The assholeousness of it all

A day of revelations, nahi?
I reveal a 9-month old secret to one (no I'm not delivering anytime soon) and a 9 week old to another. One is surprised, the other isn't. My head is spinning, tooth shaking, I have huge responsibility tomorrow. I'm insanely happy, and I have nothing more to say this time.
Or do I?
What is it to be valued?
How do you define who cares?
A benefit of doubt for the uncaring?
Or the careless?
You look, we saw- I was conquered.
And a battle I threw away to run back- only to myself.
This time I refuse to be alone, to be shaking at the knees and begging myself to keep my sanity.
I chose me, over him.
Which, by the way, is a good feeling. Like that insane day when everything changed.
Long back, before I knew he existed.
I'm my own story- my Velutha exists, my Ammu shall live.
I'm a storm full of emotions again, but this time the tide shall take charge, clean the shores and find new ones.
I lived again today.
My dream of falling hard shall come true again. This is not it- not this tragedy of a story. I choose a happily-ever-after. I'll skip what he's taking.
Yes, I'm rambling, but I assure you, my rambles make more sense this time.
No one shall be hurt, no one shall drown.
And in any case, it doesn't matter to him. And even if it does, that doesn't bother me.
The stupidity, or the assholeousness of it all lies in the fact that I was at fault. They'd warned me, like MAJOR warned. I still believed I could be the difference (with the next one, I say, I will be) but nay. I'm sooooo insistent on being correct I can't see my mistakes there. Why blame the bugger, he was just doing what he always did.
Happy birthday, Radhika.
To a new dawn.

Birthday no.20.

7 hours of presentation. Had fun, laughed, got bored.
Manasi, Shri, Clar, Coll co-ordinated with my spy-cum-friends Radhi and Shristi- surrrprised me at college...Rishanka joined the celebration too...glad she did!
Had awesome fun. Like awesome fun.
At aunt's place- with family. Eating, laughing, fighting, dancing.
Read Dad's message. Cried.
Loved my birthday.

Funeral Blues

From 'Four weddings and a funeral'. A poem that makes me cry everytime I read it. It expresses the anguish and the hurt of the lover.
The times when I can't make sense of why I'm hurt, and when even the closest of friends can't seem to grasp why I'm behaving a certain way. I think at times these lines can express what each one of us feel- the need for the world to suffer because someone we care about has a raw deal.
Do read it, it's beautiful.

Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut of the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Silence the pianos and with a muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crape bows round the white necks of the public doves
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves

He was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood
For nothing now can ever come to any good

- W.H.Auden

Avoid yaar

People do perceive me as someone who's open to a lot of ideas, a lot of fun, and heck loads of nonsense. None of which is untrue. I like the more-than-usual jabber. I love talking about stuff, more than any physical activity. I could talk for hours. Hell, I do.
But something yesterday made me realised how many things I WASN'T comfortable discussing. With anyone.
One of them stands out.
My religious perspective- Or the lack of it. I am not comfortable discussing religion. The stories in it, yes. But just as the usual fellow gets slightly squirmy the moment someone mentions to him that I am an atheist (by birth and by choice), I feel like an oddity when someone enunciates the converse. Someone I barely know, but have come to be extremely fond of, for the first time observed my reaction to keeping an idol of a deity in the fest lab. I really have no idea of how he came about it(unless he's been told previously of course, but I highly doubt that because of the tone he said what he did in), but he looked at me for a second and asked, "You don't believe in God, do you?". Now that's a first, someone observing it. Others have to be told. Kudos to his observation.
My first reaction to that, was "No, I don't" followed almost immediately by "No offense, though". I wonder why I did that. Was I seeking to stop the subject because it'd have made the others uncomfortable, sitting in a room with someone who has a radical viewpoint about something, or was it because I'd feel terribly up-close and exposed by talking about something that's such a personal choice?
I do believe it was the latter.
I'm an objective person- I don't know what makes me that confident, but I am. Almost Nomadic- with opinion, friends, incidents. I move on really fast. So it is very necessary for me to have a clean slate every next hour, every next conversation. Religion stagnates my thoughts. I cannot deny that sometimes, and as pseudo-Ruskin-Bond that it sounds, when I am looking closely as a peacock's feather, or the circle symmetry of multipetalled flowers, that I wonder of a mind greather than nature has gone into its making. But at the same time, it is the force of the waters, the pull of gravity and the vastness of the planets that makes me remember how strong our sciences are. How beautiful the world is, how old it is, and how little credit we give nature for being the way it is.
I also look at religion as something man has created to cover up his faults. His shortcomings and his inability to be as spontaneous as nature and science has forced him to say, "Tough luck" or "It was never meant to be" or "if He didn't wish it, it wouldn't happen". That's my perception, and I think discussing it, or debating over it anywhere, on this site or any other, even face to face, is as offensive as challenging your beliefs (if you're religious). I don't like to be proved wrong, no one does. And this is a topic that is a little closer than you'd believe it to be, even if I'm so blatant about it. It's my idea of faith, not asking someone else to be in control of our lives, or expecting someone else to take charge of it, or even thanking someone else for what it is- but to keep trying, keep believing that the power that rests in the human mind and body is humungous enough to push us through the million years that we've been around in different forms. Often you'll find me staring down at my hands- that's when I'm either trying to muster the courage to do something I think needs my mind to gather all its faculties in, or I've just realised that I've accomplished a task that any person would've done less dedicatedly. It's an overwhelming feeling, knowing how you can create beauty.
Evolution fascinates me. Because it has reason. Of all the religion that I have heard, what only makes sense is the inferences and conclusions. Well, I'd suggest let us all follow them as laws, rules, mores- all of those. Ethics, even. But clubbing people together and claiming that my set of beliefs supercedes yours- it's sometimes as silly as street gang wars. Be nice to everyone, earn your money and name, have great holidays, do what you love, die in peace. What's anyone else got to do with it?
I have a lot of people saying, "but there are so many things science can't answer for us" in argument of my atheism and my support of science in the place of religion. As much as they have ground, I have nothing more to say to then than- your religion has been around a good thousand years- since there has been man, there has been religion. How long has science been around? How many things in the span of decades has it proved to be a matter of physics, and not of some unknown, intergalaxial force?
Something from Dan Brown's Angels & Demons just struck me- how the Chamberlain speaks of science. He talks of how we've broken down every incident to a piece of physics and now the number of things that have been so beautiful and jaw-dropping for so many years have been reduced to experiments in a science lab by the theorem that man pins it down with. In argument, I'd say that man needs to know. With every such experiment has come the realisation of how ignorant we really are. It sparks the scientist (the reasoners and the observers, not just the lab-coat-donning nerds) to believe more that nature has so much in store that no matter how far he goes, he's still an infiniti of knowledge from knowing everything.
It just struck me how hollow the theorem of religion, each claiming to be right, must be- if they're all different. We're living on the same planet, in the same country, breathing the same air. So if your God made this world one way, and someone else's the other, who gave in? Who wasn't powerful enough to stand out? Or maybe they coexisted as part of the same divine social circle.
I do find the topic of religion interesting, by the way- so long as it is not focussed on why I'm not keen on being in the group. I think the stories and the characters are etched so finely, like trying to be ideal characters in their own fashion. I'd suggest you watch the movie Raavan, with Bachchan Jr and the Mrs. No entertainment per se, but there's a strong perspective challenge it offers that makes you think, what if? I like stories, I like characters and I like the circumstances they find themselves in. I just don't find them perfect and believable if you tell me one walked on water and the other's head was chopped off, only to be replaced very successfully by an elephant's. As a child encouraged to be curious, my reaction for each of these was the 3-year old's version of "What the f**k?" I really do not know any Islamic stories, so I won't bring that up.
My mother made me recite complex Sanskrit verses as a kid. I do have some idea of Ramdas's Manaache Shlok as well. But that, she'd done to get my pronunciation right. I feel like I'm explaining myself here, which I hardly do, but it was more of a kindergarten lesson for me to not stumble over long-lettered words than any knowledge about religion.
I sometimes feel that people have a strange outlook about religion. In any scenario, when you're walking in a crowd, let's say, you come across a man with a long beard and a skull cap, you do a mental double-take and register- Okay, Islamic. Alright, their religion has a certain protocol that makes them physically stand out that way. But how many times do we go 'Okay, Hindu' when we're in the same crowd surrounded by people without the skull cap?
Why?
When I look at a person, I want to be able to think, 'Okay, moustached dude passed by me' or 'Okay, lady in nice top to the left'. It's blatant discrimination in our heads that we hypocritically refuse to accept we make. Alright, granted that some names have a very strong religious ring to them. But that's their significance. Very different from meaning. Why should that make it any different? Gulzar, Padma and Gloria are girls. But it comes easily for us to say- Muslim girl, Hindu girl and Christian girl.
Why?
Again, you may or may not agree. Perspective, I say.
Religion may have united people in thought, but I do believe it has distanced the world from being truly human. We're just mankind, after that.

Wake up, Sids of the world...

Off facebook for a good week now. Turns out life can continue. Special thanks to Rishanka, Kapish and Sahil- all in the previous post :P for being on gtalk as well, that really helps keep some conversation going!
Essentially, I've begun to learn to manage my time. Not better, but just manage- since I didn't do any of that before this. Now I read, do my projects, update this page, do my projects, think obsessively of festival names for this new venture UPG's starting this week. I also believe my writing quotient has dipped- I am not half as funny (in case I'm flattering myself there, don't tell me), gawky as I was the last time. Serious stuff (Academics, ambitions, love) get in the way of my sense of humour. I'm 11 days from turning 20, but somehow, I think this time it's gonna be cool. Cold almost. I mean, usually I engage myself in all the birthday preparations of people all over, my friends do that for me too- but this time, everyone's in their final year, and everyone's creeped out. This is including my building lot- Manasi, Shri, Coll, Viv (who never turns up anyway), Deepa and Clarie (Both of whom I miss). Everyone's up to something. Good, really.
The name Siddharth- it's making a comeback every few weeks these days. If people weren't enough, characters in books turn out to be Siddharth. None too bad, but I think it's slooooowly replacing 'Aditya' at my fav names list. People include- Dilpreet's (who's working, and completely out of touch) IIM buddy, who I met ONCE! Had to go for the big fat Delhi wedding (note about which you will find on fb, in Manasi Vaidya's profile), so needed some pro-Delhi tips. He's from there, but he hardly have much to say- except for that Punju weddings should be fun (Fun being QUITE the understatement)...and this Diwali, I'm heading to Hyderabad- where he's working.
Siddharth no. 2 was at the wedding. He'd got hitched to the groom's sister 2 days before the wedding I'd gone for. Complicated? In any case, he looked like Mr. Khamosh from back home, and for once, Shriya agreed (I have a chronic ailment of being under the illusion, and a lot of times with substantial grounds, that people I know look like other people I know. Or maybe I was just missing college too much) Anyway, Sahil, IF you're reading this- remind me to show you the pictures- Siddharth Sr is an older version of you- the same quite, observant, crowd-resistant thingy about him. (BY THE WAY, one of the groom's cousins was Umang! And NOTHING like Mann the Maheshwari)...I tell you, it's love that keeps these two together in spirit, even in seemingly unrelated situations in Delhi. Or I'm cracking up.
Siddharth part 3 is my new classmate (On hearing 'new' classmate, Manasi's first reaction was, "So he enters TY only- and gets the degree all of you do AFTER trudging through FY and SY? So I can suddenly jump UP the ladder?") He looks like Mohnish Behl (which when I told him, he was the first person to go "Nutan's son?"...WOW! I thought people only related him to Bharjatiya films, while I did as the guy who was accused of murdering his dad- all three cases are true...no idea about the murder, but the accusation was definitely made) Kutty (as in Siddharth) is a Mallu! Almost MNS-like of me, but I LOVE it when people in the Mallu quota increase!
Siddharth 4, is a character in the book, The Collector's Wife (not to be confused with Thy Neighbor's Wife, though I seriously doubt anyone knows or will admit knowing the latter). Well, he's the collector himself. I like the way his character is portrayed- so sincerely at work, that he neglects, almost the needs of his wife. A recommended read for everyone- the topic of infidelity has been handled rather nicely- without justifying it in anyway. It’s something I’m likely to do (not the infidelity part)- get so engrossed in my career that I detach myself from most things that matter. Like I said, it’s the way he’s been portrayed, not the character itself. The desperation towards needing to be there on duty, almost like a constant, nagging obsession- that gets me. All the time, like no one else can handle it better. It’s a trait, I think, of possessiveness. Creepy, na?
I’ve been around, yes. More updates coming. Cheers.

My super-secret extended-ninja-best friends

To make this the most obvious post, this is for the eyes of everyone, and for the attention of three people.
1. Is the Ninja part of it. She's hilarious, cute, amazingly retarded, possess no amount of attitude whatsoever, and is the world's most verbose chick. She could feature on the cover of Cosmo, Tintin and Archies at once. Her habits ("Duuuuude!", Snow Patrol, "I CAN'T speak hindi yaa!", "We're talking about such INANE stuff...") have attached themselves to me. I love her bwahahahaing.
I just miss her a lot right now, and if she does read this, I hope she revives that derangedpandabear blog of hers.
2. Is best friends. Bloody lawyer. Born to blab and argue. Makes crazy Chinese Smiley from icons he gets godknowswhere. Says the most sane things. Is online (yes, except for one time this vacation, I haven't met him in 5 years) at the most required hours, especially in times of distress (not damsel am I a) and can blah blah blah his way out of anything. Never thought I'd be overruled in most of my arguments, but yeah- that's him. Kapdap. Woooohooo Long distance nutcase :P
3. Extended me. As queer as it sounds, he's like an alter ego thingy now, so when I'm talking to this one, it's more like talking to myself. Writerfolk, camerapeople, bandaddicts. Loooooooong time no see's ALL the time, and we could walk right past each other 5 times a day. Has inspired volatile rage, absolute calm, and headsplitting laughter. Someone who just gets it, needn't try hard. To hell with the world, always on his own track. And I like it that way. Undefined. My fav to him- you're you, I'm me. (Ok at least come more often on gtalk! Abandoning fb does NOT include stepping into yapping-abyss!)

That's it :P