Tearless Burden of Misery

i havent had the courage to cry
i put on a brave face and walk on
brush off every hurt, and march
ahead with a conviction, convinced
with my own lies. 

i awake every second with a fear of caving in
of falling prey to the frailty that i am 
live every minute concealing to myself the pits
the holes, my inadequacy.
i am incomplete, and that which makes me whole
scares me, for i fear the unknown

i am afraid to be free, happy
to not be bound is unimaginable
the world gives me none?
a curse of good fortune.
i need misery, even of my own making.

Disillusioned

its like crack. its what keeps me going when the going gets tough. my addiction to choice and my illusion of free will. i am bound by the illusion to choose. i know that irrespective of choices i make events that unfold will shape the outcome. more things out of my control will shape the future of my choice than i as the chooser. also the mere role of chooser is a farce as the choice has already been made. if you think you can freely choose whatever you want, think again. if you are in a shop and want to buy pants, most of the choosing has already been done in the form of the manufacturer who makes only certain designs and limited numbers of each and the designers who make the design for you, and the retail outlet where you reach for the price tag and decide your budget which is of a limited range courtesy your employer, your cultural affliction which rules what you wear. and despite all of these conditions which have already reduced your scope to null, you jumped around in the joy of having purchased the pants of your choice.

we celebrate the freedom of choice, when in reality the choices have been made. at every turn the illusion presents us with a diversion. its like multiple reflections of the same object. and that is enough to sustain our interest in this otherwise boring and morbid run of events. the choices create controversy and the choice an identity.

we are nothing but mere puppets. hapless ants that crawl on a master board with predefined route maps. whether we turn right, left or keep going straight has already been decided. yet we jump in joy at the illusion of a y road ahead which is not a y after all because somewhere ahead both arms meet. what are we but fools.

Happy Days?

first thing i am not stupid. i dont live in a fantasy and i am grounded in here and now. with that stated lets get on with it.

i just got back from a movie that i saw. it was happy days by shekhar kammula. a decent filmmaker, he always portrays very life like characters. none of the usual pomp and show of the bigger megastars of tollywood. and in course of the movie which revolves around the college life of a bunch of youngsters, there was something there that struck a chord within me.

funny thing is that i always knew college was not just about fun. but more importantly fun was a big part of it. yet it sometimes seems that tiny piece of wisdom was lost on me several crucial times.

i often feel that my mind was not made for my head. what? wll it is just that i feel that my mind grew faster than my head and bigger than it eventually. and that some portions were on steroids. in an age when most kids are lost making choices and finding ground on what is right or wrong, i was already well versed on such finer nuances and obssessed on making use of such a knowledge. in the process sometimes i stole from my life the very important property of chance, risk and mistake. the fewer i made the more i regretted not making them. and the ones i did make always seemed to loom larger than they actually were. left in doubt, i completely engaged in the quest of never having to make a wrong call. humility, cowardice, diplomacy and many such things saved moments where i would have caught myself on the wrong foot.

the very growth of mind and mental prowess started stifling the very essence of my being, creativity. critique became my hobby, and conformity an unconcious obsession.

what i say is different from what i do which is different from what i believe.

i want my innocence back. i dont want to know already what is right or wrong, the consequences of actions, risk of chance and the likes. questions such as these and thir answers have caged my being in an invisible bind. the very idea of reverting back to ignorance, carelessness and carefressness when i already am done debating all corners would again be a self-deafeating effort.

wisdom is the property of one who has earned it, a boon for one in search of it 
and a burden to one who does not realise it.

all i can do is pray that soon the burden of knowledge will become the boon of wisdom and free me from the clutches of my own prison.

i am a slave of my own thought, my ambivalence, my hypocrisy.

my mind is caged and i want to be free.

Questions

life is a funny game. i have made it all yet i suffer from it. there is nothing in this world which is not my own creation. the pleasure, the pain, the anger, the beauty, the illness, everything including the very perception of the things themselves are an elaborate creation of mine. i permeate everything. thus i suffer from the stimulus. for had it not been so, there would be no cause and effect. that cause and effect are inseparable is known. so every single day everything from the coffee mug to the lady next door are all a part of my intricate creation. creation i say because, since i permeate everything there ought not to be any differentiation of any object whatsoever. thus no attachment,  no loss, no pain, no profit, no happiness. yet i feel all of these. so what i have in effect learnt to do in this human life is create an intricate design for everything. so detailed that it becomes impossible for me the creator to identify the sameness. its only until i scratch this upper that i will see the constitutive similarity of all my existence and the search for an end ceases.

the illusion of this difference i create is so endearing that it is painful to consider otherwise. that senses, there stimuli and the responses are all the same. i often am engulfed and overwhelmed by my own creation. a great example of how my invention gets the better of me would be to examine pain. pain is something i felt is essentially what makes this illusion almost believable. it is because of this phenomenon that my determination to undermine the creation and question its origins arises. pain along with other negative emotions threatens the senses and their well being. pain destabilises the creation. yet it on its own is so overwhelming that the opportunity to see through the creation remains hidden. for example pain of loss takes away from me the pleasure associated with the company of  a 'loved' one, though this person may be a part of my very own being. now the person is my own creation and so is the attachment. the pain of separation or loss is my own too. and all this a part of my illusion. but this pain serves to strengthen the veracity of the sense of well being and stability provided by the illusion. so all energies are spent to revert back to the calm serene picture than towards understanding the illusory nature of this pain and the reinforcement effect it has on the need for the illusion.

now once the existence of this illusion has been acknowledged then arises a question.

what is the need for illusion?
why do i have to awaken, why do i have to eat, sleep or do any of the other things i do?
why do i have create a complete universe around me so intricate to engross me for a life time when all this is an illusion created by me?

it is often the most troublesome thing to do. to ask a question.

yet i should never cease to do so.

I Will Rise

i have given my all
yet i never felt this void
that comes and swallows
like death over the forsaken
and deprives me of my dignity

i have lost
lost to you and and to myself
this fight to be one
yet to be not together

the desire became the want
and then you became the need

yet i will live without you
without your shadow by my side
in spirit i will last forever in a union
that was to be unborn

leave me to my peril
and let me rise from the ashes
to serve my own and myself
the remains of the soul left from the lost
this wound shall heal the pain shall remain

it is but my nature to ask
so i will till i find the true undoing
for the painful riddle of this attachment
i will make my need my want
then my desire and i will have learnt
to live without pain of desire
want you i still may
need you i will not
you will see the new the old
and then you will see me

it will unfold for your eyes
this veritable untruth

Give A Shit?

i was talking to a friend today and in due course of the conversation i was making a forceful case for my belief in universal health care and the failure of successive american governments to apply a workable solution to the medicare issues there. this is do every single time with the same conviction that every human has the right to health. and thus follows what better a case to examine than the most powerful and richest democracy in the world.  at some point my friend probably lost patience and broke the silence and my soliloquy to say something that rather puzzled me. you know that everyone has one or two of those things that they strongly believe in and feel the need to criticise or defend, but you just seem to have a problem with evey single thing in the universe.

well may be i do. i do agree that for sometime now i have had time aplenty to while away doing nothing but entertaining a lot ideas, some interesting and others plain trash. and also i do realise that maybe i have made it a fashion to just go down defending a standpoint when afterwhile it would probably be more mature to learn rather than be stubborn. somethings i definitely need to work on.

but what worries is the fact that more and more people around me seem to be more absorbed with their own petty existence. i say petty not because they are but because of what becomes of them. i feel that in today's world more time is spent in the pursuit of one's own guarded welfare
 that even a mere thought toward the greater implications of our actions are considered a waste 
of time. i may be wrong assuming this but it is an observation which is appearing with an increasing frequency.

i am stickler. for a lot of things at that. and i do like to entertain thoughts on matters well beyind my control becuase i believe thats what leads to discussion and probably change. i am often accused of several things, increasingly favourite among which is the habit i have formed of trying to constantly highlight the need for all of us, specially my peer group and the generations that follow, to start applying some kind of a reality check on our goals and ambitions.

reality check? well simply that we all want riches yet how many of us are willing to be responsibly rich. i support that there is nothing wrong in rightfully earning one's fortune and then even rightfully spending it. but often the lines between comfort, luxury and stupidity are becoming thinner. it is now hard discern what is a need, want, desire and whim. the strata of needs and desires have been long surpassed. these are the times of the whimsical buffoons. golf carts to ride around your house, plasma tvs in every room, multiple exotic cars, private jets etc. once the domain of the capitalist leech, these are now the aspirations of the broader many.

simple things amount to a bigger change. if only each one of us could ask of ourselves that in this rat race to the fancy desired life, can we do something within reach to better those less fortunate around as well.

i am compelled to rethink what i choose. because in its own way small or big, my luxury of choice can potentially do some greater good.

i dream. i desire. for me. for us.

Yes I'm Brahmin

stifling hot. deafening sounds of the road. a couple of feet away is the mahaveer jain clinic where i sit. wedenesday op. seems almost like a geriatrics department. 17 cases cleared. next.

female, 70, joint pains and backache. knee pains had worsened since the last visit.
i examine to see any possible signs of tenderness, effusion or injury around the knee. negative.

rx tab diclofenac, tab rantac, tab bc, tab calcium. the routine.

you are going to be fine amma, i say. take the tablets everyday and come back if the pains arent relieved.

with folded hands, thank you doctorgaru. and she hesistates to leave. turns to me.

you touched my leg, are you brahmin?

Recent Events

a pictorial of the recent events around here.


bowling. faking it.


sports day. i won zilch.

whatever.

yama for the college day.

my band. bad sam. mickey in green

the forgotten snazz in jazz. the bowtie boys. backstage.

Reflections

there is a lot going on right now. in my life. in the lives of those i know. in the world. it just surprises me how much things have changed over the past couple of years. i am sitting now in final year and i cant help but gawk at the speed of time. i am stickler for the past. i am an advocate of change yet i am the great resistance to it. to understand that something is absolutely essential and yet oppose it is quite a common oddity. anyway as it seems my times spent here have shaped me in several ways.  my life's being spent desiring something and yet getting something else. or maybe it is just my nature.  

recently i was watching an episode of scrubs and it amazed the qualities i share with jd, turk and perry. all three guys each reflect certain aspects of my life. cheesy as it is, i do understand the drawbacks of comparing my life with a sitcom. i wonder if anyone ever would take it seriously enough. but it is undeniable that these charaters are often a refection of what we are.

i was reading a friends blog today. it was very impressive. i realised that she had a couple of readers who were quite regular and every post had comments to it.  i found myself wondering if i had the capacity to write like that.  

another instance was when i read a conversation between two of my 
friends one of whom was going to london over the summer. yet again i relapsed into selfdoubt. i am quite a narcissist which may be quite apparent by the amount of text i use to understand myself. but for someone like me it has become a habit to try and understand myself than to actually make headway in some other sphere of thought. it is something i have to work on. maybe its time to realise that there are better things to do right now than try and understand oneself all the time.

anyway on other issues now. life is rockily smooth. i am headed for the toughest exams so far and i have to work doubly hard to sail through successfully. personal was is and will always be tumultous. atleast not open to discussion now. i need to go out there on a holiday soon.

Stolen Thunder : Trust Blunder

hah. the rhyme. the past couple of days have been quite a rocking experience for me. joy and disappointment have come together and have taken me for a ride again. quite recently the hullabaloo over a certain academic prize doled out to the scorer of the highest marks in the university examinations had come to an end. well the story goes this way. back in june last year, i found out that i had scored the highest marks in social and preventive medicine in my university exams along with another girl in the batch. according to the prevalent tradition, an endowment award is given out each year on this achievement. i was not too familiar with this because for various reasons i had not attended the last two college day celebrations, the occasion for such an award. well anyway as luck would have it the clerk concerned with the job of creating lists of results messed up and left me forty marks short of my original score. so on that day, the award was presented only to the girl much to the bewilderment of my friends. and to be honest i was a little disheartened myself. unaware of such a clerical error i set out to find the reasons for such a decision. and in the process discovered the mess and got down to the process of setting things right. a week later i had the certificate minus the endowment money handed to me by an attendant at the principal’s office. it is shameful. not only did they commit a mistake, they also hadn’t had the decency to set the records straight. the principal was oblivious to the certificate he signed. well anyway a lot of things don’t work the way we want them to. so here i was half let down yet ecstatic because the people i cared to tell would actually bother to appreciate the achievement. or so i thought. i meant for it to be a surprise. and when i came out with the story of how i went about the whole week trying to set things straight, it dawned on me that something unintended had happened. my travails were to get the award to hand so i can officially declare myself a winner to all those who mattered. yet it turned out to be a trust issue. some said i didn’t trust them enough to have let them known earlier. much explanation later, with only a fraction of the enthusiasm i realised that much more and different was expected of me than i thought. it was a moment of glory gone awry. the award had been overshadowed. yet it did not matter because i value trust. and to me the first priority was to set that right. well anybody can guess how successful i might have been at doing that. it was of no use. a futile attempt.

trust i seek and i find in you - metallica

each of us learn the game of trust by trial and error. i may have made more errors in the process so i deal with trust very carefully. i try and make sure that the trust placed in me is well served and at times i plainly refuse to be entrusted. likewise, most people would have their own way of showing trust. for some it is trivial matters while for others more important ones substantiate their trust in another. if this was better understood then maybe i wouldn’t have faced the situation i found myself in.

trust is a wonderful thing.

I broke up with my computer#@$%

whats funny is that these days anywhere you go the computer is always right. i know i once used to laugh at those old timers who would complain about computers and how they couldnt stand the button pushing. i also would defend computers with almost religious fanaticism and pride. yet these little or not so little number crunching, graphics spewing excuses for technology have done more than enough to let me down. they have devoured my patience, robbed me of my dignity and caused a good amount of material harm. all while just sitting innocously on a crowded desk.

my angst is fuelled by the recent spate of mishaps wherein my former best friend(the computer) would delete some important piece of information putting me at the mercy of whoever cares. well for example it was my internet account, with the ignorant bastard from sify(isp) telling me that they would not entertain my claims as it conflicted with those of his computer. a couple of more heated exchanges and i had the honour of a call centre employee tell me that the computer was always right and disconnect the call. i mean i got dissed by a cc employee.

adding to the many more such misfortunes, i am now caught with facebook. my account was nonexistent, overnight. vaporised! the facebook helpdesk had only one thing to give me, a detailed guide to re-registering with them. sweet!

there is a conspiracy. someone's watching.

Times Gone By

time seems to have a greater significance in my life than i ever imagined. i realise that everything i had ever done is gone and that much of what i wanted to do still remains to be done. life is rolling past me. it seems that i have been left in a void.

i have a very old trouble in life but something i have discovered only recently. i dont know. those three words are on the verge of ruining my life. i have found that this was the most convenient answer i was giving to all questions sometimes even without thought.

this is my status. i am in the ninth semester of medical college with practically four months left to train and venture into the lions mouth, the final year exams. well some part of me says they may be slightly overrated but a greater portion agrees with popular opinion that this might be the toughest of periods i would be enduring in these five years.

i am listening to atif aslam's yakeen. the opening lines take their toll.

i have often had these subconscious images stuck in my head. i can never really identify them, but certain objects, images, words, circumstances bring them out. they are so strong that the emotion is often overwhelming.

reading the book 1984 by george orwell. the man was sheer genius or more appropriately a prophet. a modern day prophet, to have sat back so many decades ago and to have identified this path of decadence that we seem to have so boldly endeared. we are not yet there. but the time is not far away when total downfall will be the only recognizable pattern left to human existence. and that this existence shall be plagued by ignorant grim futures is not an impossible idea. anything contrary would actually be surprising.

...

they are all that i have
all that i can give to you

they can inspire you
change your life

give you love and sorrow
steal from you your pain

show new worlds that you never knew
where moments last forever
yet, ages gone by in a wink

they are my weapons, my strength
they are my refuge

i am nothing
i have nothing
yet, these are my precious gifts.

words.

Confused

it is sad. really sad. i am dazed, confused, and what not and i have cant tell anyone. the only person i could i am losing now. my mind can't take this anymore.

how am i supposed to be able to know aht to do? i am not god and god surely isnt giving me any huge signals. the choice being left to me is the biggest problem. i hate making choices. it is the most useless thing to do. an absolute waste of time. but then again it cannot be done without.

human relationships are so fragile. even more than this very perishable three and a half cubits. i am lost. i have lost. yet it is not my loss that worries me. i will live.

i cannot make choices for others. and my choices are to be respected and similarly so are theirs.

am i too practical for this world? lots of people have told me live for the moment. may be i spend too much time thinking that the actual needf for action just passes me by.

i am becoming irrelevant without ever having been relevant. obscurity is haunting me. the only thing i will be soon is an indecisive wreck.

my fault is i have a deep sense of conformism. though i display liberal views subconciously somewhere a fixed picture haunts me.

i dont want to speculate. especially on something so fragile as life. who where and what i am is so relative. more so valid in the structure of our societies. whether or not i care to abide by the rules, they will haunt me. maybe there are some elements in my upbringing that make me dependent on such useless things as rules.
may be i lack that individuality.

i feel useless. my life is tied up between what i want, what i dont, what i may want, what i may dont and what they want for me. it is the last three that bother me.

also the burden of approval from them of my actions. what use is that? yet can i renounce it? can i denounce it?

curse all.

Thoughts

is this all a game? or is it that my perception of the nature of this worldy life is so volatile that i cannot ground myself to the much touted realities of life. to deal with the burden of understanding this complex interplay of life's institutions is a challenge beyond comparison.

to each his madness. to me my thoughts. thoughts are the intangible treasure which shape and direct the action sought. but often they can be persistently misleading and baseless. this leads to an intensely anxious indecisive state at the crux of the moment when action is the need. sometimes these plaguing thoughts are the sole reason for lack of spontaneity. the thinking mind has become the bane of my existence.

time lost, cause lost, meaning lost.

envy do i those who can rest their minds in peace.
envy do i those quick in choice.
envy do i those who live here and now.

my inaction is of my own making.

i am the master of my choice yet a slave to its luxury.

i seek freedom from this bondage. if knowledge was to wash away the dark abyss of ignorance, it can also shroud the active mind into indecision. i seek the freedom from having to condone my thoughts and life to tailor the needs sought by others.

from a man of thought to a man of action.

Crossroads

pragmatism. practicability. foresight. probability. these are plain speculative tendencies of human behaviour. if life were a stock exchange then my life index is heading south and the bear is pulling me down with it. or may be the bull wasnt ever really there. i have come to lead my life on highly uncertain and empirical methods of speculation. once i begin to base my choices on these speculative tendencies, risks come into the equation. how now will you ascertain the risks for a still incomplete structure. i know not what i hold now and in the near future so it automatically makes it inconvenient for me to bear the responsibility of making predictions regarding my life let alone those of others.

as in a business, if i were to analyze my resources, my strengths, i have little practical knowledge of what they are worth in the real market place. i have no idea what my value is, no idea of the structure or course of action, the time factor, miniscule knowledge of the risks involved, and above all i am unsure of the result and its magnitude. thus i realise it was a fallible idea to start an enterprise, let alone put out on the market for investors. then we have the angel investors. i have had mine. the eventual venture capitalist who is willing to see you through the risks. but now conditions have it that after a failing idea and immense effort you are still the startup that sank.

this essentially can be extrapolated to a few ventures in my life, never yet in the realm of business. i have learnt as every entrepreneur the pitfalls and the agony of seeing an idea fail. yet it leaves me unfazed. i am not sure when the next vc will fund the next fledgling, but i am better prepared. it will certainly face similar uncertainties and may even fail but yet again i am willing to accept it.

Ignorance

the man, a little more than a slave
of senses, powers, desires to crave

the thought, a useless act
defeats not the fool, but the fact

the question, not yours to ask
for the knowing man, a tiresome task

the meaning, forever a distant dream
forever lost in the elusive gleam

the end, a timeless fruitless search
the eager quest to be left in lurch

JK

"Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence."

something there got me thinking. there is nature in me which questions the nature around me. why? i find myself asking all to often. the anatomy of this inquiry probably is as deep as evolution of the human mind, if such a thing were to be agreed to exist, and sometimes is the principle on which all forms of thought is based. inquiry is the most consistent offering of the human race. irrespective of the environment you are in, it is a question you ask sooner or later.

it does sometimes help me to wonder where all this came from. and the beauty is that the mere act of wondering leads to inquiry. all seeds of thought can be traced to an act of inquisition. but since only a diamond cuts a diamond, it is inevitable for me to ask a few inquisitons.

it is very frequently that anyone asks the question where did all this come from and very similarly i do too. the unique qualities of the sorrounding, the self, the very act of observation are amazing.

uninitiated, it is helpful to start on a hypothesis to examine the entire premise. let us assume that there is one big truth. this truth that everyone seems to be running after shall be the explanation for everything. a grand unified theory of the existent and the non-existent, of all that be. then this truth should also offer the reason to why i am here writing this, whats making this computer the way it is, why if anyone is actually reading this.

now when i assume the possibility of such a truth, it leads me to wonder what follows knowing that truth. it sure can be agreed that such knowledge would obviate existential values like place, time or event. the future has no meaning nor does the past. there is no present. the material and immaterial are all derivatives of this truth. it would constitute everything.

now if such a truth were to exist. then my existence, the computer, some guy having sex in brazil and the thoughts in my head are all the same thing. this means we are all the same.

is there a possibility of knowing such a truth?

let us consider this example. a child asks his father why a balloon rises into the sky? the father replies that the balloon is lighter than air. why is the balloon lighter than air? it contains, say helium, which is a lighter gas and that which is lighter rises above the heavier. to a child this is incomprehensible unless he receives some more explanation regarding the nature of matter, density so on and so forth. all of a sudden with a few hours of some formal lecturing, the incomprehensible explanation is very much understood.

now to understand from the above example, only truth is the observation, the answers are relative. they are relative to the fathers knowledge, the knowledge of science as we know it. every man has observed and tried to reason, where the observation is an independent act while the reason is built on deductions. 5-2 = 3. a deduction can be made from only something that is known. how can 2 be removed if you do not where to remove it from. similarly, how can any deduction be true if the very truth is unknown. in making so called informed deductions, we base ourselves already on what we know and then reason out the most plausible theory to explain it. we did not know at the outset, we do not know when we theorize and finally we lead ourselves into an answer based on ignorance to be the explanantion. in science we create empirical situations to study and then support our explanations. in this whole process of understanding firstly what has remained true is the observation. secondly, all thought, understanding and deduction was based on preexistent knowledge.

you and i as we know it, have always been fed into our minds. in lighter matters it is often agreed that a fresh perspective is the key to solving a problem. but where is the problem and who has a fresh perspective? each one of us from the moment of ourbirth have been illusioned, conditioned, fed, groomed, taught all that is not ours. for example, a baby boy on an isolated island grows to play with a stone and learns that when he drops it it falls to the ground. observation. now what is to be seen would be whether the answer he finds to his problem is the theory of gravity.

how do you expect to find this truth unknown to you, anchoring yourself on a world of knowledge and experience of reality all of which are meaningless with your taught and conditioned perceptions. all these entrapments are the creation, reason and result of everyone around you, before you.

we all, each one of us, are trapped. we are trapped in a world where each discovery into ourselves is preconditioned by external influence. this conditioning will forever keep you in the dark about the underlying truth.

what if all was rejected in this search for true perception. you will have to unlearn what you know, what you think, what you are. from here to ignorance is a difficult jouney. it could be the key and yet it could be another beginning of falsehoods based on prior knowledge, experience.

what if one were to stop asking thinking reasoning?

i know none of this is my own. it is dangerously revealing. these thoughts are not my own nor are these words, nothing around me is my own. if there were such a truth we would all be the same. words, thoughts, lives, you and me. before will be after. there is nothing but the truth.

then if everything is the truth then there is no truth. the lie will be truth, the truth the lie. the assumption itself becomes the truth. our ignorance, deductions, our reasons will be truth. there will be no truth left to discover.

Illusioned

around and round, sense misleads you
the decadent confusion of this magic
its only chaos because you dont understand it
its random when your mind is closed
if you see what your eyes did
your illusion pales
to reveal what lies beneath
the secret reason of the beauty
the peace of truth

Life

another day.
another time.
that’s where i live.
never here.

lost in dreams.
starry eyed.
lazy blinks.
gaze at the sun.
sit by the river.
breathe.

walk like there’s no tomorrow.
walk in the moonlight.
savour a delicacy.
sip golden wine.
dig my fingers into the earth.

roll in the hay.
sail a boat.
talk to the wind.
beat the tide.
shoot the moon.

feed a poor man.
play with a child.
learn to play the violin.
appreciate art.
smile.

desire nothing.
envy none.
love my enemy.
have no fear.
know the truth.
be at peace.