Forever alone and how!

After watching the latest John Lewis ad, i remembered how i used to wave at the moon as a kid. I'm sure you also did that. There was something attractive about the moon. The way it followed you on your way home on the bus. The way it stayed up all night even after the stars stopped twinkling. The way it was cold and calm while the sun appeared hot and angry. The way you drew it with a smile on your face as well as its. There was an in-built fascination with moon and the chanda mama stories only augured our curiosity about this white little plate in the sky that changes shape night after night. So much so some of us even dreamt of becoming an astronaut someday so that we could travel in a rocket and land up on our childhood friend to say hello. Of course, that part never materialized. For what it's worth, we are dreaming of colonizing Mars when our only natural satellite seems like a safer option to me. Maybe moon is destined to be forever alone. 

Being patient

I have nothing to share. I'm a void right now. There are many things going on. Some very interesting, some not so but the overall effect on my writing is nil. But if you know where i come from, i believe in words. I very much dwell on them and spend an appreciative amount of my time on understanding their flexibilities. It's part of my job too. They are just so many of them and you can never run out of the variations. Be it through lame tweets or (almost) profound FB status updates or wannabe snaps, i try to find new verbal verticals. It's an attempt to see things differently. Most of the times, i fall flat on my nose but every once in a while, i break the code. The holy grail of creativity is kissed. That doesn't last long but it's worth the wait. 

Waiting as usual. 

Where opinions come and go

Since everybody has an opinion nowadays, we've arrived at a stage where we really don't know how to draw a line. One can clearly see this change exposing itself on the online world. If somebody doesn't agree with somebody else's thought process, that somebody becomes this somebody's enemy. Just because their opinions didn't match! The fact that their underwear matched on that day doesn't count. Perhaps this is what happens when we are overflooded with data—most of it unverified. Everybody begins to form a thought school of their own, each building on the legend that they know everything about everything. In such a scenario, rigidity of discussion grows ultimately leading to poverty of intelligence. After a point, arrogance in one's knowledge sinks so deep that there's no space left for philosophical intervention. To make matters pitiable, words like overrated and underrated is used to express a point. 

Wait a minute. 

Who is rating whom? 

Let me take a guess. 

You? Oh yes. 

You are the one who is rating based on your own experiences and you wholeheartedly expect even Standard & Poor's to oblige your expertise. 

The topics of debate don't even have to be about black hole or how Angelina Jolie manages to look hot despite doing whatever she did to her boobs. It could be a plain vanilla chat about how somebody's tweet is stupid or jokes, lame. 

Big deal. 

Needless to add, when such a conversation takes place in the offline world, the dynamics are quite different. 

Offline world scenario: 

A: *smiling like a shy chimp*

B, C, D and E: "Your haircut doesn't look good, man."

A: "OK."

Just pull back for a second and see what happened above. A seemed OK with his haircut. Chances are he liked it a lot. Maybe he's having an affair with the barber. We'll never know. But the point is he was OK with his haircut. BCDE group felt otherwise and expressed their opinion. For some reason, they felt it was their duty to let A know what they thought and more bizarrely, that they thought that their thought mattered. For a few seconds, they made A realize that his haircut was the second biggest mistake of his life. Not that BCDE's opinion would make things better either for themselves or him but still, opinion has a way with people. An opinion is like those streakers who expose themselves hoping somebody will notice them. 

However, let's not neglect several points: 

a. A wanted that haircut hence had it. Just like they wanted to be opinionated. 

b. BCDE felt they knew better, not because they actually did but they just felt like that.

c. A could have easily given rise to a conversation which wouldn't have ended with OK.

d. His biggest mistake continues to be his absence on Facebook, where everybody likes everything. 

Beauty and its beholder

Every time i hold her close enough to let her eyelashes stroke my cheeks, i wonder how i must look like in her eyes. Not that i bother but several thoughts run through my head while bliss is trapped by my marrow. Two of the most frequent thoughts happen to be "Is this really happening?" and "Don't you dare cry now!" To overcome them, i hold her closer than i did the last time we hugged. For what our bond is worth, my random yet inflated worries don't matter anyway. After all, she looks a lot like mine in my eyes. Who cares about her vision? 

Going places

If you look at pigeons, like really look at them, you'll see that they don't belong anywhere. They always have this shiny veneer of an immigrant. As if they just moved in and hate the place so much that they can't keep themselves from shitting on it. We, the generation of immigrants, are a lot like them too except for the part where you flycrap over strangers. But then, that's what people are supposed to do. Move from one place to another. Not get stuck in one geography for the rest of their life presuming it's the best thing that ever happened to their lungs. There's so much more to explore. New places to check out. Newer places to check in. And to feel the difference between the two. Some of us are indeed lucky enough to travel. Being curious species, we often look at birds and wonder why don't they just take off...see the world...learn what lies beyond the hills. Besides, if we don't, who else will? Birds, no matter how wide their wingspan is, obey nature way too much. They have a fixed path to follow. Of course, that doesn't apply to pigeons. They can target whichever head they want. 

Deep, dark and ugly

Sometimes i wonder how scared the fish in ocean would be on a new moon day. Utter darkness and barely much to see. Wouldn't that be something worth being afraid of? Especially when you aren't the whale. Little and medium-sized fish wandering around as if some village in the interiors of India after sunset. 

Damn. 

On a second thought, they are used to the darkness. New moon night or not. They might have taken birth under a clear black sky. Who knows?

On a third thought, i should stop wasting time on such trivial thoughts.

On a fourth thought, you too need to find yourself better reading material.

Right in the middle

We are here... @ the centre of everything that is called Internet. Or digital madness.

First look

Observation #1: Friends come and go away because that's what happens whether you like it or not. But every once in a while, a friend quietly walks into your life and makes you believe in yourself. And before you even realize it, you don't want this one to go away. Ever.

Observation #2: "Annanavagru kopa dallid'aara?" is something a three-year-old kid asks her mother when she thinks you aren't talking to her as you're upset with her when in reality, you don't speak Kannada and there's no way you can communicate with her. Cute.

Observation #3: Newspapers turning yellow is one of the beautiful things you can witness. The only problem is we can never see the lignin in motion. It's always going to be white/salmon-pink now and within a period of time, it'll acquire a taint of time. Unjaundiced.

Observation #4: Mangalorean fish curry and parboiled rice has to be what heaven must serve on entry. Even somebody who isn't a huge fan of separating skeletons (OK, thin bones) from flesh would vouch for this humble yet royal dish. At least i would. Enchanting. 

Observation #5: What's worse than people littering on road? People doing the same inside a train on a long-distance journey. Who's going to clean up? A wild guess: Grandchildren of whoever isn't diligent enough to keep their crap on the right side of the window. Behave.

Observation #6: Studying is tough. However, it can't beat the pain that your knuckles bear while you're pushing pen on your examination paper. If it's a 3-hour paper, it seems like 9 years, 7 months and 23 days long. Yes, exaggeration is completely allowed here. Sorry.

Observation #7: Arvind Kejriwal won for only one reason: He's not corrupt. Yet. And whatever be the political rhetoric—if you understand economics—you must also take AAP's sweep with a pinch of salt. Subsidies are and will never be the solution to problems. Gumption.

Observation #8: We are what we are. Even if we pretend otherwise, we eventually come back to the person we actually embody. The way we look at things varies while those things remain the same. Similarly, for the universe at large, we are one of those things. Pity.

Observation #9: Violence is not really a bad thing. If employed effectively, it can provide what non-violence never might never be able to. The catch here being the difference between the two is enormous. When a lion turns violent with its prey, it harbours no hatred. Whatsoever.

Observation #10: Your parents may come across as archaic and boring. But that also goes on to show that you were perhaps too selfish to help them keep up with the latest from the world of "cool". So, whatever you think they are today, it's on you, not them. Comeuppance.