My humble apologies

I’ve been neglecting this site badly I know, however there is a reason.

It’s taken me some time to get this post done for many reasons. It’s stirred up all sorts of memories, and every time I tried to do it, I would just freeze and look at the screen. It’s a bit disjoint, and not particularly well written, but I needed to get it done while my hands would work properly. Quality isn’t my concern at this point of time.



It should take a few hundred pounds to crush a human skull... Human emotion however is a far more delicate thing.

When you've re-developed a closeness with people that was gone for a while, and you've fallen deeper in love with someone totally unexpected, is it right to leave anyway? Some might say yes, if the regret of not following your dreams is irreparable. If it's meant to be it will still be. Others say, why chance losing a good thing, if you're happy where you are, why go away to seek something you're not even sure you're looking for and chance losing everything you've gained, or risk it being forever changed.

When you're trying to make sure your parents aren't disappointed in you, and that you do the things you know most others only can dream about, and you don't want to put too much pressure on a wonderful and loving relationship...yet, you don't want to leave all the comforts of home, close friends and a life where you have just started to give something back in return, what do you do?

Well, I go anyway...and I cry, and I laugh, and I learn, and I constantly question if I've made the right decision, and hope that one day, I will know if these ghosts have been laid to rest.

The more you look at the clock, the slower time seems to go. It will uncover the hiding place of your mind and torture it with every second. My breakup has left me with a sense that time has become unhinged. I drift between imagination and reality, between past and present with increasing ease. I feel the bolts of time slowly coming away from the breakup. You can speed it up, you can slow it down. You can even freeze a moment. But you can't be rewind time. You can't undo what is done. Yet still I prayed while I was on the floor yesterday night. I did what many people do and tried to make a deal with God. To take me back to the beginning. I knew it was futile yet still I did it. That’s what I was doing the whole 2 hours. Waiting for an answer. An answer that never came.

Maybe I will never move on, maybe I will. People always tell me that time heals all. They lie. Wounds like this never heal, they burn with you for the rest of your life. Maybe I can never move on until I find another reason to love someone else. Why can't be life be simple? Because no one said it was going to be easy. Because at end of it, we're the ones that make it hard on ourselves for whatever reason we cling on to. That is the price we pay for being human. The price for the ability to feel.

This is the price I pay for giving myself so completely to a person and changed everything in my life. There are things in life that are worth the lifetime of misery they give. Misery or not, I don't look back in regret. For those moments that I truly lived, it was worth it. Every single moment of it.

There is a part of my that wants to let all my burdens out. A part of me that needs to talk to someone that can relate to what I am. It doesn't change the fact I still have to deal with everything myself, but it does change the state of mind I'm in, that allows me to do exactly what I need to do.

Yet, I'm here in my room, trying everything that I can to keep the disorder that are my thoughts from spilling out. Maintaining that self control has taken so much of my time, I find myself unable to focus on anything else in its entirety. So what's left is a trail of unfinished business and a wave of needful things approaching.

This is why I hate it when people wish me well. No one ever follows up to give any kind of comfort in any form. Where is an emotional outlet when you most need one? Not on my front door that's for sure.

Been a while

I'm suffering from CBU - Complete Blog Unproductiveness. I also seem to be afflicted with a bad case of procrastination. I've been putting off everything. I used to take such joy in accomplishing tasks as soon as they were presented. Whatever.

I'd love to have something exciting or funny to write about but again CBU. I have moved to a different city. I guess that's exciting. I've not been here before but I'm not as psyched up for the shift as I could be. This is where the procrastination thing comes into play. I have a lot to do to get a house ready to move in. I've got to pick out what I need to get from home. Have I done anything. What do you think?

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with how i've managed to spend a week here....

blankness (reviewing things I've done).
passing (october).
cutting (corners).
hating (sometimes).
choosing (sides).
sitting (car, seat, floor, bed).
screaming (no).
dealing (aces, clubs).
growing (beard. french)
wishing (cry).
loving (most times).
sleeping (hardly).
cussing (myself).
missing (life, fun).
wearing (uniform shirts).
listening (sean paul... why?)
dreaming (future, past).
yelling (i have subordinates now).
cheering (targets).
lying (bed).
smelling (salts).
forbidding (schemes).
worrying (targets).
smiling (mirrors).
thinking (yeah?).
spending (too much).
aching (legs).
waiting (finish, come, when).

drained.

Still a long way off on the non-procrastinating agenda.

Well, atleast I've blogged.
Baby steps.

Writing it in stone

(the following: extracts from gmails i have mailed myself over the years)

(28 Jan, 2005)
My first real breakup. Its happening right in front of me. I never thought that it was going to be like a bike crash. I have slammed the breaks and am skidding towards an emotional impact.

Is this all my fault. I don't know. It is funny what goes through your mind at a time like this. The three and a half years we spent together. The promises we made. The holidays we took. The things we did. Together.

(04 Feb)
I stood right there when she told me that she's sorry she didn't think she can make me happy. Maybe we should break up. Thats when i got angry.

(20 Feb)
My first year at b school wanes. In the weeks that followed the breakup i have tried to figure out what went wrong. Why did we break up. Maybe one day it'll seem funny, but the reasons seem so small. One day she's with me and and saying i love you and the next week she's with someone else. Probably saying the same things.

What is love by the way. And is it really that fleeting.

(09 Mar)
I live in student accommodation on campus. It is basically a three storeyed concrete block housing some one hundred and thirty hormone crazed students. This is the haunting period. The time when the demons of regret come for you.

(14 Jul)
to think about her with some else.... it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked from the room.

(17 Jul)
I just cant fall asleep anymore. The more i try to sleep the less tired i feel. I am wide awake. Have tried everything. Suddenly there are eight extra hours.

My life has been extended by a third.

I want time to pass quickly. Instead i am being forced to witness the passing of every second of every hour. I want the hurt i feel to go away. Now i have even more time on my hands.

More time to think about her.

(30 Sep)
I rode for hours with no real place to go. I watched the landscape slowly change as it clung to the last hours of sunlight before leading me to yet another sleepless night. I have started to read all the books i wished i had the time to read. With the extra hours i even have time to re-read my favourite ones.

(14 Dec)
That moment. When you see someone who can share with you all you've wanted to say, in what she writes. That it is so beautiful that you cant help but stare. Imagine as i do with the world on pause, it becomes very easy to understand the concept of beauty. Especially when it is in front of you.... Captured.... Unaware.

(18 Jun)
I want to savour these moments. To live in these moments for a week. But i can't stop it. Only slow it. And before i knew it, she was gone. Logged offline. And after the dawn passed i felt like the last person on earth. it is the first time in a long time that my heart feels the other meaning for the word crush.

(22 Jul)
She is never far from my mind.

(03 Aug)
The minutes turned into hours. The hours into days and the days joined the fast rushing river of time. The bad news is that time flows. The good news is that you wont mind. Most of my idle musings are now spent thinking of her. I drew her endlessly in my mind. Over and over. The pale halo of her skin. The delicate frame. In her eyes I can see the world. I thought about her escaping the life sapping neons of the city. Traveling to lands unseen like shes always wanted. Pursuing her dreams. I thought about her asking me to go with her. Sharing her dreams. Her love of people. My love of seeing her with them.

(23 Nov)
This is my frozen world. Within this frozen world I'm able to walk freely and unnoticed. Nobody even knows that time has stopped. And that when it does start back again, the invisible joints would join seamless except for a slight shudder. Not unlike the feeling of someone walking over your grave.

(27 Jan)
I thought about what she'd seen. I thought about what she hadn't seen. I thought about how i could explain. But the more i thought about it, the more i knew that nothing I could say would ever make that anger go away. How long can I just wait there. Delaying the inevitable. I had sat there with the world on pause for two days and still had no solution had come. I had forgotten how fast everything was moving.

(12 Feb)
Once upon a time i wanted to know what love was. Love is there if you want it to be. You just have to see that its wrapped in beauty and hidden away in the seconds of your life.
And if you don't stop for a minute, you might lose it.

Melancholic thoughts before the lights go out

It’s a melancholic Thursday. Hell, it’s been a melancholic week. I’m reminded daily of how blessed I am, but it doesn’t make it any easier to get past some of the emotional junk that creeps up on me when I’m not looking.

I do feel more organized though. Last night I skipped out on bingeing and general television to do those bills and straighten up the territory a little. It’s amazing to me that I have been in my current role for almost six months now. But there are still pockets of unattended crap sitting around, which obviously means I still have way too much stuff to do. I’ve slowly pulled away from the commitment to live simply and the conviction to turn back towards that casual lifestyle is growing stronger by the day. I have lived a lifestyle of plenty and can easily afford to give up many of the objects and wants I have so easily elevated to a status of need and possibly even worship.

My heart is pretty torn right now with thoughts of my second cousin. A good kid. Loved his mom. Went to college. Kept at the studies. Had grand plans. Kept the world turning.

He's now in a coma after a road accident. Been 5 days now. And I know that his parents have struggled for the past few days with his health, but being confronted with the reality of death is always a sobering thought. The most recent news is not positive, and I know that at any point I might receive that call from my dad with news.

I only got to know of the entire incident when I got back from Delhi on Monday. When I found out that his mom was at the hospital fighting back tears, I headed straight for the hospital from the airport. Strong, resolute woman. I keep wondering if I should head home now to be with her, but part of me has hope that her son is going to pull through just like she has in the past. However, listening to news that his health is steadily deteriorating over sporadic phone calls has been heartbreaking, and watching their will to fight the inevitable has just compounded to make my heart heavy every time I close my eyes.

Yeah.... Good night to you too.

Travails of the misconstrued traveller

The company decided that i spend too much time on the road... And what with all this talk of profitability I shouldn't take the driver along every time... (Also they know what a sweet driver I am). So they actually let me pick a car for my trips this week. And what do i do, choose a beat up maruti gypsy thats seen some thousand miles too many. This offroader must have been a sweet set of wheels in its time. But its been around a few too many potholes a few too many times. And whoever owned it obviously didn't indulge in luxuries like the occasional tune-up or oil change. The engine jerks and farts like an old man on a bad diet. The steering mechanism's got terminal arthritis. The suspension makes every bump an adventure. But all the same, this was the first time I got to drive a jeep/mobile whatever. I wasnt gonna let up on that.

So here I am, made it all the way to Denkanikottai on a left rear tyre that is as soft as a rotten banana and if thats a slow leak I'm good and screwed. I had to chuck the spare tyre to make room for all the neatly stacked up POP stuff we packed into the back. Every time I start it up I find myself wishing that this dear old girl can make it all the way to third gear without shaking the teeth out of my gums and that it could carry me another twenty yards without the carbeurator kicking out a fat one. So with 800 kms on the road this week so far, and the same to go, this hallowed trip seems to be losing its sheen. Also I've to make it home for the weekend.

Still may I proffer a truncated version of my trip to lands dusty and dry?

It was dusty, dry (maybe you already got that), hot, fast, slow, fattening, slimming, humid, wet, salty, vegetarian, fishy, meaty, colourful, hairy, large, larger, small, frictional, factional, stark, modern, ancient, and everything in-between; and we experienced friendship, suspicion, brotherhood, sisterhood, fraternity, fraternizing sexuality, happy, boisterous Nadars, strutting, drunk Devars, and tanned, perfumed Mals, honesty, swindlers, embraces, gambling, a knife or two, goats, beggars, kal dosais, yera and pura, traffic jams on half deserted roads, high-speed buses and bad drivers in the dead of night, visions of God, spice, no sleep, insomnia, more insomnia, skin, clothes, corals selling in the markets, fish, fowl, war, the threat of war, retaliation, reconciliation, olive branches, freshly cleaned socks, and hot coffee.

Sums it up, I guess. For details, call. Nobody calls me.

Clueless as me

That little thing my sis is propping up is my lil niece and the following what she had to tell me.


What's those? My feet? That’s nice. And that? My bottoms? That’s nice. Look, there’s my middle. That’s nice. I’ll call it a “no-mack”. No, no, that’s not nice. I know, I’ll call it a “stomach”. Yes, that’s nice.

Oh, my finger is in my mouth. Yo, yum. Very nice. Does the next finger taste as good as the first finger? Why, yes, yes indeed. Very pleasant. Now let me try the whole hand... Yumm.. Even better.. okay this hurts...

 And there’s Uncle. He’s nice. Behind him is a light, small and round, looking over him, over his, his..... “shoulder.” Shoulders are nice. They protect and they support. Also I can pivot myself on it.

I’ll call the ball a “bulb.” Yes, that’s very nice. Very nice. I want the bulb. Let me reach for it and maybe I can refract the light from my nails… wait, is there a nail on each finger? And why did I call them “nails?”. Oh well, that works. Wow, there’s one on each finger. But on each hand? Wow. Brilliant. How nice. And on my big finger, too? Yes, there it is. I’ll call it a “thumb”. Is there a big finger on the other hand, too? Aha, there is. And they move too! Wow. How nice.

Look, a dust speck. And another. It’s floating over the many intricate tapestries of the space time continuum. Lets stare at them. Pretty specks.. Lots of specks. And there’s my stomach again. Hmmm…. There’s my feet. Hey, Uncle’s feet. I’ll eat them. Ummmm, very nice. I’m tired of eating. I think I’ll “votit”…. No, “bomit”…. No, er…. I got it! I’ll “belch” on his feet.

Ah! Very nice. No, where was I? Oh yes, the bulb. Wait, there’s the floor! And its tiled. What a nice color. Are there any more? Hmm, yes there are. And there’s mommy. Maybe I can eat her feet. Wow, look at that paper….. it has a nice design. Does my butt have nice designs? Mommy must think so, she spends so much time putting the paper on it.

That’s nice. Oh, my rattle toy. Sounds are nice. Colors are nice. And uncle's reaching for me! Breathe hard, Anya! Wave your arms and pump your legs. Give him that half-tooth goofy grin! He’s taking me, I’m rising. Oh, look there’s a dust mote on his nose. Wow. He’s squeezing me. Ah…….. how nice!

Of Marxist equalisers and bingeing

The room was still spinning when I woke up, and I couldn't find that third saridon tablet I'd thought to lay out...you know...just in case. I drank last night. Much more than I needed.... Ok it was worth it, in the end I had a good time with good people. Today would have been perfect if I could have stayed on the couch all day, but now it's time to mentally gear up for going back to work. And the breakfast I just ate really sucked.

Am I an alcoholic you might ask? No, absolutely not. Alcoholics go to meetings. I, my friend, am a drunk. But then who doesn't like to go out after work and blow off some steam over a few cocktails after The Man has spent the last 10 hours of the day winding up. Apparently there are a lot I've come to learn.

However, alcohol is not a Machiavellian end unto itself sans the means, it's just the Utopian end. It's what the proletariat use to stop remembering how deplorable their lives are and what the bourgeoisie use to remind themselves about the greatness of theirs. It's a social conduit that unites people from all walks of life and reminds us that "hey, we're all in this together, let's get bombed and enjoy each other. "

In other news I'm thinking about breaking free from the chains of compulsive eating. My entire life, I've eaten compulsively; I either overeat compulsively, or under eat compulsively. My relationship with food has been built upon a foundation of obsession, compulsion, fear, loathing, and co-dependence. It is not a healthy one. In fact, I'd guess that it fits in somewhere with the types of mangled, hideous relationships that HBO plays thursday nights. I am constantly thinking about what I will eat next. I'm amazed by how much I've accomplished in my life, considering how much of my brain power is dedicated to thinking about food...eating it...not eating...why I can't eat it...why I want to eat it...where was I, again?

Damn, I'm an hour overdue for work.

Hic !

i seem to recognize your face
haunting, familiar, yet i can't seem to place it
cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
lifetimes are catching up with me
all these changes taking place, i wish i'd seen the place
but no one's ever taken me
hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...

-Pearl Jam

Boyles Law of Public Transportation

From where i come from, its not a great experience using the inter city public shuttle service. Was a bit a squeeze on the bus yesterday. Everyone who didn't have their face violently pressed against the windows or the armrests were wrestling furiously not to fall out the doors. All thanks to Boyle's Law about pressure being inversely related to volume. And that was at constant temperature. Well, its almost May and this might easily be the most unfashionably hot part of the country. And I spent nearly the whole journey -a nightmare three hour ride through dusty, humid roads- standing up. True to physics, pressure and volume - they didn't seem to let up.

Before it left though I waited to see if I could get a seat; otherwise I was going to hire a taxi, and charge the company however much it took. I found a seat, and it was all going well, but the driver decided he could squeeze a few more stinky passengers on board, and kept making stops. Then a crone got on. And then another one and another one. For several minutes I ignored them all, hoping that they would go away or that someone else would see them and do the gentlemanly thing. Darned women. Kept staring at me with that pitiful expression. So in the end I gave one my seat, albeit with utmost resentment and bad grace.

Had we not been jammed in like cooped chicken I would have fallen flat on my face several times, for the driver was the usual idiot, hurtling around bends as if he only had five minutes to live. After ten minutes of this I was sweating like a pig in a sauna, and soon I was aching all over. At times I only had one foot touching the floor. A poor sick child dropped a toy and I bent down to pick it up. The driver just then decided to play Carmageddon, as everyone was flung to one side, and for several moments my head was trapped. My neck was twisted like an owl's and the side of my face was squashed into the stomach of the surly peasant next to me, a stinking oaf in a vest.

It was most unpleasant.

Point of the Post - Use company perks. Thats what they are for.

Loving Ogres, Wood-Elves and Sabre Warriors

This is a take on an article in the Daedalus Project a few weeks ago about people who fell in love because they met in "massively multiplayer online role playing games. (MMORPG)"

A year and a half ago I was an avid player of these games, Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and Everquest(EQ). They were fun games, but there weren't very many female players. And people estimate that half of the female players you did see were actually male players pretending to be female. Yuck!

But based on the Daedalus's endorsement I thought that maybe I should give this another one a try. I needed to find a game with a better male to female ratio (Yes, two b school years do that to you). So I tried The Sims Online. Sims supposedly has the best male to female ratio of all massively multiplayer online games, but hardly anyone plays it. I can see why. It's pretty pointless. There's nothing to do. In Fantasy or EQ you would join a team of other players and kill monsters. Only with good teamwork was it possible to kill them efficiently. Plot lines follow every other Hollywood Fantasy movie. Young apprentice befriends older mentor(another player). Work together to kill monsters(other players). The more you kill, the stronger you get, more skills you learn. (For the initiated, along the lines of Diablo, only more complex and more fun). And so, unlike the real world where you work and work and nothing happens, in this your work is quite shockingly, rewarded.

However in Sims all you do is stuff like take the dog for a walk, call your wife good names, make lunch, watch tv, eat dinner, go to the bathroom, take a shower, sleep. That was easily the only virtual world ever invented that is more boring than real life.

But this virtual world does have a better male to female ratio than the real world. And the girls (atleast i think they were) are easier to talk to. Every time I did log on, my virtual roommate, Ktrina79 starts chatting with me. Ktrina was a schoolteacher from Montreal and the pics she sent made me wanna go back to school. Was fun for a while, but there was no way i could go on with the tedium. For all I know "she's" really some fifty year old gay guy.

Although it may not fit the stereotype, we gamers are not immune to love. There's bound to be some flirting going on when you have a few thousand people playing an MMORPG together. The games are filled with scenarios that shed light on player personalities. Those seem like pretty good odds for the ladies.

We thus stand on the cusp of a new generation where parents telling their children about the circumstances of how they met will not revolve around college parties, chance encounters at a coffee shop or business conferences. Instead, they will tell their children how they met each other while battling gnolls in subterranean caverns or slaying the undead in forgotten crypts while pretending to be warriors or clerics.

Point of the post - I'm bored. Lots of work i dont wanna do.

One True God

I'll never get why we are supposed to love these conferences that are called for ever so often. I love discussing in abstract , doodling incoherently as they discuss outcomes that will definitely have no far reaching changes. However, I do not like meetings where my attendance is required and my input is not appreciated or desired. That's how my day has been for the last two days.

I've been working my ass off on a project that will not actually kick off until after I should have moved out of here. Further, most of the other members of the team are the gods in the office. Only the opinions of the gods are truly considered. Of course, I should mention that the opinions of the gods pretty much reflect the opinion of the facilitator so there's not even value added by the gods. Not so conducive to additional input from the non-gods if I don't say so myself.

Now, this doesn't mean that the input of the non-gods is not sought. In fact, I've been called on and asked why I have no input.

There are atleast two reasons that I can attribute to that. a) I have no input because I wasn't told what to prepare for and b) Nobody told me that I'd need to prepare for it at all. On two occasions when I did have input, such thoughts (which more or less seemed related) were casually thrown aside when the gods didn't appear to readily jump behind me.

So today, after 6 hours of meeting and 6 pages of my designs of synchronised battle axes, I have come to realize that the entire meeting was just set up for the facilitator to mentally masturbate. But then I guess its part of being God. What could be more fun than calling an endless two day long meeting to listen to yourself talk, accept feedback that supports your initial opinion, and requires the non-gods to write down every single pondering thought you might have?

Off to a second session. It's enough to make me eat my drawings (on insipid paper - yes, i've tasted). Seriously, I could be chewing nails and be more productive than having to sit though any more of this.

This dance aint so great

Third Post. Think I've been bitten by the indite bug, mostly because I don't have anything positive to say.

I went to a wedding this last weekend, and had the unfortunate experience of being surrounded by mostly couples and these two single guys I went to school with. So, when the slow songs played - and there seemed to be a lot of them - I found myself sitting at the table alone. It was really, really uncomfortable.

I wasn't sure what to do with myself, so every time the tempo slowed, I excused myself to the bathroom to stare at walls. As humans I have decided that we complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production. It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be. Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom at this wedding. The other wedding guests must think I have an overactive bladder or a serious coke problem.

I can't remember ever feeling so fucking awkward in my life.

Maybe as a really young teenager. But not as an adult.

I may hire a date for the next wedding I have to attend.

Typing that actually made me sad.

Leave me alone, I'm busy

I'm SO busy that I decided to see if I could still get to blogger rather than actually do anything productive. Update on my life: sinus infection, sunburns, stock issues, dinner out, staying in room, freaking out over stock issues, sinus infection, television, internet that is just too slow and sleep.

I finally found some shows I like to watch on Thursday nights. That one with that one guy...I can't think of his name, but it's called 30Rock. I was cracking up. Watch it next Thursday if you can.

Second post in two days.... I've outdone myself

Where is the nearest bridge?

I officially hate myself.



Don't you hate it when it feels like you've had a string of disappointments and you foolishly decide to rely on someone who is well known for being unreliable to be the one who will bring you out of the dumps? And then that person - lovely and wonderful and amazing as they are - is, as people tend to be, a human being, who has their own ups and downs to contend with (at an amplified dosage, no less).

Well, i don't know about you, but i hate it.

I'm trying hard to focus on the positive, which isn't easy, because for bunches of other reasons i've had a predominantly tough few days of late. The resources seem low.

Bad karma....

It happened again .... Blogger ate my post.I've tried and I've tried to get into the habit of copy/pasting my posts as I go, or doing it in Word...but I basically suck at it. And I've been sitting here being mad about it almost long enough to just do it all again...but now I'm too...mad. Maybe the universe is just trying to tell me to shut the hell up & stop whining...

Anyway, I'll try again later. Darn...