The Block

*** Found this in the recesses of the Drafts section. Can't even remember if it's I who wrote this... Anyway, off you go into the wild, little post. Happy New Year to anyone still foolish enough to check this space for updates ***

The number of times I have begun trying to put down a post has been more than ably matched by the number of times I discarded the same. Having been so far removed from this habit, I think it rather presumptuous on my part to label it a 'Writer's Block'. For someone who has not posted anything in over a year all claims to this rather tenuous label 'Writer' are long forsaken.

And still I come back desperate to say something and hopeful of being heard. Even if that which is inside is not shouting itself out. Even if all I have left to convey are dull silences.

"What are you thinking?"
"Nothing"
"How can you think of nothing?!"
"It's a talent!"

And this is by now a running joke whose humorous aspect has long since run far away. And yet, I do think of nothing in the sense that I am thinking of nothingness filling my brain like ink and yet not assuming the tangible shape of a 'something'. Maybe I am thinking of 'something' disguised as 'nothing', held back only by my own lack of vocabulary for its expression 

To anyone who thinks I am drunk, depressed or desolate; things could not be further from the truth. I am content, work is good, travel is hectic, my needs meet my means halfway. And yet, the human in me wants more. More time, More downtime, More facetime...

And therein lies my dilemma - of not finding the time to express the nothingness in a more meaningful way.

The ThisThat Gate

I woke up feeling quite low. So I picked up a full bottle of vodka and off I go.

I walk through these unfamiliar streets of a sleepy coastal town.

Taking wild swigs off of the bottle, strangers' eyes wouldn't meet.

It's like they have already classified me a lush, and have beaten a hasty retreat.

I pay no mind as I keep on drinking, though at a distance I see an old flame & her mother get out of a car

Strangely this shames me somehow and I sidestep into what I thought was a bar.

Turns out it is a frat house and the party is at full swing.

I go from room to room, like a fly on the wall

Everyone is happy and seem to be having a ball.

I kept climbing up the stairs. until at the end I was walking down a hall.

At the end there was a balcony overlooking the sea

And a scenic coastline calling out to me.

I am stuck by a perfectly rectangular  opening on the cliffside, opening directly onto the sea

"What is that?", I asked the next guy who walked past me

"Oh, that is The ThisThat Gate.", He said offhandedly.

I was fascinated and obsessed, like a moth to the flame

I had to go there and no excuse felt lame.

I hurried on home and, strangely, felt sober along the way

I saw my maid was doing the dishes as I tried to make sense of my day.

I began packing and also throwing away things, systematically.

When I realized that I really only needed for the trip was just me.

Without another word or worrying about closing up the house behind me, I go

I slip out of the gate in the falling darkness. Something is amiss, but I just don't know

I walked about a mile before it struck me that I was not wearing a shirt and I almost felt embarrassed.

Then I look down and I saw that I was strangely ripped.

Not like a professional bodybuilder but just fit & toned.

I backtracked to my house to find a shirt and found the maid sitting outside crying softly

I asked her why and what went wrong.

She told me that she ran out of water before she was all done and

Didn't know what to make of this misery that upon her was brung.

I told her to go home and not to worry about it.

I told her the keys would be under the mat tomorrow and if I wasn't home, she shouldn't worry about it either.

And then I walked away...

*From a dream I managed to recollect for once in some detail. From the Lost & Found department of my mailbox. And also 1st post of the year, so Happy New Year to the Exodians! Far may your brains wander!

A healthy disrespect

It is nearly two months since I quit my old job, took an idealistic stand and 2/3rds paycut. There was a part of me that was convinced that I was doing the right thing, another that acknowledged that this driven partly by boredom, and minor third that was just scared shitless.


So 2 months in, what do I think of my decision? Best decision ever. I had fallen into a rut, a captivity of negativity and soul crushing boredom at my previous workplace. I was actively slacking but no one could see it. Even if they saw it, an acknowledgement was as damning on them as it might have been on me. So I was coasting on the momentum generated by the first three years of my career. A five year freewheel based on that push. Funnily enough, I got most of my, perhaps undeserved, rewards during this phase. I don't dwell on it much. In the long run things always balance out.


Back to my present situation, I am still in not that dramatic a changeover. My work still sucks from time to time. But there is potential for new and interesting stuff, so I am at it. There is a sense that I am perhaps idling my engine on this job. At least I don't take home an outlandish paycheck that guilts me.


And the paycheck...While there was some fear at the beginning if my lifestyle of material excesses would be able to adjust to the relative impoverishment, I think I am pretty well adjusted quickly on that front. But an unexpected side effect of the paycheck is that I seem to be more willing to speak my mind when my boss comes and asks me, "What is your honest opinion about how I run things here?". Consequences be damned, it is a rush to speak my mind. Of course within reason and the constraints of polite conversation and my boss quite reasonably invited criticism in a private setting than a public forum.


For the first time in 8-9 years, I have been spending time on things that interest me outside of work. Two python programming classes. One upcoming cryptography class and another on sociology. The limits that we once placed on ourselves are disappearing, but to sense them fading you have walk towards them. And it is crazily exciting. I do not know what the future holds for me, but I do know that there is less time than ever to get hung up on bullshit.


Do the things you love. Find some way to pay the bills while making your dream happen. If your work and your passion are the same, you are probably one of the lucky minority. If they aren't don't sweat it and get stuck in a web of dissatisfaction. Just keep a healthy disrespect for your job, get it to pay the bills and make sure it doesn't spill over into other parts of your life. Don't get sucked into playing an office politics game. It is never worth the effort. Someone wants to screw you over and get promoted. Let them. If you continue to get paid without having to care so much about it, you are coming out a winner.


Thus ends this ramble. I have barely been blogging, but when I do it is usually negative abstract crap. But this is the peppiest I have ever been! It is a good life, if you let it be one.

Resolutions. Dissolutions. New Solutions?

I consciously made no resolutions for the new year. But a lot has happened or threatened to happen, which makes it necessary to chart out some sort of mission statement to live the rest of the year, and possibly the rest of my days.


For a while now, I have struggled with my work and the urge to quit it all. Always the voices of reason have stayed this execution with typical words of wisdom. "What is your Plan B?", "Don't do things you will regret later.", "But that is escapism!"


I appreciate all the constructive criticisms and pithy witticisms. But it is my life dammit and it is better lived on my own terms. To this end, I feel it is important to make this easy on people who actually do have a vested interest in me. But I digress... We shall deal with consequences when we get there. It is a sequence after all, so we do have somethings that we need to get out of the way.


So I have now figured out what I don't want to do. I don't want to work at my company or with my client or in my current shift, which I have been doing for the better part of the last 8 years. Geographies and timezones did change a bit, but not much else from the perspective of the day-to-day, professionally. So no more working stiff at an IT services company for me. It is the life of a very respectable whore. But it is that and nothing more.


So now that a certain way of life has been rejected, we need to find a replacement. 'Confounded' doesn't even begin to explain how I feel going about answering that question. So I am going to be a student. I have identified a few subjects that have some interest in me at this time. I am going to go after them in a trial & error basis. Nights shall be spent learning to code Python, learning to write, learning to read & write my mother tongue, watching documentaries and posting music on my FaceBook (even if it doesn't interest anybody). Days will be spent sleeping or catching up on it if required. Evenings are when we shall make the donuts at the brain farm. I plan on slacking off as much as possible at work. I will go to work only to ensure that they don't stop paying me or start firing me. At some point it is likely that I find something that shall interest me. I sincerely hope that is the case. 


The next order of business would be to change the social scene. The more that I think about it, there more Bangalore makes sense. It is the last of the places where I still have a few friends who are not either a) getting married or b) making several babies. It would help if my current employer actually painlessly (relatively speaking, of course) allows me to transfer out to Bangalore. The job search to change addresses is going pretty badly. Apparently once you have been doing IT for too long, you are not as attractive a proposition to new employers any more. If that doesn't make you sick to be working in this industry, then I am not sure what you have for a stomach (PVC pipes?).


Finally, the long drawn out wait for the Thunderbird *might* be coming to an end. All things swinging my way, I expect to have my ride by the end of Feb. Which brings me to the final agenda item for 2012. I want to ride to Ladakh. There is a friend who has promised to hop along for the ride. I intend to keep my word.


Thus ends this statement of purposelessness.

The Incredible Bulk prepares...

...To fail spectacularly.
It is 3:02 AM and I am about to throw in the towel. I am looking at this 'Quantitative Aptitude for the CAT Exam' by Arun Sharma with equal parts of horror and admiration. Apparent short cuts involve memorizing squares and cubes of numbers 1 thru 20 AND their bloody inverses. If showing an aptitude to a skill in management requires demonstration of brute force number crunching skills, what really is the point? That might be just me trying to rationalize my inability to play a game whose rules have changed. But I really do want to do well in this test (which is not the CAT, by the way) as am just a few leaps of faith away from burning some solid bridges.

For the better part of 3 years, I have been struggling with reconciling my expectations with my life. While I still do not have a clear idea of what I want. I have become an intuitive expert in what I don't. I have not been very good in how I went about with managing this gap. It began with denial ("It is a phase. You will get over it"), anger ("if this is the best there is, logic states that things can only get worse"), self pity/loathing ("Man up, loser! There are people who would give an arm and a leg to be where you are now") and general disinterest in my own well-being.

At some point a change had to be forced and status quo disturbed. This is the logical attempt. I have given a haphazard, half-assed interview to a panel of IIM-A professors where my star statement was - "I don't follow current affairs nearly as much or as well as I should." - 1 point for honesty and -100 for general stupidity. Now I am following up on that with an equally (or possibly, even worse) effort on a shot at the IRMA entrance exam on Nov 14th.

The worst part is that I have taken 10 weeks off including a month on loss of pay to ostensibly prepare for these interviews and exams. Going back to work would be the worst thing that can happen to me now. Even as I wait for my Bullet Thunderbird to be delivered, the temptation is rather great to just hop on and ride away into a sunset. With no destinations or routes in mind.

Escapism has always been my strong suite...

Father

For the longest of times, I was my momma's boy (in every sense, you damned cynics!) and pops always found the easiest way to get to my nerves.
The man was impeccable.
Everything I was not.
Restrained, patient, intelligent and compassionate.

I spent the last ~30 years trying not to be like him and I find myself copying his mannerisms and catchphrases to the point where I cannot recognize myself anymore. Maybe he is not such a bad guy, after all...

Organisized

One of these days I have to do that myself just so that I can post here with any form of regularity. I have lost the inspiration to create any kind of contrived lyrical structures, that I call poems (Its mine and I have rights to name it what I want).

But half way through most drafts, I do hit delete and go back to sleep. I wish there was some way where I could train myself to sleepblog.

It might be way more interesting, unrestrained and actually readable.

My music. My curse.

Is it that I really like music or just that I am much more afraid of silence?
Do I really want to stay immersed in this unfulfilled threat of violence?
Every song I know has something that irks me in at least one minor way.
Maybe its my pursuit to find the perfect song that has kept my real world at bay.
Each time I come across something fresh and something new,
I abuse it relentlessly until I hate it too.
Looping tracks over time, I keep my earphones plugged in right.
Songs during daytime to drown my co-workers and songs to drown my thoughts at night.
Here take this phrase and twist it into rhyme.
Fit it to this situation as you do time.
Lamest bands with the most clichéd of lines.
I contort my brain for some connected vibes.

Still I post lyrics, videos and critiques
On social networks, quite anti-socially.
Hoping someone, sometime, shares mutual experiences
The only manner with which to bridge these distances.

Kryptonite for every superman

Wakes up at 6:30 and hops on to the treadmill.
The figurative kind. Imagine it, if you will.
Sleepwalking through the ablutions, until
Scalding jets from a shower head shrill.

Wakes you up for good. At least for now.
You pour a bowl of cereal, with milk in tow.
Distracted, unable to straighten your brow.
Time to commute and make it somehow.

Some days there's conversation on the way,
on others, just silence and mutual dismay.
On the automaton lives we live in this day.
Herded through paths without a say.

Yet in horizon, shining bright.
Like the only moon on a cloudy night.
You rise towards its dizzying height.
You embrace it even if its your kryptonite.


- Was sitting idle on my draft section for a long time. Finishing it felt necessary, though not satisfactory. Parts of it are fabrications. Most of it is untrue. But then you always knew that, didn't you.

Another day in the rest of my life

One of the most boring cliches used is "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" - Isn't that true for every day?

And what does whatever done on day 1 have to do with how the rest of the days turn out to be? Too long I have waited for a defining moment where the slate would be wiped clean, I would break out of my shell and become the true man leading the life I so want to.

I think me constantly struggling inside my shell is my definition. If I ever got out, I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself. I am defined by the act of escaping. But that implies that I absolutely need this prison to continually plot my escape.

Sometimes I pause to think of how my life should play out. It is nothing like what is going on right now. I also think if there are others like me. Others who are bothered by the disconnect between what is happening and what could be/should be/would be happening instead. And the funny part is when I really think about it hard, I cannot visualize the exact life I might be living, all I can sense is a strong sense of rejection of this life that I am currently living in. It's like a body rejecting a donor organ even if that organ is necessary for survival. It's like the body's statement that it will be defined by the struggle rather than the survival.

I think it is my role to struggle and always feel like an outsider. It tires out the brain rather easily and makes it restless. The best part of my day is when I am driving back home around 10:30 at night. I plug in my headphones under my helmet and play my music as loud as I dare to while driving through Chennai traffic. Its probably the best 20 minutes of the day when there is nothing between the ears but blessed music.

This is as confusing a blog I have posted in a long time. But just as real as well.

Observations of an Unknown Indian

It has been 3 weeks and 3 days since said unknown Indian has returned after nearly 5 years. The more the things change, the more they remain the same.

1. Bachelors in the IT industry are the lowest on the totem pole of rentable individuals. If you know what happens at the bottom of totem poles or any similar pole in India, you know that it is an unenviable location.
2. In 5 years my salary has more than doubled. Expenses are, however, projected to more than triple.
3. 'But you work in IT' is an acceptable reason to be overcharged, shortchanged and out-negotiated in any transaction.
4. Auto drivers seem surprisingly reasonable these days. Maybe the negativity over compensated on this one.
5. Commutes are unreasonable, fraught with danger and can suck the life out of the most chipper of us.
6. Maybe it's December, but the weather is glorious with barely any crippling rains or sapping heat.
7. Air conditioners are operated at a very high premium. Hotels don't run it. IT companies turn it off at night.
8. People have ready inputs on why you might have made a poor deal. Not one has offered a better deal, however.
9. Go with the flow but realize and recognize there ate some things that you must stand up for or against.
10. Despite all the obvious problems, the proximity to friends and family eliminates the captivity of negativity.

Good to be home.

Thoughts in an unlit room

The iPod plays the melancholy, meandering music of a million mortal coils unraveling.
For once I resist the urge to fill my brain with any form of distraction.
lights turned dim, I rest my eyes. Awake but not necessarily aware.
I contemplate my drink with a matter of fact acknowledgment that it is here and it is meant to be drunk.

My friends have all fallen asleep. Those that are awake still sleep walk. As for myself, I stay suspended between the realm of the living and the un-

The music is fortunately devoid of any words. I allow my brain to fill it in with an emotional context that is all my own. Why I am I so melancholy today? Is it cabin fever from spending all day indoors? Or more symptomatic of a more chronic evil?

The more I think, the more drunk I feel. It cannot be the liquor for it is still untouched. Maybe its my thoughts that finally can roam unhindered.

Falling Down

The wind does not whip my face,
As I fall away from grace.
It really is no fall at all.

A slow elevator does descend,
Stopping at each apartment,
Taking more spectators along.

Some they watch with interests vested,
others, distracted, tweeted. Jested.
Like the crowds at the previews of Fall.

This is Falling. Falling down.
Each new day you break low ground.
Sinking into black abyss.

While you patiently wait, do remember to cooperate.
The bottom is far as you move along, sedate.
This is not an exit.

When it's over, it will be a mess.
Excused, perhaps, by drunkenness.
Though escape will still elude.

baggage cart with a broken wheel

She runs across the airport floor,
heels tapping out an urgent encore.
Balances the over-sized glasses on her hair
And whispers to an ear disembodied, not there.
Half smile breaks the plane of her face.
She is not beautiful yet filled with grace.

As the endless belts roll on by
people, who to lay claim, lie
Still speaking as she hauls one on
to a little baggage cart that she has drawn
quick turn and there she stands framed
by the cart and and endless line of baggage unclaimed.

Engrossed she misses the pavement
Her lips make a perfect O of lament
As she twists an ankle and breaks the heel
of her left shoe and the baggage cart's left wheel
Looks around at a world running by
and hobbles on, embarrassed, without a reason why.

The Least Interesting Man in the World

With Apologies to a comic on the Internets
who's careful stick figures stand up in jest
Like this protagonist from weeks ago,
I do haunt this blog with a furrowed brow.

Should I post about this most prosaic of days?
Or rave and rant in panicked dismay?
Should I stay ensconced in the captivity of negativity?
Be verbose or go on an exercise of brevity?

Shall I resist the urge to apologize?
For the lack of posts to plagiarize?
Or should I succumb to my urges as a quitter?
And limit myself to 140 characters on twitter?

Whichever be the path on the fork that's chosen,
This one thing shall remain frozen.
Even now as in days of old,
I shall remain the least interesting man in the world.

Insomnia Strikes Back

Been a while since it struck this bad. But here goes nothing in the wee hours where as they say nothing good ever happens.

I am doing this experiment where I count sheep and recount my thoughts as I go through with it. To make things as interesting as possible I plan to count backwards instead of counting up.

Gives you a perspective of being on the road walking towards something rather than walking away from someone...

So arbitrarily and for no apparent reason. Six-Hundred-And-Fifty-Five...
Mental note to count each number as 'ex' 'hund-redd' 'aand' 'yy' where ex and yy are variables. Note that this is a more elaborate construct than say exx zedd yy where 100x+10z+y represents the number...

Counting back like this should ensure that you never actually hit 0 or worse having to count back to minus-six-hundred-and-fifty-five. This exercise seems to be built upon the inability of the normal human being to perform any action undistracted. So while counting down to six-hundred-and-thirty-eight your mind does a little flip and worries about the tick tock of the single clock in the darkness...wonders what hour the hand is holding up its accusatory finger at this time. Now you do not know if its six-hundred-and-twenty-one or six-hundred-and-thirty-one you were supposed to be on.

As a conciliatory measure go for the average of both numbers and resume at six-hundred-and-twenty-six. Now a little ping from the laptop where somebody someplace away has twittered/twitted/twot a little twit (Oxford better find some new nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives to address twitter-nation's self-importance).

Arbitrarily down to six-hundred-and-eleven for no good reason. Realizes the pointlessness of this blog...However seeing as how the other more eloquent contributors remain silent, this is the best you can expect for a while....

Promise to be back with better crap than this... six-hundred-and-six...

postito ergo sum

fingers hover above the darkened keyboard
the mind freezes and urges restraint
"you know that road and you have been down there before"
yet another voice raises itself, insistent

"if everything was cause and effect and cold logic
we would not need hearts and minds to navigate
life would have neither mystery no magic
and thats something you would love to hate"

thus the hemispheres trade in argument and counter-
each blow weakening the mind and its resolve
every thought mounts a challenge before it quickly flounders
standing by the sidelines you watch yourself devolve.

eventually you will drive into distraction
look away from a mirror held up to your streak, yellow.
willfully throw yourself under wheels of destruction
swallow pride and associated spirits and say "Hello..."

Waiting Room

He sat quietly on the chair besides the receptionist's window. He was out of the receptionist's point of view. When her fine Anglican tones invoked his foreign native name, it did not register. He continued to stare past the window at the trees dead in the thawing snow.

After a second failed attempt at calling him, the receptionist leans over the window and looks him dead in the eye and says with a genuine smile "The doctor will see you now". He snaps out of his reverie and walks towards the doctor's office. The memory of her smile kicks in to remind him that he hadn't smiled back. Rather belatedly he smiles at the fire extinguisher by the door as he steps in, immediately realizing the futility of the gesture.

The doctor checks his pulse, looks in his mouth, checks his lungs and reads his pressure. Finally snapping off her gloves, she says "For someone your age, your blood pressure is high. Try to cut down on your caffeine intake."

He mutters something about decaf or something. The doctor goes on uninterrupted "See me again in 3 months time That should tell us if the blood pressure reading is one off or if its symptomatic."

He takes her leave and remembers to smile and wish her a good day, almost as if making up for not smiling back to the receptionist. But the doctor has already started looking into her X-ray for the next patient and mutters a vague acknowledgment.

Vaguely underwhelmed, he walks back to the hallway hoping to find the receptionist and flash a big smile. She is not there. She is out back smoking sweet death. He sighs and walks out into the cold and wonders if its colder inside or here by his car as flurries spun around his ears.

He steps inside and drives away as 106.9 WCCC blared "Loud Love" by SoundGarden...

Day

I was reminded of this post made in a different time and place by a kindred spirit. I outright copied him for this. So no claims of originality here...

Day is the about the time between sunrise and sunset.
Its when melatonin is suppressed and most primal emotions are repressed.
Its when you are supposed to be awake and you are not.
Day is about work, spilt milk and quick cuts and dissolves.
Day is about fluorescent lights, attention disorders and more...

Day is a Trojan that escapes the nightly virus scan and is the wreaking havoc on your imagination's filesystem.
But since imagination too is a sentient concept within the Matrix, it also somehow escapes the scan. There is really no need for another virus to combat it...
Day as in Slay is the beating of dead imagination's horses.

Day is, the incessant background conversations that drones over the soundtrack of your brain.
Tight close-ups, in fact are the only things missing from Day - that makes it stop short of a daytime soap opera.
Day is your irrational attempt to subdue your thoughts from the night before...
Day is also the boundary of not just light and darkness...
but also the boundary inside defining emotion and action...

Day is about Dissociative Identity Disorder about how your dreams of what you ought to be
Rises in direct conflict with the reality of what you have become
Day is a game of chess...maneouvers and counter-maneouvers...stabs and back-stabs
Day is a concept that I have shunned for a long time...
Day is the result of our lost nights...

Day is the reason, that I am typing all this when I should have been writing functional requirements.
I may be wrong, but if you are anything like who I am, you are putting off work reading this too...
Day is when the train of thought runs on multiple parallel tracks and sometimes on collision courses...
The cold waves of air blitzing through the air conditioner pulverizes the brain to super-conductivity and the trains run amok.
Day is the reason, I dread waking up, because it makes life a chore.

Day is where the questions come up?
I cannot tell you what my day is like...You have to endure it for yourself.
For some of us day doesn't exist, we sleepwalk alone in crowds before waking up in our sleep.

Day is the reason, I refuse to think about my life,
even if I can't stop myself and fatigue by just keeping these thoughts away.
if I were to say , "dont think about her and..." slip into this...
"If we submit this PCR document by noon today, will the stakeholders provide timely approval?"
Did you just hit your mailbox to see if you have any emails requiring your approval? Or did you not care like me?

Day is your prison, where you will be held against your wish until night.
You have the right to remain silent and anything you say will be used against you in a court of flaw.
Day is your reminder that you are in this alone.
Day is what you do to get to Night.

This exposition on Day is quite frankly boring.
Today is however the one day that I am thinking about Day.
Day is when you fall to the ground with burnt wings from flying too close to the sun.
Day is when the moth with burnt wings is no better than the ant without any...
Day is the curse for many.

Day is about looking at that pretty girl in the cafeteria, catching her eye, then thinking involuntary dirty thoughts before shuddering in distaste.
Day is about existence justification, memory of a simpler times and looking back at embers of bridges glowing behind us (to a dream of how green it was on the other side)
Day is about forgetting friends, ideas, imagination and remembering painful things from your past.
Day is about maximizing opportunities and leveraging angles.

Day is not new.
Day is always a struggle. Once infected by it, you will never be cured.
Day is when you realize the ugly moth that stepped out as a beautiful butterfly still shits the same crap as it did before.

Day is when we think of excuses for another day.
Day is how I spend waiting for Night.
Day is about looking forward to your new dreams...
while also mourning the death of your old dreams.

Day is about abstract psycho-babble,
MS Excel, Word, Office and Outlook.
Day is about coffee breaks, saying "Hi. This is Bala" and putting yourself on mute for the rest of the meeting.
Day is about being cattle herded through life with the occasional paranoid delusion of being creative

And finally, Day has no finality and it always merges imperceptibly into Night.
Day does not lead us into Night on a timetable set by light...
Day is the dread that the Night, however sweet, will not be long...

Non-Sequitur

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot?
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Each prayer accepted and each wish resigned."

Happy Valentine's Day...Watch this great movie with a loved one...and fall in love with life again...