight his fears.. he accepted his fears and faults in front of millions.. that is guts.

H2:
Okay.. I can't help but grin now.. wanted to laugh out loud though
for the first time, LOL makes sense

H1:
That's one way of saying you find the argument futile now

H2:
Yes

H1:
Though I'm not so sure of the reason

H2:
Agreed, he might have had more talent in his foreskin than I have in my entire body. But definitely it was less than the amount so many other singers, guitarists, musicians, songwriters of his time have in theirs. So my only point is that I find him to be an average singer/songwriter/guitarist..

But that's just my view. I accept that you and others might like his music. But I find myself unable to appreciate it.

H1:
I never said he's the most talented, agreed on that. He might just be average. We are all intellectual men here striving to attain greater heights of pseudo-intelligence.. so whatever helps us.. all cool..

H2:
Okay.
Listen to 'Ziggy Stardust'
David Bowie

H1:
Ok

H2:
So we end the chat by rounding up a full circle.
Remember where this started..

H1:
Are the lyrics awesome too?

H2:
I like the music better

imperfect encounter

and I look back on that day, when you first saw me
I think it was who I was with, yes that was the key
and I found it hard, I found it hard to breathe
I think it was the stare, yes that did it for me

and it was a weird night, an unusual place to be
'Love the place', said I, 'Totally', said she
and in that moment, it was all I could see
seemed like a scene, straight out of a movie

and so we sat, drinking my assam tea
you wanted black coffee, but I didn't agree
and we talked, we talked of bird and bee
surely the wrong time to put forth my plea

and I was a fool, in more ways than one
losing what I had, and ending up with none
should have kept shut, but I blocked out the sun
the man who knew too much, but felt like an empty gun

The Start of an Untitled Story

Earphones plugged in, The Sound of Silence playing, and the volume turned down to a level that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s voices were barely a whisper, he was all set. Pulling up the wooden chair, he cleared the desk top of all the usual clutter and set out just a scroll pad, carefully positioning it at the center of the table. This was supposedly the perfect setting to finally sit down and write his story. He picked up a pencil and touched the tip to the top left margin of the sheet in front of him.

It was at this moment that it struck him. Until now, he had always been very vague; so much so that even he had trouble deciphering his own obscure thoughts. And he also knew why. He needed a unifying theme... a motif. And not just for his story. Lucidity was something that had constantly eluded him. It was not that he didn’t have any ideas. But so muddled up they were that giving a pragmatic close to them was inconceivable.  And with every single idea, came its posse of doubts, fear and incertitude; those floating nimbus clouds addling the otherwise clear blue skies of his subconscious.

A torrent of thoughts was flooding the streets of his head. He found himself digressing from the task at hand. Maybe it was the words of the song refraining him from focusing. Perhaps Ludwig van would have been a better pick for this setting. He reached for the pause button on his iPod. The music stopped, but he left the earphones where they were. He liked it that way.

The pencil started shaping letters precariously, giving way to words that he hoped would eventually turn into a story.

Garden State

He never thought that this could ever happen to him. He had thought himself incapable of it. He had always assumed it to be the kind of stuff that one comes across only in fables. Hell, he had even scoffed at the thought of thinking about it.

But deep inside, there was still this little voice, which now he came to realize, seldom lied. The voice which he had always stifled. And he also knew that it would grow loud and strong one day, strong enough to stop him from ignoring it any further.

Now the time had finally arrived. Arriving in a manner which shattered all his notions, notions he had always known to be false. Notions he had willfully allowed to hoard up, never gathering the courage to face up to the truth and free his cluttered mind of them.

He knew reality was cruel. So he chose to escape.

And then it came, shaking him up from slumber, like a blast of ice cold water on a January morning. More cruel than he had thought it to be.


I snap back. Only to realize that I had long overslept. The window is no longer open, the moment is long gone. Evaporated is the half-chance. Things happen when you least expect them to. The real troubles in life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blindsides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Into the Dawn

As I stood staring

Staring at the stars

The endless sky spread above me

Below me, nothing but naked blades of grass

And I sat thinking

Remembering the left behind past

Most of which I wanted to forget

Albeit some moments which I wished would last

As I lay mystified

Wondering if this was it

Whether there was more that I could have done

Or had I done my bit

And I found my heart discovering

Courage to again stand up on my feet

It was time to start afresh

And wake up from the dream

Beyond the Blur

Where pleasure ends and pain begins

The lines are blurring

Waiting for the letters that no one sends

Life passes me by

Speaking into the phone that is my past

It is my own voice which echoes

Nothing but nothingness at last

As I go through my death throes

Staring into the darkness

A ghostly image it is that I see

It disappears as I reach out towards it

And I realize that it is no one but me

As I gaze into that mirror

Wondering of things that could have been

The pleasure has ended and the pain has begun

No line between the two can now be seen

a little pep talk

Do not assume anything.

Do all you can with what you have. Give it your hundred percent and never back out. If there's even a bleak chance... a glimmer of hope... if the door is just slightly ajar, go for it and push your way through. Do not just sit back assuming that it's all over and you can't do anything about it.

Do not assume that even after trying, you are going to end up failing. If you do have to assume, assume it to be positive. Do not be pessimistic about it. Do not cover up for your laziness by doing so. Anything and everything can be done if you want to do it. It’s not the laziness. It is fear. Do not hide it behind your facade of indifference. Instead, stop being afraid. The first step is the hardest to take. Stop coming up with excuses to avoid confronting challenges. You have the motivation. And you have whatever else it takes to do it. Do not let the fear overpower all of that. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take".

Stop playing the victim. It’s very easy to pass on the blame. Don’t say that it was destined to be that way. Take definitive action to correct whatever's wrong.

Don’t shit yourself into not believing in yourself. The course which your life takes is in your own hands. Stand up and take responsibility for it. Don’t just let it pass you by.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

“Invictus” - William Ernest Henley

Of stress, randomness and everything that’s wrong with me

I don’t know why I keep going back to it. Right after I do it, I promise to myself... never again. But then, as they say, the thing about promises is that they are meant to be broken (so clichéd isn’t it). But what if these promises have been made out to your own self? It’s easy lying to others, but what one should try to achieve, is to always be true to oneself.

wait a minute… what am I doing..? Why do I always start out to write something and then drift off to these vague philosophies of mine, thus ending up with something totally different from what I had set forth to write in the first place. Why can’t my mind just focus on the job at hand.. Actually, that’s one more problem that I need to address. There’s just so many of them. I can never seem to get ahead of them. Anyway, I should learn to rise above these trivialities.

I’m sounding too random now. Time to snap back... remember that thing I mentioned earlier. The one after which I promise myself that I’ll stay away…

I’ve realized that sadness or stress doesn’t make me give in to it. In fact, in such a state, I tend to be more of a fighter (or at least that’s what I’d like to believe) and put in that extra effort to see myself through the rough.

I guess I do it when I am bored. When I have nothing good to do and see everyone else around me buried in useful productive work, I flip (and that is one more thing about myself that I need to change). That is when I try to create this illusion of happiness and importance around me.

I’m sorry that this whole post has turned out to be so arbitrary that now even I can’t understand what I wanted to write (another thing that is wrong with me, and this is the biggest one – I don’t know what I want). So just to inject some semblance of sanity into all this gibberish, I’d just say that this “thing” I’ve been talking about… it could be anything. It can imply different meanings to different individuals. It’s anything you perceive to be negative in your life (yeah, more of my philosophical crap).

And as for me, my name is Kartik and I’ve been clean for a month now.

“what do you do when you feel stressed or sad?
 

I pretend I'm a little kid again and I'm sneaking through my childhood home. I try to remember how doors opened, how closets smelled, how floors squeaked.”
 

(from 'pearls before swine')

Clarifications

It seems that my first post was taken very seriously by some persons who felt uncomfortable reading what I have written. This calls for some clarifications to be made…

I am not suffering from any actual serious suicidal tendencies. (To even think that I would be driven to such extreme measures… but then these are people who really care about me)

The above point should have been clear by the fact that I explicitly mentioned in my earlier post that I tend to sensationalize stuff. So, in effect, the last post was just an overstated description of my state of mind, which I guess overshot a little too much.


I should also pronounce at the very outset that…

My first post, in a way, also sets the tone for my future posts. In effect, there would be more of such dark and obscure stuff written here. This is because when I’m happy, I don’t feel the need to write about it because well… I’m just happy and enjoying life. It is only when I am sad or restless, that I need to give vent to all the trapped negative energy inside of me. And this I would be doing by expressing myself here. But in no way does this mean that my posts would be gloomy and depressing, as everything I write should be seen in a humorous light. No need to get all serious about it.

I guess this much should suffice for now.


“Through humour, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”
- Bill Cosby

“Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
- Arundhati Roy

Suicidal

It all started with birju’s GTalk status message reading "wish I had a gun", which prompted me to give shape to the strikingly similar thoughts already wandering in my head. Immediately, I changed my status message to "I would borrow it from birju and shoot myself"

Suicidal thoughts were filling my head since the morning after I had given a particular exam. But I don’t think that the reason for this state of mind was just this exam alone. I was already on the edge and this was just the extra push needed... the last straw. Of late, sitting alone in my room, trying not so hard to concentrate on the job at hand (usually studying), I had found myself pondering over philosophical questions about life and if it was worth all the effort. I would thus drift away into the surreal only to suddenly realize that a lot of time had been wasted in this futile exercise, and I would then try to shake myself awake from that reverie.

And again today, I found myself falling down that same abyss of depression and self-loathing all over again.

I guess writing about it and talking and discussing about it helps, as it distracts from all that is wrong with just me. It helps me in staying away from all the seemingly ‘bad’ things which one would resort to when in a similar depressed state.

I know that I exaggerate and get all dramatic about it, but then it helps me behave normally again, and as a friend put it, “thus life becomes a bit interesting”. And that is exactly what I have tried to do here in this post.

I know that it is just a fleeting phase which, like everything else in this temporal existence called life, would pass. (see… I told you… I just over-dramatized it again. I love doing that)


I never expected that this, a piece titled ‘Suicidal’, would be my first blog-post. But as it turns out, life is so freaking unpredictable!