Your Beliefs or Mine?

People I know, closer and around the year I descended on this planet, are indulging and how. In satsangs, chanting, joining cults, motivational meetings, self-disciple-ing and the likes. And here I am beginning again to read books, exchanging ideas with newer people (sometimes half my age), thinking of travelling, giving up on 'No-chicken on Tuesdays' notions, wondering if it's too late to start a new vocation and the likes.

It is quite confounding to see how we are formulated with this basic urge to slink into roles at different phases of our lives almost as though sleep walking through it. My mom tells me "High time you start devoting your mind to some place now" like she began telling me I must get regular facials as soon as I stepped into my thirties. Like it's an unwritten rule and blasphemous to go otherwise.

However, I look around and wonder who's getting the better or closer to what's within! The same are these spiritual devotees who return back satiated with the idea of having “found” themselves at a certain level and then let manipulative bitchiness of the television serials consume them. Or allow the desires of flaunting their assets or knowledge, override enjoying the simple pleasures. Splurge on materialistic acquisitions and squirm at the idea of not being invited at someone's party while the whole town was there. Gossip and judging others is what feeds them, doubts nurture and the "me" surfaces most conspicuously while they demand time to do something for self to make them selfless. Kahe ka self improvement! Ghanta!

I also muse over my own relationship of convenience with God. Say a "Thank you for being with me and stay with me" is the only prayer I manage to sneak in everyday and sometimes I forget even that. Cramming my head with the notion that God shouldn't be narcissist enough to want to hear you praise him in mantras and read holy scriptures all day. That's a human craving, isn't it, minus the semblance to divine, or so we've learnt? Spirituality sounds like all the things that you already know being told to you so that you forget and be told about it differently next time. Tell us about it if you remember it still while you look down upon someone wearing a tacky dress or narrating animatedly how you heard XYZ's wife is having an affair. Some people don't need to grow within. They first need to grow up. And if it is just a brilliant ideology that dazzles you, dive in Literature, saunter around the lanes of fiction, join Twitter, whatever!

Maybe they are right and I am wrong. I do have these occasional bursts of inner ruffle. Don't they? I'd like to reform too as soon as someone convinces me that reformation comes with the guaranteed assurance of no-ruffling. “The frequency would be less”, they argue. “You'd be more patient and make peace with problems”. Hmm, isn't that what we anyways do when problems don't seem to be fringing on solutions? Tell me about the middlemen who've shunned limelight to light your soul. Who say beyond what age-old moralistic values have upheld almost blindly through time! Who let you believe what you believe in and not what you should believe in!

The priests and the sadhus and the babas and the gurus and the palm readers, insist they can change your life but for that you must have faith. I say bring that change first for me to watch that faith being born within, than have to cultivate it in, as though through surrogate mothers of your believers.

Or maybe I miss G who's gone on tour and Seeya who's begun school from today or this is just because I've not eaten anything remotely exciting since Navratri fasts ~ the ranting of a hungry woman. Why I keep them? I have no idea. Just been keeping them forever. Perhaps because the only reflection for me of God can be "ma". Perhaps because I want to clear my conscience with the idea that "Kuch to mein bhi karte hoon" after all. Or perhaps, dizzy in this pseudo superior complex of my idea being better than theirs, I’m looking for an excuse to give up fasting from next time and indulge in the pleasures of food. God would understand, won’t He? He does not want me to stay empty stomach to feed His ego? Well, I always win in the argument against him never mind if the world thinks He is just a silent observer.

Rain on Me.

I am looking out of the French window of my closing-in room onto the gaping skies above-somewhere a long overcast stretch and then in intermittent smudge-a cotton fluff, streaked as though with lighter shades of black. Shades of black? Who could have thought! But alas, there’s always something intriguing happening only in between the two extremes-the black and white, the dark and the light, the day and the night! I look at the vacant seat beside me, pull my feet closer and then talk to myself and talk to the rain, attempting to whip the mundane.

They won’t fathom who only see the scorched patches on earth, not live with parched scraps within. I rummage around thirstily for rain to dim the Sun’s splendour and steal his silent thunder right from under his fiery nose, to hurl it across the corners of my earth like manna. Show him the brawn, for you don’t silently do your charge, you bloody well make sure everyone stands up and notices. Impede them in their paths if you must but not let anyone go untouched.

I have yet to cry in the rain like Chaplin did but having done that, standing in the washroom shower and watching the ease of the pain-I can barely imagine how purging you would be once in.

Am I looking at you or are the skies showing me, me? Turning from serene to stirred, from white to grey, from anger dipped bawls to action that follows-not just the thundering cloud, are we, but the bursting ones too? So ominously full of yourself one minute and then the next-howling, shedding endless tears, fearing the loss of how you were. Yes, rains fill you with delusions sometimes.

The clouds roar with blood-curdling rage and watchful, keen eyes, scrunch and look out, enthused and then waiting again to hear you transform into a gentle pitter patter on the roof tops. You are soothing to the eyes and ears, rousing all senses like new love that promises to douse in pleasure knowing it will eventually seep slowly into faded impressions.

How synonymous are emotions with your showers!

For some romance is evoked as though the water trickles down to their souls and pacifies the burning heat of heart aches, anger, jealousy and the likes. You raise dead passions for others-who remember being kissed in the rain and also those who pine for it.  That would be so life altering-a milestone that you may just want to settle at with bag and baggage. For a handful of fortunate others love is unwarily infused, when they share an umbrella or realize, how arrestingly mesmeric someone looks when water dribbles down the forehead or plays with wet hair.

You flow in love and like a nimble leaf floating along on your quivering ascend, the loved ones are carried through, effortlessly and naturally. You bleed into desires deeper than the earth and ooze out emotions wider than oceans. Yes, rains are mush and so much. Romance and rain are the eternal couple playing hide and seek, till they embrace and weep.

But then again, for some you stir the melancholy-the same showers become screams of wrath as the lonely heart feels the clouds mock his solitude. To look into the rain alone can sometimes be the toughest call.

I sit here by my window, letting the breeze pass through me. Watching the harsh sunshine simmer into a pleasing dullness that lightens, for in the offing would be dispersed layers of stubborn dust, cathartic washing away and eventual little pools of water gathering around, inviting my feet to jump onto them with childish abandon! The smell of wet mud wafting through the air, giving an ethereal feel to earthly life as we know it!

I waited for the storm to pass, I stood firm before the daunting winds. I waited for the skies to clear, for maybe because I was hoping for someone to walk in. Perhaps I was only waiting to throw my umbrella away and dance in the rain, even minus my dancing shoes. The springing of heart would give birth to the rhythm in my feet and lead me to where I should be. The clinging of my clothes would be a new feeling-I like the clinging maybe.

Would you please wash away my sanity-I ache to be insane?

Would you please balm my wounds, I pine to ease the pain?

What tears do to the eyes and mind, you cleanse the body and soul.

Come, drip, soak, drench and flood me!

Are you raining Praise today?

Strange is human nature-if someone praises us, they are sensible and a good judge of character. If they acclaim our contemporaries-what flattery and hogwash! One person saying nice things about my posts, I deem it as truthful, judicious awareness and the same person commenting generously on someone else’s mediocre blog is what I see as motivation by reader’s pressure. Yes, glints of narcissism are not always apparent.

It is as natural as breathing to believe nice things being said about us. We can be lulled into almost anything while listening to those earnest words which our mind signals to us as a craving we deserve. We want the world to borrow our eyes to see us like we do and borrow our mind to think the same too. We don’t want perspectives, we want garbed approvals.

It would be almost impossible to find someone who totally hates himself. Self love is the first love and like they say, the first love is the hardest to give up. So when someone fans this fire, it spreads faster than blood does in the veins. It takes us to a whole new echelon of enthusiasm within the frame of our skin and delicate layers of deliberation within.

Praise is not beyond us even if we are not one of those who are beyond praise. An act of appreciation affirms our connection to each other-validates us, expands who we are in this world. Even a little bit of a positive reception goes a long way to ensure action that may otherwise be postponed or crushed under the farce of monotony or disinclination.

It is a universally occurring phenomenon. Even those who profess to be above it are really somewhere lingering around its fringes waiting to be enticed by potent and believable enough bait. It is the marijuana of success, a vicious circle wherein enough is never enough and more leads to a wish for an encore.

The intellectuals to the retards, the artistic to the vulgar, the man on the chair to the man on the street, everyone’s looking to be considered special-every ordinary human motivated to be derived as inspiringly extraordinary or at least rare, whether they admit it or not, to a greater degree or less. And when someone gives that to us-we raise them to a pedestal just as they raise us to some altar in our minds.

Praise is often intoxicating. Watch someone who has left footprints on some soil, worth his mettle. See him bask in his own glory, drench in public adulation and tread only in hunger for greater applause. It is then that a dip in appeal occurs-for he alters to live now to please others who loved him in the first place for loving himself as he was.

Praise can balance you just as much as it has the potent power of turning you giddy. It is often misleading-it plays games of hallucination and you begin to imagine materialization of thoughts that were hitherto latent. It evokes desire and the drive. Whether it is positive or negative depends on its provocation and how much you allow it to go to your head and eventually the rest of the systems follow suit. 

The only weapon safeguarding us against this lethal attack would be the armour of discretion-being able to realize when and who is genuine and what is being said merely to ensure a reservation in the good books. Someone somewhere is always trying to get into your books-whether or not you happen to be sitting with an open or inviting one, it does not matter.

We live not for ourselves but for the redemption of how we should be. We want praise for we want to know we are not being discarded like the chaff at the flour mill of life that is grinding us mercilessly. So let's accept what we subconsciously plea to the world-as you rotate the blades of this machine, by kind to grind me to a fine powder that satiates not just your hunger but also makes me feel fulfilled in a life well lived.

I read and I live...

How do you satiate hungry eyes searching to quench a thirst?

How does one fill a void when one does not know what is needed for its redemption?

Such is life that it necessitates the delving into an escape route-to mingle into mindless relations derived out of so-called friendships or love, to drift into the unrealistic madness of cinema or devour the coming to life of words in books.

Reading, yes, I admit-I miss you. Let me confess today how I went wanton by turning to the blogosphere single-mindedly that it would make up for my erstwhile fixation of holding an actual book running into pages in my clasp. I haven’t returned to embrace you in many-a-years now. Would that explain my tossing restlessly in bed some days?

Should I blame the gradually reclining attention span or the steadily ebbing drama in my own life? A one page blog post reading of someone I admire, has been serving as a capsule perhaps to screen the symptoms though provides no cure. Or the witty one-liners on twitter that impress me no end perhaps ignite enough to ignore the larger picture! It gives me the hallucination of having “read”. Reading thus now doles out to fill some empty specks of my mind with a momentary realization of having travelled to some far-off domain, lived a reckless or meticulous life and sauntered back to my reality.

Reading is still serving me although I look not at it with the same eye.

I get magnetically pulled to any iota I see of the Victorian Ages or Romanticism symbolized by those peacefully resting in their graves now-any contemporary voices strong enough to stand at par with the Byrons, Wordsworths and Keats. Imagine the exquisiteness of ageless expressions like wandering lonely as a cloud or walking in beauty....

For such was the web they spun that getting entangled was the mind’s way of showing what a true orgasm is to the rest of the body. Such were the unadulterated emotions and expressions, as though the writers stood blind to all voices around and were enslaved to the voices in their heads.

Picking up classics or true Literature can at times have a therapeutic effect (just as much as a regular pacey best-seller). You walk down the wondering lane-what constitutes such a frame that manages to give you lines holding the grain of the ultimate truth, hand-picked from a solitary life but withstanding the test of times to reach the eternity? What immortal fountains they create and how? What triggers the unstoppable breeze that cools even the most burning of surfaces with their tender flap? Goes to prove that you can often create magic without movement or sound-magic by the gentle tap of your fingers and mind!

I read and I lived....in the days gone by when I would curl up on a sofa in a corner with a book. An illicit relation perhaps for I cared a damn how anyone looked at us-my transfixed gaze, my coy smiles, the scrunching of anxious eyes, the pleasure of reading love being made on page-me and my book, palming each other and then looking at the walls for a while, in reflection of letting sink in what the books showed me. I would move my body rarely and only when it fringed on getting numb while the mind travelled in frenzy and sometimes even that would be stationary, performing the arduous task of creating mind pictures for me-moving, pulsating images or just giving me the goose bumps with vividness painted there.

Did I become the protagonist in all I read? Yes, I experienced the greed for money, the lust for sex, the spine chilling edging in a mystery, the ache of soul for love, the crushing of entrails by a heart break, the malicious scheming for murder, the infinite search for truth. Did I come out unscarred from all I read? No, remnants of these got transfixed to me like second skin, shaping my mind, preferences and beliefs. They unwittingly went and formed a layer in my subconscious that made me think, opine and pine.

I carried the weight of whom I read for a while till fresh love began to reverberate within and another pristine crispness came between my nimble fingers, too eager to grasp the new.

Yes, Mark Twain, I agree with you when you say, "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." But perhaps reading became too taxing for me-the way I wear my heart on my sleeves, I found it difficult to stop it from becoming a bookmark trapped permanently within some sheets of a book closed and done with. The pain of returning to a life less ordinary began to be weighed against the pleasure of dipping into ecstasy. Or perhaps I have just become too lazy using the garbs of responsibilities to disguise the change in me, looking for books in faces of people? I need to find myself again and I need to find a book that can find me? -A voice that sounds like the voices in my head and calms them down. 

P.S. Sorry a severe writer's block in progress here...hopefully would find my funny bone soon!

The Sleeping Volcano

This is what I wanted to say to a dear friend and myself... I hope it helps!

They say all that appears calm on surface has ripples below if it is not declared dead-a dormant volcano, the about-to-be-boiled tea in a pan, an electric socket that remains silent on the outside but has wires screwing each other within. We all live like colossal houses done up for the arrival of make-belief guests, cobble together to show it dandy, cover up with colourful fringes, spotlight focussed on the smiles and stacking away the unwanted and unseemly in some dark, deep alley or cellar. We stuff little nothings so tight in the wardrobe that when later we do want to sort things out, the door opens and everything tumbles down to greater disarray.

We must “appear” to be beautiful. But does that make us “feel” beautiful in the truest of sense or does that increase the pang of restlessness for all praise then becomes a mockery?

It is not easy to live a dual life and not uncomplicated to get rid of it once you acquire it thus-the constant struggle between how you are and how you want to be or what you have become and what you were. Or even in the present, you would find yourself sometimes to be two different persons-an oxymoron in a way that only you can perceive. It is when someone or some situation comes along that extracts you from a convenient environ dragging you to the risky hilt that awareness strikes in-it was a stagnant pond which you might have been impersonating.And then the mind fucking game begins of wanting to know which part of you is real and which you have fashioned to please those around you. You are made to mould in a certain way because that is how you are expected to behave whereas your contours refuse to take just about any shape.

You begin to churn within to meet you-battling to and fro between two extremes that somehow got created and the chasm therein sucking you so deep, that each endeavour made for a rising swings between the feelings of either ecstatic joy of a drug induced roller coaster emotional rush or just abysmal low of being painfully weary and drab.

You rummage around for answers, you spend time talking to what you think is you, you ask those who know you, you test yourself time and again hoping that where you stand at the end of the experiment would be the logically derived conclusion. But life isn’t all science and even all science does not have all answers. Some searches manifest themselves into invisible circles. You keep turning and tossing in your head as the jarring bafflement creates the cacophony that gets termed as your life.

And then there are days when the head gives you no answer so that you come to the conclusion-It is all in the head. You have no feelings or lack of it per se, it is the head that tells you and you could/should tell it back what you want to hear from it. But then again it is not the head that has the sense or ability to do it, for it is seldom used by the owner. It is the influences that fan its insecurities and harbour all irrationality.

And as if that damage does not suffice, ego comes in and strikes the death knell. What “I” think is right becomes supreme and care-a-damn sets in. What I want consumes what I need! All love is self-love, all actions are perpetrated to this very aim, and all feelings culminate in this sea that devours it all. We want us to be happy but we want us to also not to appear selfish-how ironical! Most of us live our lives in trying to strike a balance between the two and hence be trapped in the see-saw of emotions.

Often we continue to fight against arguments that are not in line with our own chain of thoughts or feelings. We seldom stop to evaluate what caused the resurgence of these thoughts in the first place. Are they really mine or did I gather them from people whom I think are mine along the route? And now that I have imbibed them so rigidly, are they worth creating a ruckus about? We would never know who/what is right and who/what is not!

One man’s heaven is another man’s hell. Then why not live freely off shackles of guilt? Why let little termites of doubt eat you? Why not do that which gives you pleasure, irrespective of how many accusing fingers stand against you? Let ‘you’ be that where ‘you’ is happiest. The ultimate decision to be taken is to please others or to please myself-and there will always be a contradiction in both these polarities. You cannot do both no matter how Herculean your attempt or how noble your intentions.

So then how do we know who we are? What is our purpose? Whom should we please? I am known by the relations that move along with me, but they are not me. I am needed by the services I render, but that again cannot define me. I am my interests and my likes, but they are transient and ebb and flow over, yet I remain.

So if I go on this struggle of finding myself, am I being too selfish, too philosophical, too foolish? Am I going against the intrinsic fabric of human nature to accept what we get and live in it to our very best? I am burning within to break my limitations but then my limits end there where some else’s intolerance begins. I want to find me and ask it what it really wants and who it really is. I want to be able to then not question my own actions or have to think over my own decisions for I would know me beyond my name.

Right now, I know someone who knows little but then the journey has just begun and I must not fear and I must not run. I must accept all facets and neither curb one or encourage the other. I must remember it has to be fun. I must learn to fight so that I do not lose me in the crowd. I must survive. I must understand my needs and confront the doubts. I must not give in or give up and must not imbibe or disperse. I should not flow along and yet go with the flow....

And in case you find her before I do, would you please help introduce me to me?

Let's talk about Love!

Let’s talk about Love-love as we know it, love as we want it and Love as it should be. But they say “True love” is like a ghost that everyone talks about and few have seen. Love is like that-vague at one time and yet so bang-on at another. Try telling someone exactly why you love a person or exactly why you don’t love another and you’ll encounter utter helplessness of the highest order. And like someone said, it is more than three words mumbled before going to bed or hanging up the phone.

Love is a momentary or a momentous spark? Actually a bit of both-it comes to you like lightning. Strikes you once and effects you forever. The spark may be gone but the smouldering remains. It burns as well as warms you for life. But then for some it is like fever-it comes and goes with changes in the environment around them. For many others it is breathing-it sustains and completes and though we may not realise that we need it and have it all the time, when gone it suffocates.

The falling in love in itself is such an extraordinary phenomenon! It becomes a temporary state of frenzy within-as though all the atoms are suddenly charged up and hyper active. Slowly they become sluggish or your system becomes attuned to the velocity and you crave for an upgrade yes, I know, trying to sound all scientific and all. Some bodies harbour very lazy atoms perhaps-they become satisfied with what and how they are and live like that forever. You may view that as a blessing what another man may call a curse!

Love at first sight is something equally intriguing. Imagine for a blind man then-the dim possibility of this ever coming true. But blind mortals fall in love too. Sight as our guiding partner is a boon or bane depending upon how well we balance the other senses with it. So imagine it also for a man blinded by what he thinks is beautiful! There is only attraction at first sight-love is too long a process to get so simplified. Yet love at first sight can really not be dismissed as too dreamy, for dreams are said to reflect the sub conscious.

Erich Segal had said-‘True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.’ It is a latent phenomenon, say like a dormant volcano simmering within. To outsiders there appears nothing till one day it all bursts out and everything succumbs in its sway. Loving someone is not the same as being in love. A dear friend once said-everything is about a season, a reason or a lifetime. You may love with all your heart for all your life but that feeling of being in love comes for a short while. Some want the transient madness and others run after the perennial assurance.

We live in a world that waits for the extraordinary to come about to love and the ordinary rarely gets a chance to show that it can rise to that level. Why do we ignore the fact that ordinary requires just that little bit ‘extra’ to make it rise to the occasion? We sit with a list of what we want in a man/woman to make us love him/her. When truth is we never know what we really want from love till we fall in love. It is then that we realize what more we could and should get and how juvenile was the list to begin with. It then becomes an internal dilemma to accept the person as he is, which is the popularly deemed yardstick for love, or to keep on the search. We generally fall in love with our eyes and fall-out from our mind. Very few people are actually happy in love-as for the rest, they were either too quick to declare love to someone or too late in doing so!

If you say you can’t live without someone, get a rain check there too. Living without someone is easy-living with someone is the difficult part. When you fall in love once, there are chances that it becomes a habit-you can fall again-the body becomes inured to it and on its own finds ways to satisfy its craving. Living with whom you love, is THE test-for then you step down from the hazy clouds to the caked dry surface of reality and remove the shades to face the glare. You can scrunch your eyes or shut them or stare at the dazzle in its face. How long you can take it before you look for shade then measures if it was true love?

True love is often confused with romantic and frantic love. It is believed that if there is no madness, there is no love? If there is complacence there is something missing. So it is sometimes the hardest to derive at the inference of whether it is love or just a very deep-seated infatuation. It always is baffling for the symptoms are almost similar. The craving to be together, the adrenalin rush, the constant meditation of the beloved to the extent of becoming oblivious to it all-how do we know when it really is love?  This is where being in love and loving might come in handy. It is so easy to convince ourselves that we are in love and so difficult to actually love.

Some live to love and some love to live. It is what segregates wanting to sleep with someone hot but not wanting to do so too. It makes you look past all the negativity for that one positive aspect which thrills you no end. Love is such an incomparable feel-good. It is what happens to your mind when your mind should be at someplace else. It is the feeling of fear that grips at the thought of it being lost even before it is found. We love because nothing thrills like love does.

Can love be selfish? Yes and no. There is no such thing as ‘unrequited love being the strongest’. How long can you love someone who is unaware or unconcerned about how you feel? Loving someone is the reassertion of loving ourselves. We love because our love makes US feel good. Would we love where we do not experience the feel-good? So it really is about “me” at the end of the day. But then again-when two people do fall in love, there is no room for selfishness-no games played, no jealousy, no boastfulness, any offense or defence. In the Utopian state, there is no thinking then if you are being used or no devising of ways to play hard to get. Love is simple-you don’t do ANYTHING to hurt the one you are in love with-anything at all, and you know you’ve landed on something pure. Love makes you always ready to accept, to understand, to trust, to justify, to support. That explains why some women stand by their men despite knowing that they have been unfaithful. They know no other way of being than by giving unconditional love-accepting and not expecting is sometimes love’s biggest characteristic.

That also brings us to the very debatable issue of being in love with more than one person at a time. Is it possible or is it just an excuse to sleep around or boost your ego with the possible notion that you are so loveable? We can be in love with multiple people with evenly balanced purity of emotions and intentions. Aren’t we equally loving towards our parents, brothers, set of friends-why segregate romantic love from the domain of feelings? It’s like saying you can feel kindness just for once, compassion just for another and passion just for someone else.

We always look for a love that is forever-but how can something that is born have no end? And forever has anyways become redundant in the present times that we live in-nothing lasts forever and never say never! It is natural to expect something that’s been begun to reach its destination and thereby completion. A line can never become a circle till what you give comes back to you. And why is ‘end’ associated with a ‘dead end’? It can be a cross over to begin something new. Yes, love is like that too-transcending, changing its shades, taking new forms and you must move along with the flow or be beaten upon the crags on shore.  

Love is never easy-nothing that is worthy ever is! It tests before it puts you to rest. For some absence makes the heart grow fonder and for others-out of sight and out of mind. Love requires consistency, otherwise you just might turn around a few years down the line and realise it was just another fascination or fling. You may not hold hands anymore, you may not caress as before, but love is that million dollar look of concern when the loved one trips or a message on the phone that says ‘We don’t kiss much anymore and I know it is my fault.’

Love is a must for at least once in a lifetime. Find it if you feel it might not come searching for you. Experience it, for it might not give you opportunities forever. Treasure it, for nothing is more valuable. Without love, you’d remain vacant from within, lost even when found!

You love so you may live

Or do you live so you may love?

Tossing over a feathery bed,

Yearning for a tender touch!

You see the wonders the world has to offer

But only then close your lids gratified,

When you see passion in some loving eyes!

Why run after riches and fame

Suffering just to see your name

Etched in history as a glorious memory,

When all you need is to be stuck up

In someone’s fond reverie!

Crave not for immortality

Nor desire the world’s adulation

Pray to keep close a heart

That skips its beats on separation!

I want not gods or heavens or things money can buy,

I want not the worldly ties.

I want this fluttering heart of mine

To feel true love before it dies.

Of 'Zindagi Na Mile Dobara' and more!

It is 1 o’clock at night. I have just returned from my first night show of a movie in a year because the world was hollering about Zindagi na Milege Dobaara since a week and I thought if I won’t catch it now, I would soon probably be gasping for air or something or be labelled an outcast and deported to Alaska.

But as I was returning I was also pondering over my exact feelings about the movie. Of course there was a feel good but then there is also a tad bit of disappointment somewhere. That was also introspected and I came up with my very own bullet list again:

1. We actually had centre seats 6, 7, 8 (my nephew had also gone with my beloved and me) but the stupid seat guy made us sit at 3, 4, 5 and then came a fat aunty ji, some ten minutes late in the movie with two gawky guys dangling by her sides, made us all stand and create a ruckus and probably got us cussed under the breath by those seated behind us and despite me asserting that she’s seated her big butt on our space, they eventually gobbled up our seats and we had to settle back on her corner ones. Not that I was cribbing about those seats before, beloved was-but then the aftermath conclusion is I hate being bullied into giving what is rightly mine for no rhyme or reason. So bad start and also a nudge to beloved to remind him the umpteenth time that it is great that he is so super accommodating and all but there are times in life when he has to give up the ‘chalta hain’ attitude that surfaces EVERY where. I tell him people are using him for his niceness and he only says ‘Chalo, kisse ke kaam to aa raha hoon!’ Grrrr-believe me, it is not so “awwww...” every time.

2. Facebook was screaming and reeking with praises of the flick and how it was changing lives-some scores of very flattering updates were about the movie. I remember a cute blogger friend also updating this as her status. “Those who liked Delhi Belly and not ZNMD are sick.”

I did not dislike it really but just to be sure, I took the thermometer into my mouth to check if I was-98.4 it says and along with that in asterisk, are the invisible words that only I can perceive- ‘You are over healthy, could you please do something about it?’

I guess over expectations nipped the outcome a bit. Lesson learnt also that one must watch movies that we look forward to before the reviews flow in because you might not read the movie buzz section in the newspaper or avoid the pompous critics on television giving their ratings but you can run, you deny but you can’t escape the reviewers on Fb-count me as one of them too.

Zindagi Na Milege Dobaara:

Firstly, why such an excruciatingly painful title Madam Zoya Akhtar? I mean agreed there have been worst-Kabhi Alvida Na Kehne, Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam it’s now 1. 19 a.m. please forgive me for my tired memory and hence not coming up with more of such obnoxious names, I shall devote a post on this some other time to make up. But fortunately for those flicks the names kinda gelled well with the mouth. Zindagi-makes me just stop short at that...“Zindagi” for ZNMD is too weird an abbreviation and a very inconvenient for the lips.

Please don’t get me wrong here my friends- I have nothing against wholesome family entertainers-they’ve built our cinema on that. Look at The Johars and The Chopras achieving cult statuses by selling larger than life dreams. You come out hoping for a Raj to bump into or imagining flowers blooming at every encounter to turn it into love at first sight and then dance on well choreographed chartbuster numbers in Swiss locales, wearing heavily designed outfits at your sangeet. I never thought I’d be saying this but I now think-Isn’t it time we grew up?

I mean agreed ZNMD sounds such a fabulous proposition if it could really come true. If all men could go to Spain or even a poor old Singapore for bachelors party and then bump into beautiful scuba divers and have one night stands with good girls and with no strings attached! If we could meet up school friends after years and get together for such longish time as though nothing’s changed! If we could just dive into water or jump off a plane or run before a mad bull which I feel many do anyways in this part of Uttar Pradesh with rampant street animals making a go at your rear side at their whims and fancies and feel that we are living again. If only we could just as easily turn down marriage proposals without caring a damn about the feelings of those involved especially family and become Runaway Brides and grooms! Yes, we’d be kings of wishful thinking!

The Times of India recently informed of a study that revealed that romance novels lead to unstable mental health for women making them either over-the-top expectant or wanton to materialize such as they read, in their own mundane lives. So I guess it is time we told the movie makers to stop messing with our heads and please don’t give us larger than life ideas that seldom see the daylight. I mean till we craved for houses and families like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum it was alright-please don’t make us yearn for a life like what you show here! On a personal note perhaps I am also a bit bitter because I have always wanted to live like that-be on the move, new experiences around every corner-may be this mad post is just a response to the ‘sour grapes’ syndrome of the fox who is tempted by the grapes on the vine and then raises a snooty nose in disdain when it realises that they are beyond its reach.

Then I am also pondering that maybe it is the small city deficiency syndrome-may be life is such in metros of Delhi, Mumbai and the likes. But then we also have friends in these places that are equally stuck up in the grinds of the everyday earning of bread and butter that I suppose they strive to be served in gold plates adorned with precious diamonds, for their work schedules are so maddening that enjoying what they are reaping is postponed till some other time. Enough is never enough!

The movie-ZNMD was less of a movie and more of an experience, a journey you made with them. Of course I laughed and smiled and ogled at the three gorgeous and sexiest men in the Indian film industry and wanted to be Laila at many points yes, the smooch point topping the list. But then I also felt it all was too beyond our reach. I mean what could possibly have been the outcome of life for the trio after such a road trip-back to the grind or can they afford to party like that forever? How can you keep living Zindagi when zindagi makes 101 demands out of you to slog to survive? We all love holidays, we all love to be free without responsibilities, do things that make ME happy at the end of the day and period. But is it really possible? To just be with no strings attached?

It’s not that people like those don’t exist who live up their lives-they do, but their number is too miniscule to want everyone to be and behave like them. Possibly like a rare ‘Salman’-who gives up his obligations to an unborn child and his unwed mother for he never really grew up to want to grow up? And then also-do Hrithik, Farhan and Abhay really look as though they were out of college just four years back? Despite all their hotness, please! There were many shades of Dil Chahta Hai and The Hangover there and also some other movies which I could not put my finger on. I loved Farhan’s recital of poetry, loved the Senorita song and ached to be buried in the tomatoes too. And as far as the lip lock was concerned-we’ve seen Hrithik do better- remembering here the Dhoom kiss with Aishwarya that was oh-so-awesome!

On the other hand was Delhi Belly, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Again male bonding formed the crux with three guys as the protagonists. I read many reviews condemning the toilet humour and offensive language yet there was a novelty attached to it. The unique blend of English and Hindi that did not look artificial or put on in anyway-no songs, no intervals, no pretence, no dreams-just shit happening as it really does happen in actuality sometimes. There were genuinely moments when I laughed my head off my seat.

Despite all my aversions to crassness in real life, if you ask me which is closer home to me-I’d say there are more chances of me finding myself in trouble with the mafia and hear the worst of F and all the rest of the alphabet words than finding myself with a sexy finance man, who’d be ready to give up his job to go away with me to Morocco and the likes and sing Senorita there for the rest of our lives. I know what you are thinking-is ke liye tereko Katrina types hona padega-but then even hypothetically it is a weird possibility. I also know that you are going to tell me ‘It is just a movie-itna sochte nahi hain’-but you know, one of those days when a movie makes you-THINK!

After having blah-blahed about it all for three pages and still having you hear, let me also say this-our opinions of movies are formed not just by the content and merit of the movie itself but what frame of mind we are in when we venture to dekho them. I remember a couple friend and us went once to see this suspense thriller by the actor who played Meheer No. 2 in the television serial ‘Kyonki Saas bhi kabhi Bahu thi’ and laughed our guts out at the ham scenes and blatant and obnoxious over acting and omg-dialogues that were dissected and imitated-it remains one of my most enjoyable movie experiences ever! I don’t know what made me write a movie review for I generally don’t. Just that ZNMD makes you wanna be free and when you can’t, you wanna tell the world it is an impractical and bad idea! ;-) 

Sex and a whole lot like that!

These are just some baap of random thoughts/observations concerning/alluding to sex or lack/need/desire/madness of it and a whole lot like that kinda topics!

So bachcha log, please don’t read this and if you must then please don’t blame me later for not giving you spice enough!

•         I often share posts of bloggers I like on my Facebook page and generally my friends log do read trusting my taste and instincts god help and bless them all. However, when recently I put up a link to a post entitled ‘porn nights’ there were more “likes” and comments than ever before hmmmmmm...acha ji-wink, wink, even though ironically there wasn’t any actual porn or even a whiff of it anywhere. Just the title was enough to generate curiosity and thereby clicks. Even my own most famous posts have been those with double meanings and hints of titillation do you sniff some inane pride there? so much that I have to physically stop my dainty right hand with my super dainty left hand, from typing more of just that stuff. Pooooooint is-sex sells!

•            Like it or not, believe it or not, we are a bunch of sex starved voyeuristic lot no matter how many times we rattle the bed post in the cosy confines of our homes. We by which I am generalizing and in no way stating my personal preferences get thrilled still by watching hot lip-locks on screen or hearing about whose wife was caught in bed with whom. Complete crass shows like Big Boss, evoke such mass interest because the public is waiting with bated breath to hear someone abuse another in unfathomable terms or falter from the moralistic path into a fling. A hot item number ensures saleability of music and the movie no matter how crappy the content is. Katrina and John Abrahim still rule vast dingy corners of human imagination though they can ‘not-act’ the pants off anyone. Rahul Gandhi never mind masses calling him baba...he can be many’s baby;-) is the preferred politician among the youth for he is relatively sexier looking than the rest of the one-foot-in-grave or mouth-drenched-in-tobacco lot alright, maybe I am speaking for myself here, but isn’t he really?

•            Recently a dear friend of mine was very annoyed when he went to his bank for his usual dealings. Upon questioning why, he said that they had changed his Relationship Manager to a GUY and that was most disagreeable for him, as from the last twenty years of his ‘relationship’ with the bank, he had pretty and even passable, marginally pretty females, more ready to oblige than otherwise for business of course. Another dear friend of mine does not like female instructors at the gym for she feels they do not have the understanding of the body as a male instructor does. And in my many years of discerning people and their drift, I know better than to ask them to explain their weird surmise.

•             Why, sexier people do have greater chances of being hired than the ordinary dorks! And sometimes greater chances of being fired too. In my quest for maids came a damsel of a regular height and standard weight, except the top half of her body, just below the neck was inexplicably super bestowed, accentuated more hideously by the clingy kurta that she wore. So while I spoke to her, despite all my normal tendencies, please don’t raise that eyebrow...do I still need to convince the masses of THAT? I would inevitably find my eyes juxtaposed to those humungous things that would be called breasts in normal human understanding. My god, I was wondering, did she accidently take in those injections that is rumoured to be used on mini watermelons to make them ripen into the most giant ones on the shelves in a day? And I said ‘no thank you, I don’t want you toppling over with my daughter just because the 2/3^rd of your top half might not be able to handle the rest of the 1/3^rd of the weight below’.

•            It also is true that whatever we try to smother emerges out more strongly than ever. Tell your teenage daughter to stay away from boys and surely she’d be adventurous enough to commence on that very path to know ‘why’.  Create a hullaballoo about hot scenes in a movie and indisputably it would have more than the regular takers, wanting to satiate some urge or the other, if not just the curious one. Like I remember how a whole bunch of us friends and even many other ‘selective movie goers’ also, thronged the theatres for the movie Love, Sex and Dhokha although it boasted of no star cast or anything else, except what the title sheepishly hinted at. Neha Dhupia would forever be remembered, not for any movie that she was a part of, but for a simple quote she made, “Only Shahrukh and sex sells in Indian movies!”

•            Most boys do not begin as “men” unless circumstances make them promiscuous. This I realised post my blog article on ‘My Understanding of Men and Women’ where men have been cruelly stereotyped as solely driven by their libido I am sorry, please don’t take a morcha against me to ban me or something, I do love your specie at the end of the day. There a dear blogger Anshul remarked that he did not find many traces of himself or perhaps he just had to grow up to be a “man”. Bless you for being such a nice munda, bringing hope for my despairing sisterhood not yours obviously. Like always Anshul, even your comments give me food for thought; forget about your posts which are like a sinful banquet by those standards.

   

         Anyways, I then realised that although most men would say that there is    no man who does not have sex on his mind in his relation with a woman, I almost began to beg to differ. There are still boys who want to fall in love with one girl whom they’d eventually settle down with, dream of eternal love and bed hopping is just not their game though this variety is under a serious threat of extinction and such specimens are already declared as endangered species, fiercely guarded by the owners like Kohinoor Heeras. It’s easier to find tiger’s milk than them! Or perhaps, they are yet to become men- these tendencies surface even in the boy next door, more so in the middle ages, as a cynically wise dear friend says, when you realise that you gave up the best part of your twenties believing in ideals like those of teenage girls-even the teenage girls don’t think like that anymore, he says. 

•             Recent cases of celeb infidelities have made headlines everywhere. People scrunch their noses in disdain at the Strauss-Kahn saga, from Tiger Woods okay, his tally more than anything else makes him so outrageous to Ryan Giggs and Gordon Ramsay. Actors like Charlie Sheen and Hugh Grant have ruled the roost more so with their sexual escapades. While I am in no way defending polygamy, I do sometimes feel how difficult it must be in show biz to continue tightening your leash around the flimsy slippery corners of conscience. It is okay for us lesser mortals to sit comfy in our not-so-glamorous or powerful arenas we don’t have to bear faces of a Hrithik or a Kareena, within breathing distance every day, crooning love lullaby to us and then test our god damn moralities We just have to raise an accusing finger at those who reach unfathomable heights through the sheer beauty of their countenances and body or swoon-worthy talent. It is so pleasurable to pick faults in others whereby you make an assertion of a lack of them in you, without having to say it in so many words.

I mean come on, if I were a Bill Clinton and sexy females thronging me would flirt and make passes, I would be too abnormally human to let it pass without retorting suitably back, especially after the world known established fact of my gift of gab. And no one counts the 101 times he may have resisted but the one time he could not dodge no puns intended he was crucified. Sometimes it becomes difficult to realise when the blurring lines of harmless flirting have crossed over. So before we burn their effigies, let us at least put ourselves in their shoes oh how we’d love that, won’t we?

Ranbir Kapoor is accused of being philandering. Hell! When women like Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif and the recent bevy of beauties associated with the Casanova, cling on him or they spend days and nights in locales that only the dreamiest of fairy tales could boast of, it should not really come as a surprise with his kind of charm. I don’t know how Sachin Tendulkar and Shahrukh have managed to not create such headlines but then do we really know the truth always?

Ordinary mortals attached to their families and living in a closer knit set ups have really no excuse to stray but the stars...they are stars after all, beyond reach and part of their appeal is the hype around them!

All I am saying here is that you can’t beat the drums about being loyal and moral till your morality has been suitably tested by something which is difficult to resist. When Vishwamitra can give in, the rest of the men are also only humans!

•          While I am not being judgemental in the above cases, I would really like to jump the bandwagon in another one. In this age of internet relationships, it is easy getting hooked and easier still is assuring privacy with a person even though it may not be “touch”-phone like easy physical. While there may be chat rooms and the likes catering to such needs of individuals, it is sad how the youth is prone to blind faith or stupid thrill of exchanging nude pictures of themselves, with such non-chalance. I try to keep an open mind in most cases and think from the other’s point of view before being driven to conclusions yet I do believe that here one needs to be a whole lot more cautious of what is sacredly hers even after trusting the other to the point of obsession.

The younger lot are more confused than ever about their own preferences and loyalty because in relationships like these, they give too much of themselves too soon and then are extremely disillusioned if it does not work out. Sexual experimentation is worse when you are ignorant of the real world and worst still if you are on the internet, speaking from a girl’s point of view. From a man’s side-How can you let go of the belief in your loyal streaks because of a couple of failed internet relationships and convince yourself that you might not have it in you to not stray and thereby stray with the most guiltless of conscience?  

Enough! So much of sex talk is making me sexy oh how I wish it was THAT easy!

So until next time when I make more sense...stay sexy! :-)

Looking for my Parallel Universe!

The Quantum Theory is something that technical, scientific and any-big-term-phobic ‘me’ would generally stay miles away from. Heck, I don’t even know if it is more concerned with science or technology or both. But I’ll tell you what my modest ‘big-on-advice-n-little-on-information’ brain has understood of it through a lesson I teach in Class 11^th, through the mind-blastingly awesome flick ‘Source Code’ and through my discussions about it with a dear friend.

It is an amazing theory that implies parallel universes could exist simultaneously along with our own, having their own history, events and often a completely poles apart turn of reality as compared to the one that has materialised in the otherwise normal world, as we know it. The ever eternal debate between reality and what we deem as real!

What is reality? Something that we are experiencing as of now or is this, the big, fat dream that would burst someday like a bubble and we would wake up to a different scenario?

I’ll first share with you the gist of this chapter I teach to Class 11^th students and that evokes the maximum number of yawns and protests from most of the slackers. So if you yawn in between don’t you dare open your mouth for anything besides a mesmerized gape, we’ll know where you stand!

It is the story of a History professor/writer/lecturer who one day wakes up to find himself in a train that is heading from Pune to Bombay. There are some Anglo-Indians on board and the train bears the symbol of the East India Company. Flabbergasted, he first presupposes that he has somehow travelled back in time, but it is not so. He is in the same time zone and era but in a world that is unfamiliar to him. Upon a little investigative stunt, he finds out that this is a different India, in contrast to the one as we know. Here we have not been ruled by the Britishers for a hundred years and are instead self reliant and extremely progressive. Whatever pocketful of English influence is there on the Bombay soil, it is in way of trading and entrepreneurship.

He goes to the central library to search for the turning point of the events and from where had history become different in this world to our own. Upon digging his self written history books, he finally converges it all to The Battle of Plassey where Vishwas Rao, the Maratha ruler missed the English bullet by a fraction of a hair, leading to the subsequent morale boost of his army and victory against the English in the 1800’s. The British influence thereafter was reduced and Indian Marathas ruled the nation for half a century before it became democratic.

While OUR History reveals that Vishwas Rao was killed by the British army that eventually led to an irreversible expansion of the English empire, whereby they ruled us for the next century! The professor absent-mindedly keeps the note of the information in his pocket, moves out and gets embroiled in an argument with an angry crowd, beaten up to the point of becoming subconscious and wakes up again to find himself on his bed in the world that he calls his own.

He is then explained to that since the last two days he was in coma, after a collision with a truck and the near death experience-which he realizes may have somehow made it possible for him to make that transition. However, the professor has evidence of that note in his pocket to prove to the detractors that they are wrong and what he was relating was not his insane imagination or wishful thinking.

 

The movie ‘Source Code’ also revolves around a similar web whereby one person travels through time and space to find himself in a body unknown to him, to save the world from a potential bomb threat and thereby able to create different realities by going back and forth in time for eight minutes on each round. Sounds complicated? Read the story here.

                         

Is that not an amazing leeway?

The assumption that varied realities exist in the universe where different histories I never thought I could use this term in plurals are being made based on a turn of events or diverse decisions that might have been taken. If I put my own life at this parameter it makes me dizzy to just imagine the possibilities.

Forgetting the global potential, it makes me wonder if there is another world, where I may be living a different life based on some road less travelled that I decided to sojourn on. There could be a world where I may not be married but running my own media channel, as was craved by me some fifteen years ago when I stepped out of the threshold of school. Selfish na, you think....But that was the first crossroad that I had stood on, debating and churning within till I finally gave in to family pressures. And many a times I am confounded by the 'what if?' that could have transpired there.

 

How amazing if we could peer into these different worlds as though into crystal balls and then pick and choose which alternative best suits our disposition and perhaps live there happily ever after. It is even more awesome than the supposition of visiting our future through some time machine because that cannot be altered while here we get options. And I have yet to find a human being who dislikes the idea of options for anything and everything!

“There is no one reality. Each of us lives in a separate universe. That's not speaking metaphorically. This is the hypothesis of the stark nature of reality suggested by recent developments in quantum physics. Reality in a dynamic universe is non-objective. Consciousness is the only reality.”-says M.R. Frank, from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

I find myself wondering at the concept of multiple realities. How do parallel universes connect? What are the exact processes by which mind interacts with matter at the quantum level? Would we ever be able to travel through time, space and realities like this? And would a technically-duh me ever be able to comprehend fully, leave alone use this scientific break-through, if ever achieved in our history? The universe that we live in has such a fascinating nature and there is after all something more complex than the brain...or is it really the brain’s complexity again, after all?