Invocation

i am a lie, a mirror, a blank
canvas at your hands, you make me
try and be, you or your wont
i change, for i know no better,
moulded, muddled by the hour, i lose.
i unconsciously fail your conscious
deed, kind and principle
none i own, yet i worship
i please, for there is no me
everything, everyone you are
what i am, what i am not

Freely Bound

these are the lines
the lines you dont see but
i am drawn, strewn, bound.

these are the lines
they hold me together
guide my chaos, restrain my peace.

these are the lines
mad, mythical and mystical
humour, these lines define me.

these are the lines
the lines you dont see but
they liberate me, i break them free.

Change

i hear something that changes another bit of my life.

Predictable Choice

so here i was talking about random things in life when i went into a soliloquoy. the subject of my angst this time dealt with directions we "choose" to take in our lives.

like take the example of the cohort that graduated in the summer of 2008 to which i belong. a 150 fresh  mbbs graduates came out into the real world. so it was yet another crossroads and time to make choices again. what gets me thinking is how many of us actually stop to think of what we are to do next. the obvious choice for many would be to move on to postgrad in a specialty and further training to be a specialist doctor. and there is nothing wrong with that. i would love to be one too. the problem arises with the way we think that we choose to do it. 

i have often observed that we dont have to do too much to live life well. life has a way of taking care of you. all you have to do at your end is perform life's current task well enough. thats all and everything else is taken care of. i finish mbbs and the obvious questions arise and life has an answer. do a pg. there is not so much thinking involved in the choice, ofcourse the details are different. 

when i say life, i mean what you have around you. you have a certain upbringing in a certain household with a certain way of life in a certain society with certain social, cultural and economic sensibilities. and if you choose to sit back and relax, then these have a way of being your cushion. they have conditioned your behaviour enough to make whatever is next obvious. just dont ask too many questions and everything will be laid out in front of you. 

your life is the environment around you. it is the nature around you not your nature. it is what nurtured you, not the ideas you nurture. every idea you have, every trait you claim has litttle to do with you. it is a response you have conditioned to an external stimulus. and the beauty of our societal environments is that there are inherent feedback mechanisms to keep track and if necessary weed out the unwanted. and may be even recondition a response into a more suitable one. thats the purpose of your society. the thinking has been done for you. you have a role to play. just do what you have to well enough and everything will show up in front of you. its almost like life is offering you a step at a time what you need . you could be blind to where these steps lead and still you wont be lost. and if you were to deviate and sidestep, there are inherent protector mechanisms in this society that will try and bring you back to the mainstream that life has charted for you. if you persist, then you are marginalized, obscured or even ostracized. every once in a while there are few who can reach the destination through their own charted paths and they stand out. society explains them to you as extraordinary or freaks. its almost like they are pushed into being the cases falling outside 2 standard deviations of your normal gaussian curve. even maths is taught to teach you the oddity.

now when you do dare to sidestep, you are making a choice. now what governs this choice. the reason you chose to sidestep is so that you can take the reins into your own hands and lead life the way you want it to go. but then if you were to chart the new directions based on previous conditioning of the very same society you come from then how far are you really stepping out. all you know is what you have learnt, that is responses to those stimuli your environment has given you. the eyes can see only what the mind knows holds true here. the limits of your thought are more or less defined by the boundaries of the stream you are hoping to leave. then what do you do. do you even have a true idea of your own that can help? is any response your own as all the stimuli coming are that from an environment you are trying to abort and therefore detrimental to the search of your new direction?

society teaches you to dream of a destination. the final outcome of your efforts. yet it very successfully limits them temporally. therefore any average joe being led down his path sees satisfaction in stepping onto the next step. but he fails to realise that the next step will always be there. there is no stopping. whatever your effort, action, there will always be an outcome and you will move on. such a joe will never realise that it is never going to end. walking through the mall he is inspired to dress like an icon and purchase a particular brand. then a car, a house, watches, holidays and the list is endless. he runs after another everytime. does he ever stop and think about what it is about the next thing he desires that will make it all come to an end? i dont know. will he ever realise that such a scramble is perpetual unless he stops it. i dont know that either.

some say it is not the destination but the journey that is important. but society teaches you the contrary. you belong to a certain social class and therefore there shall be certain endpoints that you shall aim to achieve. anything else is crushed. 

we all are eventually aiming for the same thing. yet how many of us realise that we are all conditioned beyond imagination such that we limit our own choices.   

choice is an illusion. they let you pick a flavour when all you know and see is chocolate.

Yes We Can

Nov 8th , 2008

Watching Obama say these words gave me goose bumps. For the first time after a long time I actually cared about America and its people.  I don’t know when I forgot them. Must have been sometime through those eight forgettable years that have just gone by.

The earliest memory of America, though I have never been there, was the fateful night when I sat huddled in front of a TV set with a bunch of other Indian kids while the grownups watched from over their couches and dinner plates. The Iraqis on the streets couldn’t do enough to deter a resilient Indian soiree. Bush Sr was talking about the goings-on in the middle-east, the invasion of Kuwait. I still remember his wrinkled, meditative words heavily pouring out. War it was.

I am a child of the Gulf War. Americans were our heroes.  Play and chatter was abundant with the imagery of good-evil transferred to the America-Iraq scenario. America was the good guy. That was 1990.

Operation Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Kosovo.  Operation Desert Fox.  The ten years that followed were a series of conflicts relayed in a carefully reconstructed manner always readily identifying the bad guy. Of course we knew who the good guys were. Didn’t we? Growing up to these events brought on some questions. Yet one never doubted the intention. America meant no harm. They fought for the people, their rights and their good. Well there were other ways of doing it but no other would step up to the task so readily. That was America doing what it did best, playing the good guy.

Then came the new millennium and with it brought controversy, doubt and eventually, decay. Controversy over the how the man got into the office, doubt over his capability and judgment, and finally the decay of the American spirit and also the good will that America had fostered in minds like mine. George Walker Bush had done everything humanly possible to open the wrong doors, rub people the wrong way, all the while carrying a straight face of a man driven by vision and purpose.

9/11 forever changed the world we lived in. But Afghanistan and later Iraq were hasty responses to a blow on the very face of the American spirit. The need of the hour was determination, resilience and thoughtful intervention. What has come to be does not even qualify debate. Could it have been different? May be. Should it have been so bad? Definitely not. Four years ago, for reasons unknown, at least to many outside America, Bush was re-elected to the highest office in the most powerful country in the world. The second term of W is something I can’t wait to forget, and I am not alone. Bad policy is very different from ignorance. Persistent and worsening ignorance can only be judged as idiocy. God bless America became God save America.

As with all things, the Bush years have come to pass. Every American who voted Obama on the ballot represented the hopes of the entire world. People from every corner who directly or indirectly were beneficiaries or victims, as times have it, of American policy of recent years held their breath as America went to the polls. The world was glued to its TVs, radios and computers awaiting the outcomes of their suffering, the fruit of the hopes they had invested in the common citizen of the USA. And they weren’t let down.

The words of change the new president of America had on the eve of his victory were not for his people alone but for people world over. The man on stage in front of America today was not just a leader America voted for, he was chosen by all of us around the world who wanted to see the guiding light in new hands. Watching intently, I couldn’t help but smile to myself when I saw him speak with conviction and promise of restoring America to its lost glory.

Obama is not just a man or a leader or a president. He is an idea. An image of the power and will of the people, invested in one man. America has once again beat the odds and managed to make that leap of faith. Less than 50 years after Martin Luther King, they have elected as president a young, black man who has the tenacity to challenge, the will to persevere and courage to transform. He represents an opportunity for America to try something new, to show the world a new direction and to make possible tolerant and peaceful coexistence. It is a chance to abandon a rampant ruthless barbarism, both fundamental and state-sponsored, that is scarring the lives of millions of people and bring back an era of dialogue and non-violence. A man who does not carry the weight of years of electoral politics, who is not hardened by the unforgiving corridors of Washington and entrenched in the interests of the high and the mighty brings with him a sense of honesty to the table. This alone will give Obama what few other presidents have enjoyed, the respect and adulation of the peoples of the world and above all a chance, to break ice and foster brotherhood.

Economy. Trade. Healthcare. Foreign Policy. World Peace. Obama’s mandate, rather the legacy he stands to inherit, is unenviable to say the least. Yet even the longest journeys start with a small step. And with Obama, America has taken a giant leap. Four years on, I look forward to remembering these times as a period of great change when I stood witness as history unfolded and a new paradigm shift came to be in the way the people of America, the people of the world lived.

Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama, Yes we can.

Her Quest to End

She walks on, buried

By her years, the cold bites her heart

Hunched against the howl, of fading

Winds, pain weakened, her wrinkles carry

The weight of frailty, her years have rolled

On like the seasons, as she prepares

To brave the cruelty of another final winter.

Some fly, yet some wither, the fruit

Like the leaves, and the turning heavens

Grey, she has with her memories

Of the lost, hers fallen and theirs taken

By the world, with its times, have come

Clinking needles, the lonely chatter

Her yarns share her destiny.

Blessed young angels run amuck

In the warm summer sun, the crisp

Laundry, pie on her window sill, and

Her womb, for it bears more fruit, than

One, kind to her finds her, joy, not knows

No sorrows. This is to her, womanhood

A worship, for the labors.

It is a lovely morning, spring

Has found its way to the skies, to her life.

A chuckle, a subtle touch, sends the hearts

Fluttering into the chirp, the laughter of the children

To be, of infinite hope and dream. It is

In the song and dance, in the clutter of chairs,

To the bustle of kin, she has come to be, one.

As the apples redden, the cherries

Ripe, she grows, a cherubic smile

Flowing locks, in the darkest night

Dreams of moments to be, her luscious

Senses, her graceful splendor nurture

Swaying fields, her maiden youth.

She skips, falls, scrapes her knee

A bold girl she, can’t stop the tears

As she runs to her mother, suppressing

That quaint wail that escapes her pain.

In those tender arms that raised her

She rests, salt drying on her upper lip.

From dust to womb, a soul

She journeys, to another body

Endlessly yearning, to dwell in a moment of

Salvation, for eternity.

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.