Void !!

I open my eyes, have a look at the watch on the table. I see the watch reads 4 am. How did I wake up so early? Wait,  when did I sleep?  Have  I been  awake whole night?  What was the last time I saw the watch, was it 3:30 am or was it 3:45? Damn, it is too much information to remember?  I realize something is missing. What is that? There is a feeling of overwhelming emptiness. Nothing seems to matter. Nothing seems worth doing anything. Nothing seems pleasant. Nothing seems bad. Nothing hurts. Well, does really nothing hurt? Or may be something hurts that I don't know about? Could it be I am happy at something I don't know about? Well, I don't know, I am empty. I feel nothing. So What do I do? How do I survive this day again?  I see there is this huge shade of darkness looming somewhere. Where is that? Is it somewhere out in the street? Or is it somewhere in the sky? Or wait, is it all inside me?

Somehow manage to get up, well  there was hardly any alternative. I go to bath room, be done with daily ablutions, take a shower, look at the watch again. Damn, its still 4:30, now what? How about I eat some apples? I like apples, don't I? Wait, when did I have apples last time? Do I like apples? You know what, lets have some orange. Why would I have oranges? Let's have some noodles. Damn, its again so much to process. I can never decide what would I have. Hmm, wait a minute, let's have all of them. Am I crazy, how can I have all of them. I am already gaining weight. You know what, I can't process it right now, I will have everything, screw the weight for now.  I have an apple, an orange while my noodles are getting cooked.  Damn, I really spent a whole bloody paragraph on what I had for a freaking breakfast. 

I think I should go for a walk, that should help me feel better. Or well, it should make me feel something. I go out of building, where do I go left or right? Damn, again such a big freaking decision to make. Can I cut myself in two parts and send both in different directions? Screw that, lets go right. Na, lets go left. You know what, lets screw it. Let's go straight today. And you now what, lets just turn back from where the road ends so that no more decisions about left/right to be made. 

Damn, finally back to the bloody building again, You know what, now let's not think, lets just follow our routine we should be okay. We should be okay to survive the day.

So I reach office at some point, I find someone shouting at someone. Damn, why does this guy need to shout. Why does he simply not understands shouting won't get him what he wants.  Damn, am I the only sane person on the planet? Wait, If I think everyone else is insane, than I must be insane, right? That's only logical. So I establish I am insane. Well, now we I am getting somewhere. I make up a quote in my mind "Insanity is the best form of sanity" and I have a smile. WTF, what does this even mean? Let's screw it again. With this the smiles too vanishes, is replaced with a gloomy look. Wait, why am I gloomy now? I wish I knew.

Why am I such a disappointment? Why do I suck so much? Why can I never do anything right. Have I done anything right in my life? Why did I let people make me feel bad? Well, may be its not people its just me who is supposed to feel bad. There could be something genetic wrong with me. I can't be blamed for that. Can I be?  Damn, why don't I have a freaking aim in my life? Everyone has got an aim. Let's set us an aim. My aim is to become batman. Damn, I am day-dreaming again,  how would I become Batman? Let's pick up a simpler aim.  Thought process keeps on going with no conclusion.

Well, let's just give this a rest for today !!

Sunrises and Sunsets

We used to go to my village quite often when I was a kid. We used to sleep under the skies as modern life amenities were mostly non-existent there. We used to make cricket balls using old clothes. We used to manufacture our own bats by collecting woods from the trees. We used to find our ways to find some paisas to get some sweets from the village merchant. I literally remember I took 1 paisa once to the merchant and got a sweet for that.

There was a time I wanted to fly kites. It was a kite season in the place where I used to stay with my parents. The kite season happened to be at different time in my village, hence finding kites from market turned out to be a daunting task.  We collected old plastic bags, tore pieces from them and started making kites. Now all we had to do was find some string to fly the kite with. Luckily we found some metered long string somewhere. We couldn't fly kite too far as the string wasn't big. It was fun nevertheless.

During those times first light of sun or voice of buffalo used to wake me up. I don't remember I ever slept past 5:30.  I used to see sun rising above a distant mountain. During earlier childhood days I wished someday I will go and have a closer look at where the sun comes from. My guess was that it probably just hides behind mountain at night.

I remember seeing last light of sun while I was eagerly waiting for my turn to bat in an ongoing cricket game. Those days we wished sun light to last a bit longer so that we can play some more.

It's a wonder how much things have changed. I hardly visit village anymore. I have never flown a kite in years. Never think of actually playing cricket.

The biggest change is, I have not seen sun's first and last rays in years (or at least never gave it a thought even if I did rarely).  Well, things surely have changed a lot !!

Back to blogger

I have not been writing much lately. Small ideas do come to mind now and then but I have never been penning them down.

Good news my followers (not sure if anyone really exist ;-). I am gonna write something on an average daily now onwards. The posts are going to be quick and short. Just a dump of my ideas may be. So here we go.

Human beings continue to fascinate me. God created us or we evolved ourselves over slow and painful process of evolution. It doesn't matter which theory you believe, take your pick. In any case we got a super complex brain. Despite being the most important part of our human body this is the least understood part.
Do we know what really goes on in this super complex wired machine? Why do we feel sad? Why do we feel happy? Why can some people are incapable to feel anything? Does it really matter if we feel something? We often get told that its our feelings which make us human. But what if we had no feelings? Shall we be God? Shall we achieve Nirvana?

I have read recently that even though we don't understand brain we can modify its wiring by deliberate effort. I still need to understand how that actually works. If it really does work can we really make a curriculum for schools where all kids are trained those skills and by default they can have a similar wiring of brain resulting in similar exhibition of human behavior.
We can create practically a new species, a better species or worse? Again take your pick.
I for one would like to correct the single most flow in me if I could. Any ideas what that is? May be you and I can figure that out together some day.

Yet Another year?

This is my first post in 2014. The year has almost half gone. Looks like I have never managed time or simply never managed to gather motivation to come back and write on this blog.

Life has been going as it has gone for a long long time now. Has this year been even worse so far? Probably yes, may be not. Good and bad are just difficult to classify that easily. There is always a possibility that what we classify as good might really be bad in long term and vice versa.

I have seen people broken, shattered and bouncing back them stronger than ever, so bad things made them stronger? Or those things were really good as that's how they were supposed to happen?  So things which make us stronger, could they have been good even if they didn't  seem like? There is an old saying "Whatever doesn't kill us only makes us stronger".

Anyways, has 2014 been good so far? Or bad? That's a mystery which will get unfolded in coming months or years may be.

Lets make a promise at least in all this chaos. Let's get together each week and write something down?

Nostalgic last day of 2013

Sometimes in life you never want somethings yet they happen. You try desperately to avoid them, yet they happen. You cry, plead, yet they happen.
Today I happened to visit a certain City after 1 year and 3-4 days. As I was passing through the streets it seemed just like I was there just a  few minutes back. Every memory was as clear as crystal. The task for which I was supposed to be there also brought more nostalgic memories of life.  Last 6 years of my life kept on coming one by one to mind as I walked a certain area in this certain city. I am not to say that the memories were bad, or they were good. They are just memories. I was not afraid of getting them back, I kept on walking and walking and kept on getting them back. I won't say that I wanted to relive them or I miss them. Neither will I say that I don't want to relive them or I don't miss them. They are just memories. Each step I walked brought more of them. These are the things which made me who I am today. Now, I won't say that I am a better person than I was before them. I also won't say that they made me a worse person. They just made me who I am. They have played a very big role in who I am now. Why should I be scared of them? I am not.
Many times I turned left/right, I know that the people who are part of these memories are not left/right now. Then why did I do it? Well, I don't know. Did I wish they were around today as well? May be,  Or may be, I did it for no purpose. These are just memories, should they really mean anything? May be or may be not. Should they have any impact on my life? May be or may be not.

Anyways putting a lot of these in a bag stored in my mind, I am leaving this city for now. Should be back some day again then I will gather more of them and store them in a different bag in my mind or may be in same bag?

Let's Welcome 2013 finally

A lots of thoughts coming to mind but not getting to write them down all. So well, lets welcome 2013 now finally :-)

Heroes and Villains

We are so obsessed with watching, reading about movies/stories where good triumphs over evil. Since tender age we have been used to watching gargantuan, abominable looking demons being slayed by beautiful, brave humans/gods symbolizing victory of good over bad.

In my case, I was very fond of watching many mythological television programs. Well, those guys used to show good and bad in such a transparent way that even though being a kid I was able to comprehend almost everything that was going on. I was able to appreciate that a gargantuan, demon crying "Ha Ha Ha" deserves to be teared apart with use of a super powerful arrow or deserves to be beheaded by a Chakra.

Even besides mythological programs, life used to be so simple on TV. Villains were like Gabbar Singh who deserved no sympathy for amputating hands of poor Thakur.

Anyways, the point is that it was so easy to differentiate between good and evil.

Is life really so simple? Can we easily distinguish between good and bad? Can't a good person be bad or a good person be bad? Truth is, we can never really say that a person is absolutely good or completely bad. If we believe in theory of God residing in everyone, it becomes easier to comprehend that everybody can be good and everybody can be bad.

In real life, we can never find pure villains and pure heroes. The fact is, it is circumstances which make someone hero or villain. Movies have shown this very nicely in recent Hollywood flicks like MegaMind, Despicable me. I happened to like both. Even now, days of monsters are far from over. They live on in forms like Voldermort.

When I think of a villains who has touched my life real deeply one name stands apart. That’s Andrei Taganov. That man had (or has?) been my role model in so many things. The man was initially portrayed as Villain by Ayn Rand in her novel We the Living; as we keep on reading novel he turns into the hero and hero ends up turning into villain. The transformation spanned across the novel was really touching. A hardcore communist; who is supposed to be antagonist of objectivist Ayn Rand turns out to be hero by the end of novel. That’s something which is really mind boggling. So what did this guy really do which affected me so deeply that I used to have a note stuck on monitor of my computer saying “Be Andrei Taganov”. Well, let’s go to a nice webpage to understand this.

http://therationalfool.blogspot.in/2006/03/conversation-with-kira-argounova.html

Let’s take some part of this page if you don’t want to read it or it disappears by when you read it.

Fool: At Andrei's grave you had wondered if you had killed Andrei Taganov. Did you kill Andrei, Kira?
Kira: Yes, I think I killed Andrei…I was definitely an accomplice to his murder.
Fool:What was Andrei Taganov to you?
Kira: Just a friend.
Fool: And you were just Andrei's friend, too?
Kira: No, I was Andrei's love, his life, his only one, and his highest reverence.
Fool: Kira, you killed your friend, who held you in his highest reverence and to whom you were his life? Why?

Fool: But he was not your life, and you didn't hold him in your highest reverence?
Kira: No, I wonder why I did not.

Fool: Kira, the last time you saw Andrei, when you ran after him in the snow, without a coat, without a care about what Leo might think, you were going to tell Andrei something that you couldn't tell him in Leo's presence. What did you want to tell him?
Kira: I was afraid of losing Andrei…for ever. I was afraid that I would never see him alive again. I couldn't bear the thought of losing him. Andrei was everything I thought Leo was, Leo could have been. I didn't see it so clearly until then, what might have been between Andrei and me, but it was too late. I wanted Andrei to know that.
Fool: Is that what Andrei meant, when he said, "If we don't say anything - and just leave it to… to our silence, knowing that we both understand, and that we still have that much in common?

I think it would be really difficult for me to find words which explain what I liked in Andrei with perspicuity. I can just say that I think (used to think?) that if I ever love a girl, it has to be unshakable, perpetual, and most importantly absolutely unconditional as Andrei’s love for Kira did. He held Kira in highest reverence till he was alive. He helped her in any possible way he thought he could; even though she failed to return the same. Well, to get real feeling of all this you got to read the novel.

The sad part of the story was, the destiny Miss Rand chose for Andrei and off course Kira as well. That’s why I decided to think of an alternative ending for the story when I think of this novel. In my version of story, when Leo runs away, Kira ultimately realizes that Andrei is really what she thought Leo ever was and they decide to live happily ever after.

It’s just a pity that Kira failed to see Leo and Andrei both for what they were rather than living in her own fantastical world. But well, that’s how delusional people become in some cases. More on that delusion later someday.