Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts

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2011-04-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

2011-04-23T02:08:00.001-07:00

Dont ask him why, or how or when?

But...

Visiting mental institutions is not, unfortunately, the sort of activity that becomes easier with practice. Never mind that the grounds are well kept, never mind that the staff seem cheerful and friendly, the moment I set foot in the facility, a certain restlessness invariably takes hold.

"The hill looked green to me."

2011-04-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

<a href='http://www.pcplats.com/mp3-3151997-Muse-Starlight.shtml' >Starlight - Muse

The Room

2011-04-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

"Nice to see you back again, I missed my most dysfunctional client," she said with a face that really wanted to say i told you so.

"Oh, i'm not back!" i exclaimed adjusting myself on the new and far less irritating couch, "just passing through."

"Good for you, how have you been?" She uttered this plainly, as if it were a formality. I made sure my response was just as perfunctory as her question, "Good."

I must admit, i missed seeing her. The room which once was a shelter to my rogue brain was now looking more and more broken. We had a pact, it said, you were to spend your life with me. Insane forever, remember. What happened? Little did everyone know that it wasn't the room i signed up for, it was her.

"You'll be alright," she said, putting her diary and pen away on the side table, "You'll be perfectly fine, i don't think there was anything ever wrong with you in the first place, but it was fun. Making it look like you were a what-dya-call-it- a gone case?"

Smile forced its way out of me, "You bitch!"

Smile forced its way out of her, "You said it!"

"I will still come see you, you know - this isn't goodbye. I don't think there's ever going to be a goodbye between us." There's this feeling, when your not really crying, but there's water that is slowly flooding your eyeballs and you force it to stay there, so as to avoid any trickling incident, It was happening to me now.

"I know," She ended.

I got up and walked towards that same window through which sunlight often practiced art on the floor and looking outside at the empty street, woke up.

And the Friction is dead.

2011-04-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the most difficult thing to write, but it was coming; I'm done.

Done with you, done with life. I'm done picking up the pieces, every-time. Who lost who, really?

I grew up, for the most part like an orphan. I suppose the only difference was that i had a roof above my head and food to eat. Every single one of my imaginary friends would swear by this, i grew up- alone.

When you came, what we had, was friendship. I've had very little experience with this word. Although, i suppose I've thrown it around more times than i'd like to admit. Like love, most experiences of joy, pleasure and companionship were alien to me. The first thing i ever really learnt to feel was isolation. Being alone in a room full of people was a gift, being with you in a room full of people was better.

Then; She happened. I didn't realize it at first, and i'm pretty sure you didn't either. I suppose, we felt at the time, she was another one like everyone else. You were mistaken, i was painfully naive. When it started taking shape, i kept pushing it away because i didn't know what to expect, didn't know what to call it, how to share, what to share. One thing was certain, she was mine. I put her through hell; she took me with her. Love. Fucking powerful love.

I once told you that my relationship with the family was too late to fix. Nothing i ever did made things better, only worse. And this past year, Dear God!

Forever. This worked. The last 2 months have more than compensated for everything i did not feel my entire fucking life. To stare my father in the eye, to really talk to my mother, to be involved - This may seem like nothing to you but it is everything to me. I grew up an orphan, remember!

The wedding, my forever, my future. I wonder why something like this, would hurt you enough to think you lost me.

And if it is my friendship that you accuse, then it is my future that you resent. For, I've wanted nothing more than to see you play with my kids and grow old together, as perhaps the only other among-us that i had the pleasure of knowing.

Something Corporate

2011-01-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

My eyes hurt!
What is up with this place? Now, don't get me wrong: If not less, then there are at least 3 fantastic people lurking around these ~~cubicles~~ corridors. Making sense of everything is overrated. i'd rather be at an obscure bar somewhere, downing a fifth of whiskey in a dirt-stained glass. I would be; Serious!

Forests, there's an idea! Jungle, Wilderness, Wild, Willy Wonka, wtf?

Touch me again and i'll strangle you with an extension cord and not in a good way.

Now my palms hurt. I could go on. This could never end. They could never know.

Make me a plum-cake. Now!

I think i am high on corporate air. In the end, its just like the blind man from the Korean movie said, "Sheba-nom, Sailor!"

The Friction is back!

2011-01-05T17:54:00.000-08:00

So here's a little nugget that you can take to your grave, 'life is magical'.

Now, now - I know what you're thinking, but before you begin to formulate completely inaccurate assumptions, i'll let you in on something very special and very strange: the mosquitos on this balcony bite you in the face.

It's true!

And while I'm trying to type this on my tiny mobile screen while periodically slapping myself in the face to either kill or scare the little unapologetic blood-suckers, I am made witness to what is clearly a reckoning: I am back!

Nobody puts this baby in the corner.

Indefinite Hiatus

2010-10-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Next Post: Oct 7. 2011.

Switchover

2010-08-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Listen sweetheart. You wanna call and butter me up with sympathy and then drop this on me because you think that I’m down and will take anything – let me explain this to you in a metaphor you will understand. I am sure there are guys who have fingered you in the ass long enough that eventually you'd let them fuck it. And now you think you got me bent over with your finger in my ass thinking I will let you do the same. I am not like you. You will not FUCK ME IN THE ASS, I WILL NOT PISS IN A CUP FOR YOU, OR ANYONE ELSE.

Free.

2010-08-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Getting old sucks.

One moment your alive and the next you're; shrinking, taking far less space from the world than you did before. My grandparents are on a one way trip to the highest floor in the building and it makes for one shitty goodbye. Any day now, thought everyone.

I'm losing interest in a livelihood where ideas are chained to suffocate and generosity is exploited. When the time is right, i'll disappear.

I've been preparing for this my entire life. When all is said and done, your the same size as everyone else. If this is where i want to be then it is only here that i have to let myself go. If they are the right people, then it is only them i deserve. And as i wait, in hopes of a second chance- it is becoming clear to me that i don't really need one. I'm....free!

Come to think of it, i'm getting older too but for me, it just got much more interesting. Yes.

Line

2010-08-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Oh come … – That’s what marriage is for, so you can bang out your anger.

Trouble

2010-07-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

" What happened ? It's been weeks since i last saw you "

She appeared annoyed. Holding a quickly disappearing cigarette, i realized that i desperately needed an astray for my room.

" I've, I've changed. I think i have an alter ego. " I stammered.

For those of you who know me from as long ago as Himalayan Academy, everyday on my way to and from school building, when on my own, i spoke to myself at length about who i was and what i wanted to be. I spent hours with myself trying to understand people and the things they did. I suppose you don't understand, which i understand, is your problem.

" You have a what? "

" Nothing, forget about it!"

For a fact, i knew she didn't forget about it. Alex Turner is wise. I suppose this is irrelevant.

" My friend looks good in pink hair. "

She seemed uninterested, i suppose this had something to do with me not telling her what she wanted to know.

" Which friend? " She started.

" I don't mean her whole hair is pink, just a shade of. "

There i was wondering if this was real and if it was then i must surely be in some kind of trouble. I was.

Astronomy

2010-07-21T05:40:00.000-07:00

Hello ladies and gentlemen. I will be your narrator. My name is Aurora...Borealis. There are over 400 stars in our galaxy, maybe more. No one knows for sure. Many have said that the universe is even larger than the Indian Ocean. And that is why it is called Infinitum Staroctapusim. Ah, yes, our glorious constellations. There they all are, take a look. Over here we have...one with a guy holding some sort of thing. Over here, our beloved Olympic rings, all seven of them. And here, here's one with a fish. Notice, straight, straight above you: the hammer of Jeff. And over there in the South-north, you'll see Monkey With Rash. The Egyptians used to set their clocks by it. Oh look! There goes an asteroid. Comet. It's what they named that cleaning solution after. I know it may stink when you leave it in the sink, but boy oh boy does it clean!

[/Private]

2010-07-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

The problem with caring, there comes a point when you care too much.

Despite that, being let down is a fucking pain the ass.

O you can't, is it ? Watch me!

Dhol Yaara Dhol

2010-06-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

This is my mess.

Leave me to it.

I deserve a fucking disaster.

Falling Out Boy

2010-06-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

Prolonged sitting can sometimes invoke a song on the inside of your head, in my case it is always either Starlight by Muse or Sugar we're going down by Fall Out Boy. On this particular Tuesday, the cushion seemed utterly inadequate making me feel like revealing much less than usual.

She could tell, like she could tell everything and i could tell that she could tell.

"So, how's work? "

"Okay."

Amused by that response, she felt a compelling need to probe. " Okay? Good-bad-don't care? All of the three? "

"Okay as in," I liberated a sigh from within, " so my superiors have a habit of setting ungettable targets and well, we're more of in the habit of being content with far less. "

"Really? So you're not meeting your targets."

"No, its not that! .......... It's not about targets or ..... it's about being, lets say rational. About understanding the situation or research. "

She kept silent, i think because she figured i had more to add, which i did but the damn cushions kept screwing with the scene. What i really wanted to say was can you get a new couch?

"My colleagues think i should be made CEO." I forced a smile but it sorta metamorphosed into a giggle. Odd.

"They think what?" She seemed to have missed the last part of what i had said unless of course this was deliberate.

"Nothing, just.... since i have so many opinions about so many things, they feel i'd serve better as the CEO. It's a joke, of which i'm the butt of. "

" What do you think of the idea? "

So, was she making fun of me too? I had to wonder, True - i do tend to say a lot sometimes and i do know how it can be a problem. I decided to drop the thought and think about next week instead.

"I think that, i think i have a lot to learn. I am not even sure if i'd ever really become a CEO, at least not as long as i still have Animal Planet in my reach, know what i mean? " I gift wrapped it with a chuckle succeeded by a look at the ceiling.

I have to admit, somewhere along the road I must've lost something very important to have ultimately become this way. As vague as that was, it's still true, still painful, still present. The Art of Choosing - my latest procurement, a book by Sheena Iyengar waiting to be read, still oblivious to its fate of being declared either unworthy or succinct, whichever. I liberated a second sigh on that thought.

" So, you're leaving for Kalimpong again, tomorrow? " she said, after waiting for my head to return to position.

"Yes, " I replied, looking sideways now - at the wall, thinking, whether i should come back next week or give up treatment. Either way, i thought, it was not like i was going to get anything back.

Victory

2010-06-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

There is about as little a doubt on whether i now possess a unique weltanschauung as there is in whether Vampires use excessive makeup.

If any of you were remotely aware of my abilities pertaining to the unraveling of human nature, you would concur that it was best if you had just shut the hell up and not encouraged it further. I have, however, taken this into consideration (which speaks volumes about my levels of generosity) and decided to let you off with a warning.

My problem is my untamed sense of humor and i see that now, which is to mean that i will solve it. Please refrain from figuring anything out of all this, if you've noticed anything at all , you'd know that I always use my blog and the words therein to speak directly to me and not to its readers. On the few instances that i have deviated from the above pattern, all requisite paperwork were presented.

All said and done, i win.

R.I.P

2010-05-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

This is going to be one of those posts where i jump to a conclusion about something that i should probably think through but wont because i don't give a rat's ass about it or i do and i don't want to share or both.

You don't really know me that well and i am not ashamed to use this to my advantage, i didn't ask to be put with you and neither did i get to choose. This was fate or coincidence, but here we are and what now?

I could be wrong but speaking the truth about something while under the influence is not that bad a thing albeit very effective and speaking the truth, generally, gets me nowhere. I feel betrayed, somewhat, but who says i haven't gotten used to it - except i have and it doesn't bother me all that much, slightly irritating but i can live with that.

You don't really know me.

Consider this. It takes me nothing to dissociate - however, it took me a lot to associate.

We're done.

Sex Lies and Videotape

2010-05-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

"You don't even know who I am. You don't have the slightest idea who I am.”

The cushion created a rustle as I shifted less than a few inches. “Am I supposed to recount all the points in my life leading up to this moment and just hope that it's coherent, that it makes some sort of sense to you?”

“It doesn't make any sense to me.” The face went blank as though making an attempt to describe the statement, then it came alive again with expectations of a satisfactory response.

“I don’t have the slightest idea who I am and I’m supposed to explain it to you? And why, you tell me why. Why do I have to explain myself to you?” The discomfort in my voice was now creating disturbances in the air, I felt it, I know she did too – the air around us certainly felt it. There began a phenomena as if the lights in the room played tricks with the rays of sunlight seeping through the curtains making everything a performance.

“Because, maybe I can help you” - This was a plea.

“Help me with what?” – This was a rejection.

“Your problem;”

The following happened very quickly before either of us had any time to generate appropriate expressions.

“My problem, Do I have a problem? I look around me in this town and I see … I feel comparatively healthy.”

“You’ve got a problem.”

“You’re right,”- The resurgence of facial disposition aided dialogue delivery, “I’ve got a lot of problems, but they belong to me.”

“You think they’re yours but they’re not, everybody that walks through that door becomes a part of your problem. Anybody that comes in contact with you -”

The abrupt discontinuation was deliberate; the messenger is immune to every retaliatory round of gunfire and therefore automatically pardoned for transporting the message. The message, however vicious must go through the entire process of changing hands gaining new ownership, giving away to evolution. I got up and walked rhythmically to the window and gently began drawing the curtains in the opposite direction, putting an end to the performance.

AvA

2010-05-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

If I don’t document this moment, I have this feeling that it will be lost.

Forget all the things that you own

And travel almost anywhere you can go.

She said; Show me the world inside your head, show me the world that your see yourself, you can use some help, for sometimes it comes with a shove.

Let's start a riot; nobody's right - nobody's wrong.

Cause by design, its full of holes. It's just one Epic Holiday.

Can one really feel difference? What do you know about love or friendship or betrayal. You're just a heart with no body. All you do is beat.

Oh i know you well, all your life

I've felt you breathe, watched you lie across the seam

of space and time. I'd wait like snow on the eve of spring;

I can outlast cold, can you outlast me?

Sick

2010-05-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

I hate being sick.

Letting a feeling take over your body like Bush took over Iraq.

No WMD here, bitch!

N/A

2010-05-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

Exaltation.

Death of a Saint

2010-05-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

Blowing smoke at the wind has its advantages.

Especially when its handmade state-of-the-fuckin-art.

Should everything have a purpose? Doesn’t saying fuck off make it permanent anymore or have I missed an entire decade where words lost their significance to blocking someone on a social networking page?

Don’t I even get a response after all I’ve done for you in my mind?

The death of a saint

Does make me a sinner?

The fresh smell of paint in our house not yet built.

The death of a saint

Does make you a killer?

Those broken dreams, that in time stood still.

Lester

2010-05-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Most people go through life without truly ever understanding it. I suppose it is not their fault, most don’t even try very hard.

We just like to ask questions without realizing that most of them don’t really have any answers.

I am not going to lie, but there have been times when I’ve felt that there was no other way except lying my way through regularity. Things were just so insane, they still are sometimes but I suppose with time, I have learnt to cope. Some people still confuse me but that’s for their own good, I don’t think I’d ever pay attention to those lacking sophistication. Some of the shit they pull are interesting, I suppose they are the sort of things I’d like to explore and understand but others are just disgusting. I don’t understand the evil that some men do and perhaps I don’t want to understand – but they never cease to amaze me.

I think I’ll spend the next few days in voyager mode trying to take notes and reviewing them later. Wisdom is a phase that repeats itself only so long as you’re aware of its ability to disappear.

I’ll let it pass.

The truth of the matter is one can never tell if things are really different until you spell it out for them.

Indi

2010-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

“The IndiBlogger of the Month is awarded to a blogger who churns out great content, has a loyal fan base and who's dedication is an inspiration to all IndiBloggers.”

Four wonderful people voted for me. The winner got 50. Bummer!

I could never win a contest that requires me to churn out anything. As for a fan base, I have those who don’t believe in loyalty or anything which necessitates consistency as a rule, I could never possibly be an inspiration to anyone willing to live a life within reason.

In all the spirit I could muster, however, I’d like to thank Indi for considering me as a valid applicant.

There!

[/Private]

2010-04-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

If you lose a spouse, your called a widow or a widower. If you're a child and you lose your parents, then you're an orphan.

But what's the word to describe a parent who loses a child?

I guess that's just too fucking awful to even have a name.

Rain

2010-04-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

“Notice how everything around us is so still.”

“And what if it is,” I retaliated almost threatened by the prospect of being attacked by somebody lurking in the background waiting to take me by surprise. “I understand this was supposed to be about solving my problems, not that I’m thrilled about any of it but I suppose it’s necessary.”

“Would you like them to be solved?”

“No, I don’t know; I guess if you can -” The idea of being in therapy was in itself something I was having trouble dealing with and now that somebody was looking at me with the satisfaction of being certified as a keeper of my innermost thoughts made me even more uncomfortable.

“Alright, how about you tell me about your relationship with your parents – let’s start there.”

I wondered if there is a manual that guides them through a step by step method on how to proceed unraveling the human mind. I wondered about the name of the manual, if it did exist and about the name of the author. “Can we start somewhere else? I want to leave my parents out of this.” I found my hand scratching my cheeks producing a sound familiar to those who forget to shave to work on a meeting day.

“The reason you’re here is so that you can talk about the things that you normally leave out.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you about how someone I know referred to a place as being infested with Muslims.”

“I am sorry?”

“It’s true; you’d be amazed how unbelievably ignorant some people can be. It makes you wish you had never met them at all or alternatively they were run over by a heavy automobile.” I forced a smile as a courtesy to the sarcasm. “Also” - I continued, “It’s funny how people drag animal body parts into the English language like Bull’s eye or Bull shit or the bull by its horn. Right! I mean” -

“You’re not taking this seriously at all.”

“No, I am, really. It’s just I don’t know if I’ll ever be alright. If things will ever be like I want them to be or if one day I’ll just get up and be alive. The best part of my day is undoubtedly the auto ride from park circus to Tagore Park; truly, it’s amazing how I just watch life being life and everybody doing what they inevitably should be doing. And yesterday it rained which was fantastic because normally this place this boiling hot and there is nothing more refreshing than rain. So, with all due respect and I mean this sincerely, I don’t think you can ever solve anything like the rain can.”

There was a silence that followed which gave me the impression that I had gone entirely misunderstood. I let it trail until at least one of us felt irritated by it.

“Well, I am going to ask to you to come again next week, we’ll see if you’re feeling like sharing then because it’s important that you share. Okay?”

“Yes.”

There are only about a handful of really good reasons for having a therapist in your mind. It’s the bad ones I’m worried about.

Something.

2010-04-22T02:06:00.000-07:00

There's something--despite their grim surroundings, despite the stakes, despite the little getaway weekend to Raichak starting tomorrow--there's something so juvenile about the way people venture to the very brink of saying something constructive, and then retreat. Leaving ME feeling like a fool for having entertained the slightest bit of hope.

Being Rahul

2010-04-16T02:54:00.000-07:00

“You channel other people’s pain –“

“It’s a gift and a curse,” I said exhaling a cloud of smoke that quickly floated upwards blending unwillingly with the whiteness of the ceiling. That morning (and mornings for me usually began at seven with the lingering taste of last night’s alcohol and a feeling of gloom) I had spent a significant stretch of time staring outside the toilet window, with the toothbrush jailed firmly in my mouth, at the adjacent unoccupied hotel room window with the uneasy hope of finding somebody there looking back at me. And although, absolutely nothing that happened following the aforementioned stare had anything to do with the current scheme of things, I couldn’t stop wanting to fit it into our conversation at the moment.

“Nobody’s staying next door,” I whispered with triumph, inhaling tobacco-laced air in gulps that might’ve been mistaken for yawns.

She wore the faintly curious yet faintly ignorant look of a rebellious teenager at the onset of personal victory. “Even if someone was staying next door, that someone would tell you that it’s a gift – what you have.”

“I don’t know,” I retaliated, giving away to recline. There is a peculiarity to silence that makes everything else in the background seem more important, the ticking of the clock, window panes shifting less than a centimeter in the wind, birds and breath.

“In any case I think you should start doing things differently from now on, like you planned to. God knows how many times you’ve ranted about it. The time has come to act, darling.” She paused. “You hear that? That is thunder and you’re getting to hear the overlords perform in concert just to mark the opening scene. Fucking-awesome.”

I nodded, absent, glazed eyes creating the impression that i was staring over her shoulder, and began patiently, as though teaching a two year old to count, “one, two, three, four…”

“I get it,” she said, leaning forward so our foreheads touched, so i had no choice but to lock eyes with her. “Flinch,” she started, and, sensing a challenge, I held my gaze, unblinking. “Drunk.”

I gave an intoxicated and somewhat amused smile making sure it offended her confidence murmuring, “You wish.”

She leaned to the side spontaneously shifting her lips jointly leftwards from her nose, “Fine, be that way! See if I care.”

“You would, I know that much.” I retorted undeterred by the threat.

“Would it change?” I asked moments later, an eternity later for Rahul Raman, who’d in that time given up smoking, liquor, sex and sarcasm—each for the span of two seconds, at least. “Caring for me, If I slept with someone else, for instance.”

“If you cheated on me,” she said levelly, “the only pain you’d be channeling, is your own.”

“Good point,” I murmured into her hair.

2010-04-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

“You remembered my name—“

“Because it’s blue.”

He wasn’t seated at so much as propped up against the bar, inhaling tobacco-laced air in gulps that might’ve been mistaken for yawns. That morning (and mornings for him began at eleven, with the sour-stale taste of last night’s alcohol lining his mouth) he’d quit smoking for the third time this week, and was scheduled to resume six hours before his next final.

“Funny.” Someone had once informed Alan that his vocal rendering of that particular word was surpassed in arrogance only by his enunciation of ‘Alan Shore.’ “I myself found the attempted traipse across the study by way of available furniture the more memorable portion of the evening.” He spun the ashtray before him with a finger, forcing himself after several whirls to direct his attention to her.

She wore the faintly quizzical, faintly pitying look of someone who’d just witnessed a magnificently doomed feat of drunken acrobatics. He supposed it lingered, much like the swath of bruising on his right shoulder, from the moment of last night’s misstep and crash from credenza to hardwood floor.

“No. That’s why I remembered you as the jackass. Your name—“

“Is blue. Are you sure?”

In a flash of teeth and a rush of air, she laughed. “Are you going to buy me a drink or not?”

“I’m waiting for somebody.”

“Yes or no, Alan.”

Propelled by a combination of scornful remarks about his balance and halting looks from the bartender with each request for another drink, Alan eased into a booth, sidling up against the brick wall in a way that might elicit protest from the wall’s mother and patting the vacant expanse of cloth beside him. If his (mythical) companion were to show up, the opposite bench would be hers.

“Synesthesia.”

“Like Nabokov,” he supplied, inwardly bemoaning the decision to give up cigarettes. It was one of those rare moments every smoker secretly longs for: the perfect opportunity to direct a nonchalant jet of smoke at the ceiling.

“You’ve been wanting to say that for ten minutes.” He smirked, not bothering to deny it, and drank in her delicate wrists, free of jewelry and luminously pale in the soft light of the bar.

Thus far they’d managed to maintain a careful physical barrier, so careful that in leaning forward he felt in violation of some invisible force field corresponding roughly to the contours of her body. “Give me a rainbow-colored sentence,” he said.

“Rainbow?”

He nodded, absent, glazed eyes creating the impression he was staring over her shoulder, and began patiently, as though teaching a two-year-old to count: “Red, orange, yellow, green…”

“I get it,” she said, leaning forward so their foreheads touched, so he had no choice but to lock eyes with her. “Flinch,” she started, and, sensing a challenge, he held her gaze, unblinking. “Drunk.”

He gave an intoxicated and somehow demure smile, lifted a hand and pressed to her cheek fingers still damp with condensation collected from his glass. “Yellow,” he prompted in a whisper.

“Cat.” They laughed simultaneously, her mouth shifting into a smile beneath his hand. “Arch. Alan.” He trailed a thumb over her lips, speculatively, as though wondering if they’d form a good bridge from her mouth to his. “Home. Proud.”

“That was like no complete sentence I’ve ever heard,” he said, kissing her.

He often conceived of his voice as she might, in various hues and textures—blazing red, lively green, familiar comforting brown of a shag carpet—and imagined her hearing some faint echo of it at the party (an echo of a color, what was that like?), imagined one of his haughty declarations imprinted pale pink or steel wool on her consciousness.

“Would it change?” he asked three weeks later, an eternity later for Alan Shore, who’d in that time given up smoking, liquor, sex, law, and sarcasm—each for the span of a night, at least. “The color of my name. If I slept with someone else, for instance.”

“If you cheated on me,” she said levelly, “I wouldn’t care about the color of your name.”

“Good point,” he murmured into her hair.

page 57

2010-04-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

Write page 57 of your 300-page autobiography.

Excerpt from As Yet Untitled by Rahul Raman..

When all of it ended--an experience I recall as being messy above all else, an incontrovertible evidence of my own stupidity--the prevailing wisdom, foisted upon me with maddening regularity, was that my predicament resulted from nothing more than another attempt to rid myself of the guilt.

This platitude seemed an enormous comfort to those dispensing it, from my then-girlfriend to whomever took it upon him- or herself to plaster upon themselves the shameful disposition that is, being my friend. For my part, I had difficulty stomaching (along with most anything else) the notion that there was something inherently wrong with either three o' clock in the afternoon or liking Nancy Botwin.

Ought I to have been in some hotel, with an unbelievably poor room service? - The person charged with knocking my door in the middle of the afternoon--I suppose he had the misfortune of working the wrong shift.

It's become popular wisdom, taken up by coworkers and grief-stricken friends, relatives and mere acquaintances eager for their three seconds of relevancy, I apologize. Tragedy is the conspiracy of space and time against an utterly blameless victim. Given the sheer number of people pronounced unfortunate victims of poor timing, you'd think someone lucky enough to reside in the right place and time would miss them.

Slightly less popular and infinitely more useful would have been the wisdom "Don't drink like a pig, even if at the time it strikes you as audacious valiant controlled." Even if it everything goes off without a hitch on a daily basis. Not once did anybody call me an idiot--possibly out of concern that my ego would rupture at a delicate stage in recovery, but regardless, it was something I very much deserved to hear.

Not that I would have listened. She and I didn't end. I told her to go.

I understand it's an empty phrase--there are perhaps few things I understand better than an empty phrase--but I didn't and don't appreciate the implication that I wound up sprawled on a hospital bed on account of having missed an exit cue.

And despite all this, despite pronounced scorn for the phrase, I can't seem to escape the nagging sense that there's somewhere else I should be.

<--- end of page--->

Chapter 4 : Heartbreaker

2010-04-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

We had a deal. You were to run my foot over with a lawnmower.

Chapter 3 : Freedom

2010-04-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, i get it. You want Gorkhaland.

How many times does a person have to read these three words before they fully understand that they want Gorkhaland.

Really impressive work with the slogans, everywhere, you have spared not one wall, not a single wall.

I appeal to the centre, give it to them already! I've not seen a more passionate request albeit backed by violence and agitation, in like forever. Hand to God, i haven't. There is a flag on every curve, and there are a lot of curves.

Darjeeling, despite the reviews, i like the mall, again, very very much. I'm at the Old (Main) Bellevue Hotel at the very edge of the mall.

Next time i'll stay at the Dakeling.

There is this fantastic liquor store right in the middle of the mall.

Also, Darjeeling has successfully abandoned plastic bags. I'd give away Gorkhaland just for that.

More photos to i don't know, visualize?

[gallery link="file" columns="2"]

I'll get back to whiskey now.

Youngistaan Ka WOW!

2010-04-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Note to self: I may regret this.

Second note to self: This is probably gonna draw the least number of comments.

________________________________________

If you were the game master, what challenge would you like to throw to Ranbir?

I'd ask him to solve any one of the following four most difficult riddles ever asked without once, and this is the important part, without once asking Google about it;

one. What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the day, and three legs in the evening?

two. What is the meaning of life?

three. Is question number two a very harmful question?

four. Did drinking Pepsi help you answer the above questions? If 'no' - then your answer doesn't count!

_______________________________________

Despite what you may think, i love Pepsi - and i'll go drink one now just to prove it.

Chapter 2 : Steve and Gloria

2010-04-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

I am not a nature person but i am very much a forest person.

Did that even make any sense?

Kalimpong is not cold at all, i'd rate it somewhere between lukewarm and inducing a single droplet of sweat kinda weather, also the place kinda makes me wanna think about things, which is good i suppose. Bear with me here for i am trying to sound like a traveler telling tales of travel but not quite.

Steve and Gloria are two Americans from DC who travel-blog. They look like they are in their forties but i could be wrong about that. They also have a lot of views on a lot of things. They like Kerala and North Bengal and have been spending their so far three-month long vacation sight-seeing all that is beautiful. Steve likes to farm orchids which is well because Holumba Haven is just the place for your average orchid lover.

This is my second time here which should tell you that i like place very much. I'll now post pictures to this effect.

[gallery link="file"]

Steve, Gloria and I spent the latter part of the afternoon discussing an array of topics like political turmoil in the hills, technology integrated education in schools and even pollution control.

And now i'm going to have to see them again for dinner.

My room looks electricity deprived under this lighting but that's probably what makes this so much more beautiful.

Chapter I : the leaving

2010-04-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so - there are just so many ways in which i can start this story but i am gonna go with;

I like speed. Not in the traditional sense of-course and since "God hates us all" is just as good, the race for me lies in making it to the station in time for the 10:05 Darjeeling Mail coach number B6 berth number 32.

See you there?

Having packed my entirely unprofessional hiking bag to the brim, and having loaded my iPod with everything from FOB to Joplin, notforgetting Rammstein or even Hendrix, i am ready to embark upon this journey through the ever-industrializing plains of Bengal to the never-agitating hills of Bengal, all in over 15 hours from now. With the exception of an appendage which generously cushions my laptop, i look in the least like a man on a business tour and exceedingly like someone about to conquer Woodstock.

I spent the last two hours watching this thing and damn do i feel good?

Ready or Not : here i come.

State of the Universe

2010-03-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

Work is taking me places.

Kalimpong,Darjeeling,Kurseong, Coochbehar;

In that order and for two whole weeks starting Monday next.

I intend to make a story out of the whole thing, so.

Watch this space.

*sigh*

Candle

2010-03-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

The secret; the ultimate secret to end all secrets, - ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, pimps and whores, meat-eaters and leftovers - is the truth that everything and everyone around us, exist, inexplicably in a state of gray.

It's true.

Most people don't know what the fuck they're doing most of the time and their actions are simply the means to justify an end they find appropriate for the time being. Everyone thinks they understand the big picture but thoughts can be misleading.

Not that I'm expecting you to say something clever but what lives on its own substance and dies when it devours itself?

Read My Mind

2010-03-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

I need to write, i know i need to write something..any-fucking-thing will do. I need a song, and i am changing one track after another to make sure i find something suitable and now i am stuck on the Killers.

This had to be about Niki. It had to come spontaneously - not manufactured - but natural and it has to have a moment of its own and that moment cannot have a substitute so I'm gonna put this song on repeat for as long as this takes. So, here goes nothing.

There are three parts to this story.

Part one - myself

I am complicated, there i said it okay? For as long as I've known myself i have always been a giant mother-fucking riddle! I have. And just when i think i have myself figured, BOOM! - Nothing. Do i hate some of the things i have done in my life...Hell fuckin' yeah i do...i remember and lament shit i did to people back in the 6th grade to this fucking day, i drink myself to town about it every time and it's not about to go away anytime soon. The consequences of my actions will haunt me till the day i get shot or something...if that isn't how i die. But the truth of the matter is i really never get into these things deliberately, they just happen; they fucking do. Do i force them sometimes...sure okay...but do i want it all to end in some giant hate orgy? No.

I used to try to pretend i'm Don Juan DeMarco outside the dining hall every evening when i was in the sixth grade, yeah...your probably falling off your chair right about fucking now if not already...but that shit was real to me. It meant something and maybe six months later i dropped Don Juan for somebody else just as interesting but in all of this role-play,never once did i lost sight of what i wanted and what i wanted was to be - to be complicated.

I didn't want to become another one of everybody, another easy simple to understand piece of junk. It may have been the best fucking decision in my life but if i had known then that i'd leave such a trail of destruction in my way then i'd never have gone through with it. I'd be happier somewhere reading Chetan Bhagat while sipping cold fucking coffee in the middle of the day and crib about how i just can't stay away from Splitsvilla!

Too long?

Part two - Love

To take advice from me on matters of love would be the most irrational thing you could ever do. Sure, my powers of deduction are above average and i may just be able to tell a few things from looking at your face or reading your handwriting but that doesn't mean i know love. See love and me, we're not really sure where we're at. I think we're strangers in familiar territory but i can tell you a thing or two about relationships. Relationships are easy, as long as you follow the rules and don't do anything stupid; your game. The difficult part is whats really on your mind when your in a relationship. What your thinking, what your feeling - thats the important part. The two of you may never want the same things but still manage to be in a relationship or alternatively you may want the same things and still manage to screw the whole thing up like a psychotic cat at the dry cleaners.

But if you ask me, at the end of the day with a few naked shots of whiskey down your throat, nothing is impossible.

Part three - untitled

The teenage queen, the loaded gun, the drop dead dream,the chosen one..I feel exhausted, its been two hours and this song wont stop. Two hours to write one post, one frickin' journal entry that is completely undecorated by my more than usual anxiety for ordainment. See?

This one was for everyone who'll live long enough to watch me die as what appears to be a very rich but ultimately crazy man, for everyone whose ever watched and truly understood Don Juan DeMarco, for everyone whose heard one single song by the Killers so many times and for everyone who think cursing is an unhealthy yet morally justifiable virtue to posses.

Everybody whose with me say f-u-c-k!

E.N.D

2010-03-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

Seeing how i have been proclaimed the troublemaker at work, I will be accepting thanks and tribute for this recently acquired title at the leisure of all parties impacted by my damaging efforts. And since I'm in a mood of unparalleled generosity, I'll refrain from asking how it is that taking multiple NIIT Identification cards to pizza hut would make a person eligible for equally multiplicative discounts.

Moving on from acts of heroism and derelictions of duty, has the city of joy suffered a sudden plunge in temperature these past few days? I don't recall nights as being so cold. I don't recall losing all sensation in successive portions of my anatomy, anyway.

The end.

2010-03-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

With the objective of writing an advisory post,

Help a Child and Help Yourself

2010-03-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is perhaps a time as good as any other to write an issue post! Nobody ever seems to notice anything under normal circumstances. So what if our education system is in a mess? It's not likely to change anytime soon.

I went to a school today. They have two hundred and twenty kids in all paying less than ten rupees a month for an education with far greater value than in the schools you and i went to. I suppose you don't care about things like that; what good can a place like that do anyway?

I met a man today. He pointed out, among several other things, how teaching is never encouraged as a career in this country. Well ordained advertisements about a lucrative MBA, the traditional benefits of becoming a doctor, fast paced life of an IT professional but never a teacher. Ironic how only this morning i found myself expressing my distrust in a pedagogue collective only to find myself soaking up their wisdom in the afternoon.

I saw a boy today. He had troubled legs that had a habit of giving away too quickly, so they built a machine around it. It made things complicated but when has that bothered anyone? "They say i have special needs," said the boy but I doubt anyone else heard it or perhaps he was just talking to me. If you've told a child a thousand times and he still doesn't understand, then it is not the child who is the slow learner.

I heard a voice today. No matter what it is that your thinking right now, you know you've heard them too. The voice thats always telling you that you want to care but there's always something more important for you do than listen to it. Yes, that one. It told me to get my shit together because there's very little time left and that things were about to change, for me.

Help is enough.

2010-03-04T01:34:00.000-08:00

You can't conceive of me as having been anyone other than the person you're speaking to this very instant, can you?

You may be--all right, you probably are--right, but I don't think brutality of any sort is an admirable quality. Honesty should be, above all, about knowing oneself, not an excuse to fling less-than-pleasant truths in the faces of others.

Sometimes people need lies.

Status Quo

2010-02-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

Of all the things I have lost in the past few years, I’ve most regretted losing friendships. As for what I’ve gained….

*sigh*

I am rarely taken by surprise, but when someone gets married, disowned and fired all in under six months, I am left with very little choice.

I regained a little sister – not so little anymore. I would have never guessed we’d grow up to be just like each other. We are.

I’ve gained a workplace, I’ve acquired a new skin – one I was never sure of fitting into – I have.

I’ve gained a new place of residence. I’ve moved into privacy, the kind I’m comfortable with.

I’ve gained a perspective, new perspective.

Im still losing myself but i suppose that was alway a given.

2010-01-16T04:30:00.000-08:00

But then there's the morning after - the hangover, the realization that I'm not quite as available as I thought I was the night before. and she's gone and I'm haunted by yet another road not taken.

I have no idea how i get myself into fucked up situations, one could almost say i have a talent, but the truth of the matter is, every single time i start with best of intentions. As to how all this spirals into one giant fuckfest is beyond me or perhaps i walk right into these things.

The imaginary movie currently playing inside my head is called "Sex and India." It is a story about a few people and their radical approach towards sex in modern hardly-free India. The kind of work that could get more criticism than applause. I disgust myself but I am not unhappy about that.

Im turning into a foulmouth. Im not even sure if im allowed to use that as a noun.

I suppose i should just get a new blog.

2010-01-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

"Rome is burning," he said, as he poured himself another drink. "Yet, here I am knee deep in another river of pussy."

"Here it comes," she thought. "Another self indulgent, whiskey soaked, diatribe about how fucking great everything was in the past. And how all us poor souls born too late to see the Stones at - wherever, or snort the good coke that they had at Studio 54 "

Well, we all just missed out on practically everything worth living for. And the worst part was, she agreed with him.

"Here we are," she thought, "at the edge of the world - the very edge of western civilization and all of us are so desperate to feel something... anything... that we keep falling into each other and fucking our way toward the end of days."

2010-01-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

Has our acquaintance been so brief that the difference between sarcasm and sincerity continues to perplex? I'd have thought we'd endured one another longer than that.

Happy New Year.

How was last night?

Here's what i spent mine with.

*sigh* yes, i gloat.

2009-12-26T08:49:00.000-08:00

I wrote my first blog post in June of 2004.

With well over 5 years of experience as a blogger having witnessed everything from Google acquiring Blogger to importing of entries to Facebook, I find that the time is just about right to announce my resignation from bloggerdom.

Seriously, How many of you did that last sentence fool? Show of hands!

Another Christmas, Another Year. 2010. Time to make resolutions?

I broke every single resolution i made last year, which should tell you so much about my interest in keeping any at all. However, *sigh*

(in no specific order)

1. Continue hating Vandana - For all those reading this on Facebook who also happen to know who Vandana is, Now's the time to go - "Not Again!"

2. Drink Less.

3. No....Seriously, Drink Less.

4. Save - Aside from Tigers, Trees and the Planet, If there's room, then money.

5. Change - just a little bit. i could be wasting my time on this one.

Somehow it's reassuring, knowing i'm not the only one pretending to be normal. The problem with acting normal is that normal people get into stupid situations.

2009-12-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

I'm repeating a post. I suppose this time around, it bears more meaning. There are very few things more depressing than becoming a tag on my posts.

What have you most regretted losing?

Sometimes I have to stop myself from wondering if I made that story up. College, that's years ago. Years. I don't remember a thing. Why should I have retained this...memory of the first day? It's very vivid, like a scene from a film. The color's probably oversaturated, too.

I never had any sort of imaginary friend as a child, except...I might have.

Or maybe this is my attempt at some sort of tidy justification so I can move on. If so, I wish it would work.

I know I didn't lose him. I left. I couldn't very well have stayed, but now I doubt I'll ever return to Friendship. Someone might recognize me.

What was it that I lost? He was a friend. My best friend, but isn't that just a phrase i throw around?

I can't think of a thing to regret aside from the fact that its dead, and yet I do.

Deleted.

2009-12-04T02:37:00.000-08:00

One of the many advantages of knowing how to control the IT setup in the workplace coupled with the inward inclination to stir shit up affords you with a very elusive oppertunity to accidentally stumble upon a confidential statement inside the four margins of your superior's outlook express. I admit to doing nothing.

"Rahul should be moved on to rolls effective 7^th December. I will give him the appointment letter when he is there in chennai."

Im being promoted in under three months of joining this company.

Fuck-Yeah!

2009-11-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

It's difficult to engage in higher cognitive functions when gifts are at stake.

Chisel that onto my tombstone.

As for what would make me really happy?

Imaginary friends. Fall Out Boy's new album. Bespoke suits. Books. Women. Table Tennis. Stimulating conversation. Travel. Needlessly elaborate inventions. Independent thought. Christmas lights. Incongruity. The jangle of pocket change (in moderation). A new season of Dexter. The Dalmore. Waking to the smell of breakfast (anybody cooking for me of their own accord, for that matter). Calcutta. Receiving letters. Animal Planeton a Sunday Night. Children, in groups of three or fewer. Having something whispered in my ear. Dark chocolate. Double entendres. Wai-Wai. Mastery of a new body of knowledge. Winter. Pepperoni. Achieving a favorable outcome on behalf of a deserving objective.

2009-11-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

The other day someone told me that Cuban cigars were considered exotic because they were apparently and i quote, rolled on the legs of beautiful virgin ladies.

I downloaded pirated copies of the new Flyleaf and Robbie Williams album.

There is quite simply nothing worse than having an elephant in the room. Except perhaps flogging a dead horse, but thats another matter.

I can only try to help and i am, perhaps this is all my fault, as usual. It is not fair to ask a person to see light in a world that you made dark in the first place. But...there's light!

I can only listen!

Alpha-dog or Omega-lomaniac? Who gives a shit? When the fat lady sings I'll be the one holding the lawnmower to her foot.

I'll leave it at there's only so many cigars you can roll on a lady before she loses her virginity.

2009-11-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

India lost.

I dont watch cricket all that often and on the one day i choose to, we come this effin' close to victory, only to lose this effin' miserably.

I need a drink!

2009-10-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Woman who tries out penis' for size.

This will be interesting. I am tempted to go back to writing in my old cryptic ways, for once, in a very long time there comes a subject worthy of discussion in the only way i know it deserves; cruelty.

Think of it what you will and i've said this before, things that aren't particularly of no interest to me are those that aren't naturally accepted as interesting. I am different, this could get old. This is old.

I could fake anything, tears especially. They come in very handy. Secrets are often italicized, or are they better off in bold? Who am i to judge?

I am not a fan of short sentences but sometimes *sigh* Sometimes sentences have to be left where they are, incomplete, unclear, irritated. It is an assault on my memory; to think of a day when everything just fell right into place - there is no such a day - it does not exist. No strike that - cannot exist. It is not in my nature to be perfect neither is it an advantage i desire.

She is trying penis' on for size, wait till its perfect. She wants/craves/needs perfect. They all do, every single one of them.

In the end, Fuck, in the end you wont know a good thing even if it came up and slit your throat.

F.O.B

2009-10-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm always the last to know. My insides are copper and I'd kill to make them gold. Conversation got me here: another night alone in the city. So make my bed the grave and shovel dirt onto my sheets.

This is me standing in the arch of the door hating that look that's on your face that says there's another fool like me. There's one born every minute.

2009-10-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

And i am born, again.

Rested

2009-10-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

I feel neither better nor worse. Rested, though. That must be a good thing.

I probably shouldn't have asked for this. It's not something I ever could have done. If worst comes to worst I'll walk around a less than desirable district (again) and hope that someone knocks me out in order to steal my shoes (again), but I won't ask for this again.

Some whiskey and some ice and then I'm on my way.

And Oh, i turn twenty-four in three days.

In related news, Bowling for Soup is back and so is Paramore.

and here's somethig for the readers.

Needles(s)

2009-09-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

The natural assumption made by any young child entering a doctor’s office is that he’s about to receive a shot.

On this occasion, though—and it can’t have been the first time I’d ever gotten a shot—I don’t remember being afraid. My mother had probably promised me a lollipop afterwards. Such was the custom.

I was…I was young. Memory’s imperfect. I do recall a large chair of brown plastic; my legs dangling above the floor. I think, during that interminable period of boredom where good little boys and girls are expected to occupy themselves with staring vacantly into space or perusing the adventures on the Duck Tales, I think I rifled through all the drawers in the examining room. From this I learned that the drawers in a doctor’s office contain an endless supply of pens, and a regrettable—to me, back then—dearth of scalpels.

Having finished that task, and possibly on cue, I asked my mother how much longer. She took my hand and told me to be patient. Ordinarily this would have prompted a barrage of follow-up questions, but this time I didn’t ask. Perhaps it had something to do with my hand clutching hers.

The nurse comes in. I hop up on the examining table—an exhilarating experience when you’re all of four feet tall—and peer down my nose at her as she endeavors to roll up the sleeve of my bulky gray full shirt. It must have been raining that day; I only wore that shirt when it rained.

Eventually she realizes the shirt’s too much trouble and I remove it as per her instructions, tossing it carelessly to my mother. That done, I look at her expectantly and she turns away and tells me to lie down.

The fabric coating the table is someone’s desperate attempt to replicate leather and every time I change position it stuck to my skin. Freedom from that rewarded me with a faint pink kiss to the flesh that was in contact with the table. I suppose I was sweating. I suppose that’s what made it so difficult. But I don’t remember being afraid.

I don’t…in medical school, nurses must be instructed in the administration of shots. Someone, somewhere, has stood in the front of a classroom and scribbled on a blackboard, “Inform the child that they’re going to receive a shot. Tell them it will hurt a little, but it will be okay. Tell them they can hold your hand if they like and remind them that the appropriate parental unit is nearby.”

I’m going to give you a shot, she says. It will hurt a little—she smiles reassuringly, and I smile back, because any adult with the patience to smile at me is an immediate candidate for sainthood—but it will be okay. I can hold your hand if you want. I shake my head no.

She knots a thick yellow rubber band around my arm and it stings the skin. I imagine the numbness spreading; I picture numbness as those little dots you see before your eyes when you press the heels of your hands against them. I’m told to make a fist and I clamp my eyes shut. I’m told again to make a fist.

I never thought I’d be describing the sensation of a needle puncturing the skin. It’s perhaps unnecessary—most people have experienced it.

It’s only a needle. My eyes were shut, the knuckles of my right hand must have been white, and that was the thought I clung to. I felt the nurse’s fingers, cool, on my arm, steadying it.

It’s…it’s not sharp and sudden and searing. It’s nothing to be afraid of. A cringe and it’s over. It’s done.

What it is is deliberate. Deliberate and, for the briefest instant, undeniably present, the focus of every hypersensitive nerve and brain cell in the body. Then it’s gone. Done.

But it’s not, because there’s a droplet of blood pooling on the arm and until the nurse dabs at it with cotton and slaps a bandage over it you’re left staring at this tiny bead of red and imagining the hole it had to have leaked from.

She told me I’d been very brave, and my mother nodded in agreement. Up until the age of twelve, every time I managed to grimace through a shot, I was told I’d been brave. I prodded the bandage on my upper arm a few times. Dull pain resulted.

My mother offered me a hand off the examining table, but I slid to the ground myself. She reminded me how brave I’d been, and suggested we go out to get that lollipop.

That was a certain vaccination. Needless to say—although most of what I’ve said has been needless—I’ve never had that either.

I’ve never really been comfortable around needles, either.

The Square Root of 3

2009-09-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

That Jimmy who ate the world once told me, "You'll sit alone forever If you wait for the right time, What are you hoping for?" That Jimmy also asked me not to give away the end, because it was the one thing that would stay mine.

I suppose i believed him and besides the music was incredible and it was titled "23" which just so happens to be my age, so i suppose he was talking to me.

Being alone around all the festivities for the past three days taught me a few very valuable lessons.

First, I can drink about four pints of beer before having to ask for a complimentary snack. Second, Animal Planet is simply the most wonderful channel on television today. Third, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a pretty good movie.

I’m of the opinion that all stores should close on Valentine’s Day. In this way we could actually require the people who spend their (presumably) hard-earned money on flowers and chocolates to instead spend time with one another.

I am aware that any law enforcement official with even a smattering of common sense would violently oppose this. I thus project that this suggestion of mine is destined for disapproval.

Whatever be the law, the end would always be mine. Not fair, but to think i had to colour the context with Valentine's Day to facilitate the discussion of my nemeisis. Sad, perhaps, but who says life's fair?

The Square Root of 3

I'm sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed.

From Harold and Kumar ; the sequel.

Surprise

2009-09-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

Ever had a feeling you wanted to write something down twice.

My life is somewhat like figuring out the correct html codes to moving the widget on your blog from left to right, a little mistake, even the absence of a single "<" could yield absolutely nothing. I have spent hours trying to understand exactly why i did something and have always gotten nowhere.

I'd like to think there are people like me, it gives me a sense of companionship. Maybe someday i'll run into one of them unsuspectingly and then who knows what will follow.

I never asked my parents about the circumstances surrounding my conception. I have no idea whether they had the chance to try their respective roles on for size, whether, when I was nothing more than a cluster of cells or a due date, they began to plan the course of my life. It's not so uncommon, I suppose--the world, when you're very young, seems to have sprung up around you. Every new discovery--the taste of ice cream, the grass stains on your clothes, even the bug you unearth in your yard, with its hairy limbs and twitching antennae--is a housewarming gift from the universe to you. Your parents have always been your parents; the notion of their leading an existence independent of yours is unimaginable, which is probably why i found the first week at boarding school so difficult.

I don't know when I figured out that dendrophobia was probably not a gift (though odds are good I was somehwere no one could ever find me at the time), the host of fears and humiliations (minor, but how they stung) were probably not gifts, and that maybe this world I lived in wasn't the hospitable place I'd taken it for.

I never asked because I had a hunch they'd use a bittersweet word like "surprise." Surprise meaning accident (I'd come into being with all the grace and promise of a head-on collision, plates made of glass shattered on the kitchen floor, or--fittingly--the sudden voiding of a bladder in the middle of the night) and accident meaning, when you got down to it, mistake.

Looking back, I suspect my father most resents those aspects of my character that remind him of himself.

I'd like to spare a child that.

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness”, “joy”, or “regret”. Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right word to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.”

2009-09-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

To everyone who is here to return my comment on their blog, Please go here and post your comments and use that address from here on.

This blog was a failed experiment, Thank You.

Fantastic Stuff

2009-09-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by quoting Groucho Marx;

"I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER. "

Fantastic Stuff.

Being somebody who frequently employs manipulation in daily life, i find it easy to detect when somebody is trying to manipulate me. Take people at work for example, i am new - and with my newness comes lack of experience but neither suggests that i am an idiot.

Human beings can be extremely mean to aliens. No, really...despite all the special effects which i have to admit is fantastic, we cannot be so disrespectful to "prawns" from out space. Inter-species prostitution, please!

In 1937, Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) said, We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

Like i said, Fantastic stuff!

Fantastic Stuff

2009-09-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by quoting Groucho Marx;

"I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER. "

Fantastic Stuff.

Being somebody who frequently employs manipulation in daily life, i find it easy to detect when somebody is trying to manipulate me. Take people at work for example, i am new - and with my newness comes lack of experience but neither suggests that i am an idiot.

Human beings can be extremely mean to aliens. No, really...despite all the special effects which i have to admit is fantastic, we cannot be so disrespectful to "prawns" from out space. Inter-species prostitution, please!

In 1937, Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) said, We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

Like i said, Fantastic stuff!

Double Platinum

2009-09-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

Firstly, i stopped being Rahul. What is Rahul but merely a name, the name of a phenomena, a habit, a bad habit. One i had to quit, rather quickly i might add.
The comma, not the butterfly, which i seem to use more often in writing is a very powerful tool, in my opinion, can be used to separate things while keeping the sentence together in one beautiful yet powerful union. Beauty is sensitive, take the comma for example, the nymphalis c-album is a beautiful butterfly and butterflies are sensitive creatures. My point is when Patrick Stump realised that he had created a language which could grow on a person and take its own shape and form, he failed to comprehend its effects on the individuals whose ears would subsequently fall prey to his creation.

Secondly, and i am forced to employ the word since i already used firstly, the point of everything in life is to evolve. I have evolved. Thats about all the use i can find for secondly. So i'll directly skip to thirdly.

Thirdly, and i have said this before, my life is one with a high turnover rate. I cannot be expected to keep track of all the various expectations i destroy on a day to day basis. Its unfair. A lot of things in life are unfair, I'm not, I try to strike a balance, follow the code - like Dexter. I truly believe that Ryan Reynolds can act and Mark Harmon is stunningly good looking for his age. As for unfair, Kelli Williams deserves more than a lazy half-ass incomplete page on wikipedia and the song Footballer's wife should actually get more credit than people actually care to give it.

There, i said it! I feel so much better having vented all my frustrations upon this..this.. page (for lack of a better word.)

Im done hiding .

Double Platinum

2009-09-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

It all started when Patrick Stump uttered the following words from his buccal cavity, "wishing to be the friction in your jeans" was never meant to be taken very seriously by my brain but somewhere along the very thin and dimly lit line, i took it - seriously. This changed a lot of things.

Firstly, i stopped being Rahul. What is Rahul but merely a name, the name of a phenomena, a habit, a bad habit. One i had to quit, rather quickly i might add.
The comma, not the butterfly, which i seem to use more often in writing is a very powerful tool, in my opinion, can be used to separate things while keeping the sentence together in one beautiful yet powerful union. Beauty is sensitive, take the comma for example, the nymphalis c-album is a beautiful butterfly and butterflies are sensitive creatures. My point is when Patrick Stump realised that he had created a language which could grow on a person and take its own shape and form, he failed to comprehend its effects on the individuals whose ears would subsequently fall prey to his creation.

Secondly, and i am forced to employ the word since i already used firstly, the point of everything in life is to evolve. I have evolved. Thats about all the use i can find for secondly. So i'll directly skip to thirdly.

Thirdly, and i have said this before, my life is one with a high turnover rate. I cannot be expected to keep track of all the various expectations i destroy on a day to day basis. Its unfair. A lot of things in life are unfair, I'm not, I try to strike a balance, follow the code - like Dexter. I truly believe that Ryan Reynolds can act and Mark Harmon is stunningly good looking for his age. As for unfair, Kelli Williams deserves more than a lazy half-ass incomplete page on wikipedia and the song Footballer's wife should actually get more credit than people actually care to give it.

There, i said it! I feel so much better having vented all my frustrations upon this..this.. page (for lack of a better word.)

Im done hiding .

2009-08-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

If the eyes are the windows to the soul and grief is the door, As long as its closed its the barrier between knowing and not knowing.

Walk away from it and it stays closed forever but open it, walk through it and pain becomes true and now im faced with the struggle for my survival that i knew as always coming.

Ive been preparing for this my entire life. When all si said and done, your the same size as everyone else.

For every door that closes, It was always right there.

I had to say goodbye, in order to reconnect with whats really important, with who i was, with who i have to be.

2009-08-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

Entirely irrelevant.

In school, a long long time ago, we used to play this game called typewriter. What you’d do was you’d pick out a likely-looking victim, somebody small and not overburdened with friends, and shove him—like most schoolyard games, this one had vaguely homoerotic undercurrents, and besides, the girls cried too easily—to the ground. You’d plant your knees in the hollows of his arms and commence jabbing at his chest with your index fingers.

I don’t know what it was that made me the favorite. No, that isn’t true—it was the way I squirmed and thrashed and squealed and erupted sometimes in laughter and sometimes in tears. Even the real dunces of the school, kids possessed of an almost supernatural stupidity— Debdeep or Gourab Sarkar, for instance, who postulated that old photographs were black and white because color hadn’t seeped into the world back then—had the sense to bear their beatings with a certain sort of honour that prevented a second time.

I, on the other hand, lacked the survival instincts of a possum. Beating me up must have been an immensely satisfying experience.I had bruises on my chest. Tiny ones—no bigger than a dime.

I’d count them in the shower, monitor their shifts in color: indigo to olive to mustard.

But. But there I was, a boy whose only history was the dirt under his nails, the scratches on his legs, and whose future…

My life unlike Humbug wont leak on the internet before the release date.

Let's leave it at that.

2009-07-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

The first, essential step in relating a ghost story is to insist—to swear—that every syllable you're about to utter is the strictest, the starkest, the most bloodcurdling truth.

2009-07-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot of people seem to be straightening things out now. This is good. Odd, that it's happening all at once like this, but good.

Is there some sort of strange astrological allignment I should know about?

Assuming a new character is never an easy thing to do especially when you plan to change everything about yourself.

If your not on "the list" .. Goodbye.

On more than one occasion I have found myself unaccountably drawn to a member of the opposite sex. Love? *laughs* Not "I want to get married, divorced, and send you alimony for the rest of my life" love. I'll usually settle for spending the rest of the night together, and I'm not sure that qualifies.

*sighs* In my (oh-so-humble) opinion, talking about love is an exercise in futility. In fact, talking of any sort is extremely dangerous, especially where something as important as sex is concerned. *clears throat* But that's not the point. The point...well, I'm having some trouble getting to it.

Let me put it this way: I think love at first sight can happen.

*laughs* But believe? I don't know that I believe in anything.

2009-06-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Therapy, she assured him, wasn't the tidy packaging of problems, assembly-line style, so that they were more pleasing to the world. It was an individualized process--the course it took would be guided more by the indivuidual himself than any principle of psychology.

"Intimacy's a two-way street," she says. She turns to look at me, smiles in a way that's at once wary and indulgent. "Don't even start."

"What?"

"'Are you sure?'" She cocks her head in playful imitation of a journalist's inquisitiveness. "'It's not a one-lane road? A four-lane highway? A footpath?'"

" I was, at the time, a young and eager fella, choosing ties in emulation of someone else's taste and convinced that once i'd hit upon the right combination of arrogance and raw talent, i could simply shoulder my way through life."

She surveys him with some unclassifiable but disconcerting emotion. After careful intrspection of her face i was able to identify it as compassion--the sort of compassion accorded to a dying houseplant. "Sit down," she says. "You look anxious."

"I wasn't about to say any of that." my fingers shudder in the midst of the path they're trailing up her arm. "Although now that you mention it, the road imagery does possess a certain appeal. Intimacy is a tollway--"

"My point--"

"Ah," I interrupt darkly. "One of those."

"If you want a woman who makes you feel wanted, who attends to your needs, who accepts you for who you are, it's probably best that you extend the same courtesy to her."

My fingers fall away from her skin. I shift onto my back, shut my eyes. "Yes."

2009-06-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

I can tell when your lying.

2009-06-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Verse 1 : the boy

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said "yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant it started to pour
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of that time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name

Verse 2: the girl

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
You tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
And now you're outside me, you see all the beauty
Repent all your sin
It's nothing but time and a face that you'll lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard, I'll send you the news
From the house down the road from real love

Verse 3: the girl

There's one thing I meant to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save

And to think they sang it all to make sense of just this one thing.

Live through this and you wont look back...

2009-05-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

People have this notion that confidences are always offered up sotto voce. That anything worth knowing will, for their convenience, be preceded by the words “don’t tell anyone I said this, but...” Secrets, shameful, tragic, humiliating though they may be—we’ve come to believe they should be accompanied by fanfare.

I’ve told you my secrets. That’s the secret.

2009-05-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

I hve a tendency to betray things that never existed in the first place.

Gone.

2009-04-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

Leave of Absence

2009-03-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

[private]

Somewhere along the line--presumably lurking in the depths he'd sunk to in recent memory--he'd decided to put a halt to guilt. It was exhausting, uncomfortable, and never went without failing to yield any positive results whatsoever.

So he went to a nearby beach, all of a sudden, and spent the day wondering what was needed to make everything normal comfortable.

At what must have been the stroke of midnight, one could even say at the exact moment, state of inebriation notwithstanding, he figured it out.

As soon as this was over he could start not feeling guilty.

Fall Out Boy!

[/private]

2009-03-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am not pointing fingers.. I'm just assuming the character of whoever he is supposed to be.

Vintage, why not?

This is the sort of question that demands not to be taken seriously. Even if I did have an answer on the tip of my tongue, or lurking somewhere in the depths of my--strictly hypothetical--soul, I wouldn't give it. Whatever happened to life's great mystery? Whatever happened to mystery?

People behave as though having the answer to a question--any answer at all, not even the right answer, since they're all scarcely differentiable--constitutes some sort of triumph. Knowledge doesn't make anything more tangible…perhaps that's not the right word. Nothing endures simply because you know about it; quite the contrary. I feel as though I've been asked to identify a valuable mineral deposit so that it might be mined. I'd much rather sit back on my reclining chair and say, "There's gold in those hills" than begin the painstaking process of excavation, refinement, and distribution to international markets.

...and here I am, in grave danger of answering the question. There's value in obscurity. I prize questions above answers, and this was a particularly insipid specimen.

I pronounced her gone not long ago, and absence isn't something people write about. We memorialize. Here should be a list of the hundred little things she'll take with--and I don't have one. I can't...I refuse to break her down into component parts.

Because one of the many would be the part that loves him, and what are the dimensions of that? He makes her laugh.

He makes her happy. That is and should be the end of it. She may love Notwithstanding her feelings for me, I've never...she's not seeing me for the happiness I bring her. I don't know that I've ever brought her happiness. Well, maybe during our period of protracted flirtation, when she could roll her eyes and smirk and not have to entertain the paralyzing notion of any sort of permanence.

Perhaps I thought that in avoiding it--that trite trio of syllables--I could somehow invest them with meaning (that I thought they lacked meaning says...), but all things being equal, he'd only have to say, "so do I." A glance over his shoulder, a different three little words. It's so simple--is that the problem? I can't fathom simplicity. Right now I can't fathom how I was ever able to touch her, not if she was always en route to elsewhere.

She's happy with him. Happiness...well, I know it when I see it.

I know to take one giant step back.

I don't torment myself by imagining them having sex. Sex I wouldn't mind (when do I ever). It's thinking about conversation, casual references, shared acquaintances, shorthand for a history she'll never tell me and never want to. They were probably laughing at a chance word that reminded them of a fifteen-year-old inside joke.

Them.

If i ever see her, the genius is in the if.

Nobody's going to see her.

2009-03-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Rahul,

If I know you at all (and, despite the years that have intervened between us, I daresay I do) you're going to skip to the end of this letter and read the last line first. At this point in time, I haven't yet penned that line, so I suppose in a way that sets us on equal footing.

I'm sorry to say I can't bring myself to fill the page with the prettiest of lies--I suspect you might believe them and, if I may be presumptuous (ask Mrs. Bahel what that word means; it was she who told me) you have enough unfulfilled expectations to look forward to without my adding to that list. To give advice would, of course, be to invite you not to follow it. You leave me few options.

(Don't worry--and this sentence will irritate you--if you don't understand everything I've written. Some of it isn't worth understanding and understanding itself enjoys a reputation it doesn't deserve.

But then you're the boy who prides himself on dismantling magician's tricks and science experiments, who reads those books full of rhyming insults nobody could ever hope to use and treasures those days when yours is the lone hand raised in response to a question. Know-it-all.)

We don't really grow up. I'd like for that "we" to be all-inclusive, but I don't have anybody else's experience to speak from. There isn't a day when everything changes. Nobody becomes an adult, shedding their childhood as a snake would its skin. You probably imagine (when not occupied with more important concerns) the you of the grown-up world: taller, more confident, decked out in an impressive suit and crisply ironed shirt and preparing to embark on another day as a secret agent or private detective. At any rate, that's what I imagined.

You put the suit on. There are buttons upon buttons to fasten. You learn to tie the tie. Being an adult is like morning assembly: it's nine-tenths ceremony, one-tenth attendance. You'll find very few friends . Adulthood will instill certain habits. Confidence can be acquired. You can pick and choose which mannerisms to cultivate, which to sustain, and tell yourself they arose spontaneously.

In the same way, some things (attachment to stuffed animals, glee at mixing every available flavour of soft drink) will slowly fade, but dendrophobia will take a little more time. Don't--remember there are entire parts of yourself you can easily allow to die in the name of...what name was it again?

I'm not telling you you shouldn't learn to let things go. But be careful what you choose.

Affectionately,

Rahul

P.S. This is not in code, but you're welcome to attempt to decrypt it.

P.P.S. I told you so.

P.P.P.S. Enclosed is Rs 20. Please put it toward bribing the school barber to get you a presentable haircut.

P.P.P.P.S. If you spend it on mutton from Rajganj, I will know.

2009-02-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

If your 18 years or younger, Do not read This. If your older, Do not read this.

Everyone else, Happy Valentine's Day.

How old were you when you discovered the joys of masturbation?
Ten? Eleven? It bears noting that masturbation didn’t yield its joys all at once.

How old were you when you first did anything sexual with another person?
Fourteen.

Have you ever had unprotected sex? Why?
Yes. Because I thought it would be more intimate. Because I thought it would be better. Because I wasn’t thinking.

What term do you prefer to use when saying you had sex? (Got laid, fucked, made love, etc.) Is there a difference in your mind between such terms?
What do you mean, is there a difference in my mind? They’re different terms.

I use whichever suits my needs at the time. “Made love” is rarely employed without a dollop of irony.

Have you ever used common household objects for sexual purposes?
Common household objects like money?

Do you own sex toys?
No, I lease.

She-male porn! Yes or no?
None for me, thanks.

Your current partner has had way more sexual partners than you. How do you react?
I wonder why we’re comparing stats.

You have had way more sexual partners than your current partner. How do you react?
It—get used to this answer—depends on the circumstances. If she felt intimidated or vulnerable, I suppose I’d offer as much reassurance as I possibly could without lying about my sexual habits. If she felt embarrassed…

Would you have sex with a person who you hated if you were extremely physically attracted to them?
Yes.

Would you have sex with someone you cared deeply for, but had no physical attraction to?
I don’t know. This question presumes an ability to cleanly sever the physical element of attraction from other contributing factors—an ability I’m not sure I possess.

Would you dump someone for refusing to give you head?
No, But i suppose one has to wonder if that is all i want, most of the time i settle for knowing i can.

Do YOU ever refuse to give head?
I have.

Spit or swallow?
If this refers to my toothbrushing habits, I spit.

What have you had up your butt for sexual reasons?
Moving on.

Would you ever consider fisting?
Thanks to you, anonymous, I'm considering it now.

Have you ever sneezed during a sex act?
Not that I can recall.

Farted?
Yes.

Do you prefer to face your partner during intercourse, or away?
I prefer to face my partner.

Do you have a favorite position? If so, what?
I enjoy variety.

Where indoors do you prefer to have sex? (Bed, floor, shower, etc.)
I like beds, certainly, but there’s something appealing about making use of whatever surface happens to be handy.

Do you enjoy having sex outdoors?
It can be fun. It can also be exceedingly uncomfortable.

Would you ever take erotic photos of yourself or make sex tapes?
No.

Do you enjoy being watched while having intercourse/masturbating?
No.

How important is your sexual identity (gay, bi, straight) to your sense of self?
Not very.

If you woke up in bed, naked, with a member of the sex you don't normally fuck, how would you react?
It would depend upon the person and possibly the bed.

If your partner admitted, while extremely drunk, to a fetish you find distasteful, what would you do?
People have admitted while extremely sober to fetishes I find distasteful.

If it were a drunken confession from a woman I was sleeping with, I imagine I’d inquire further.

If you partner told you he/she desired a threesome, how would you react?
Once again, it would depend upon the partner and the circumstances. I might be intrigued. I might take it as an indication of waning interest.

What is the maximum number of people you would sleep with at one time?
If two extremely attractive women accosted me on the street and demanded I go to bed with them both, I wouldn’t say no, but realistically speaking, one.

Have you ever toyed with the idea of double penetration?
I’ve given it due consideration.

If one partner cuts off all sexual contact, is it acceptable for the deprived partner to cheat?
Understandable, perhaps, but not acceptable.

What's a sexual deal-breaker for you? The one thing you will NOT do for anybody?
I don’t like blood. I don’t like being infantilized. Aside from that, feces, children, animals, corpses, and public transportation are all out of the question.

Say you have a kid. What sort of attitude towards sex would you want them to grow up to have?
I’d want them to be knowledgeable about and comfortable with it. I wouldn’t want them to feel anxious or pressured—sex should be fun and it should be pleasurable. I’d want them to feel as though they could discuss it with me without being judged or misled.

Phew!

Any takers?

2009-02-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

Its true, Romance is dead. I shot it in the chest and then in the head.

This was is side one, Flip me over.

2009-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

If I could, over the course of twenty-four hours, dissemble—I’d say systematically because it sounds so much more thorough, but I haven’t yet honed my destructive impulses abilities to that point--someone’s life from the inside out, whose would it be and how?

I’m supposed to be answering, “your name” Isn’t that right? Surely exchanging lives would lead to an increased appreciation for you, a heightened awareness—whoever designated heightened awareness a good thing must have also had a hand in penning these questions—of…the complete hopelessness that characterizes any attempt to have a relationship with me.

And, once I’d sold the movie rights, a tidy profit.

Contrary to widely-embraced opinion—it goes by the name of “fact” in some circles—I don’t actively hate anybody. Certainly not enough to squander my sole opportunity at life-swapping on someone I dislike. Besides, there’s the small matter of what they might do to my life in the meantime, and at the end of this day I’d like to return to find my cell phone intact.

I’d rather trade, I think, with someone scheduled to die that day. Nothing overly gruesome, nothing I might stand a chance of preventing. Cheating death seems a worthwhile pursuit, as well as…a change of pace. Few drawbacks come to mind.

I’d rest.

On the other hand, I might consider the good of humanity, switch with whomever’s running India TV these days, and renew Good Journalism.

He's not worth it.

2009-02-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

[audio http://www.dajoob.com/pub/music/My%20Heart%20is%20the%20Worst%20Kind%20of%20Weapon%20Remix%20%28Fall%20Out%20Boy%29.mp3]

2009-01-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

At approximately 10:59 pm on the 27th of January 2009, I felt more alone than i ever have in my life.

2009-01-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

"Strike us like matches, cause everyone deserves the flames, We only do it for the scars and stories - not the fame."

Jit once said that one of the things—the thing—that drew him to me, back when he and i used to do beer cans like changing consciences in love and smoked up as if that stuff was legal and seemed doomed to either prison or death, was my honesty. Little did he know.

To live in my shoes is to cultivate...a number of filthy habits, not the least of which is an inclination toward reduction. Sometimes i feel that my existence is, at its heart, a mechanism to reduce the spectrum of human emotion—pride, love, anger, loyalty, jealousy, lust, fear—to a instance of conflict. "Somebody was wronged"—one of the most impersonal sentences that i have ever uttered. And then you winnow it down to a verdict, an ultimatum, number of days.

You take a friend and you do the same. Jit, you're chronically insecure—don’t you remember? Jit, you're the man nobody i know could speak of without having to suppress a snicker. Jit, you made the mistake of being human to me once and I'm not about to let you forget it.

You silly idiot, don't think this won't come with a cost.

That's the real lesson. Not "he can go on asking for more! "—although, God help him, he did get the verb right. Some people will exploit anything, any perceived vulnerability. If you're smart (and he's certainly that), ambitious (that as well), and a little bit of a coward (remains to be seen), you eliminate those vulnerabilities. Patch over them, bluff around them, guard them jealously.

He loved it. He so obviously loved--
Rahul, you're different. Rahul, you're different. Rahul, you're different.

Until you're left with that. Until you find yourself wondering what else there could possibly be.

2008-12-31T01:01:00.000-08:00

If my life were a movie, it would be a documentary about the manufacture and distribution of paper shredders. I would prefer Guy Ritchie direct it, but God knows I'm not picky.

I would not appear.

Happy NewYear.

2008-12-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

Insensitivity peaks during uncertainty.

Depend on no one.

2008-12-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1:

I feel as though I ought to step aside and afford the angel-maker a shot at eternal bliss. Or at least a lovely bus ride and a cooking invitation at/with my girlfriend(s) followed by some quick paperwork and lingering bitterness. She is next in line, if the less-slowly-than-is-strictly-necessary emerging pattern is to be believed.

How many adverbs did that last sentence employ?

Chapter 2:

They're happy, i hope - and beyond that there is, of course, no way of knowing. That word is subjected to such abuse whenever a wedding is imminent...

An engagement at the Hyatt and a wedding at the Park certainly warrants happy.

Am I happy for them? I want them to be happy. I'd like nothing more than for them to live happily ever after. This is the point at which the definition of "happy" becomes...well, I suspect I'm the sort of person who would require a dictionary to figure it out in the first place. And I'd use one, but including citations at the end of one's private musings regarding marriage brings one's sincerity into question.

I can't ever simply write these. I have to involve citations.

Koel's wedding was quite possibly--she would say undoubtedly--the nicest thing that God could have ever designed for her. It was the happiest id ever seen her.

I have to accompany her in a few days to meet the lawyer in charge of finalizing her divorce.
I didn't want to speak of this.

There's a difficult sentence to follow. I did speak of this, of course; my propensity for speaking out of turn is a matter of record.

I told her this was the best thing that could ever have happened to her. She proceeded to make me swear an oath not to employ sarcasm for the remainder of the night, and I'm no longer certain she was kidding. I described to her how lovely she looked and she promised I'd be the first one called in the event of a divorce. In retrospect, that's not very funny either.

Chapter 3:

My school looked beautiful. It was only after i came back to the hotel that i realized how much i had missed it.

Almost everyone vomited that night. i wish i had too. I'm given to hyperbole when drunk.

I met the wife killer on a motorbike no less. I liked the wife very much. I hate the wife killer.

I met Sougata, OMFG.

2008-11-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MRYLWJb1o]

2008-10-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

And Monty is Dead!

2008-10-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

I went. Simple as that. I am twenty-four—newly twenty-four—and not in the habit of soul-searching. I know what my soul contains. Industrious little businessman/journalist that i am, I take inventory regularly; if pressed, I can draw up an itemized list of its contents.

I made the two-minute ride from College to Friend's Flat in a black Yamaha RX 100 that had either an excellent pick-up or enough fuel to compliment the excellent pick-up—never both at once. It was a hot, sticky day and I spent most of it listening to whichever stupid song the guy who i still don't know the name of ; played, whilst drinking rum and smoking gold flake.

No one’s ever asked me what it’s like to be sexually abused as a child—perhaps because it’s not something I readily discuss, or perhaps because the answer is obvious: it’s awful. And I had no delusions on that score. I knew I was speeding up the stairs to allow an older boy to touch me on the pretext of it being a "family game." I knew I had as little chance as anyone wanting a happy ending with me as their significant other.

I sure as hell knew better than to allow the exact same thing to happen to me again on a vacation to Digha in the near future. Perhaps its fair to put the former line in italics.

A certain someone was thirty-two when i had met him. Seven years earlier, he had raped an elderly neighbor, clobbered her with an axe and nailed her hands to a chair before setting fire to her house. The next day, he had raped and sodomized a girl of twelve and then shot her thirteen-year-old sister, leaving the girl a paraplegic. For these crimes, the state of West Bengal had sentenced him to a double life imprisonment.

But as i made this two-minute bike ride from college to the friend's flat on his twenty year old Yamaha RX 100, I had this sense of—I’m sitting here mentally snapping my fingers in an attempt to conjure a word that probably doesn’t exist in the lexicon of a twenty-four-year-old cynic—resolve, I suppose. Hope, even, absurd as that sounds. My crazed jaunt felt, on some level, like a rescue attempt; on some level, maybe I believed that this very ride could salvage some part of me.

(This certain someone had, at most, an IQ of 66. At the age of twenty-one, he’d begun to hear voices urging him to commit violent, destructive acts. He spent much of his life in and out of mental institutions. The day before the murder, something had impelled him to seek refuge in a halfway house; there hadn’t been any room. I enclose this information in parentheses because it had little to no legal relevance.)

It was dark by the time I left for home. I waited a while before i took the auto from Tollygunge to Hajra, hoping that the auto-wallah would split a hundred rupee note without making a scene.

2008-10-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't delete it, but I didn't read it either.

I'm really good at things like that.

2008-09-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

Its only a word, right?

2008-09-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

This is the End.

Rotation.

Tia's going to my school, 90%.

Astrophysics.

Vodka.

Righteous Kill.

Happy.

2008-08-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

...I can't think of anything to say.

Yes.

Not that I make a habit of keeping track. Probability decrees it regardless; "yes" is a very big lie.

I doubt it was spoken. I doubt there's one specific moment I could point to even if I scoured my memory for every fradulent, potentially incriminating statement uttered--an exercise that could take any number of years.

A lie is a process. A process isn't something you're able to take back.

Logically, there must have been be a beginning, but a beginning doesn't necessitate an end, and without an end, can there be consequences?

Yes is a bigger lie than no. It's an acceptance.

I might have refused.

...scratch that. "I have no idea what kind of person would misplace a key in his pants" and "I dont care" certainly rank high.

2008-08-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

For the purposes of this inquiry, "therapy" shall be defined as "the treatment, conducted by a licensed professional, of mental and emotional disorders through the use of psychological techniques"; "therapist" shall be defined as "the licensed professional conducting said therapy."

I need therapy. Find me a therapist.

What, sit here? on my own, in my room? Life’s a cabaret, man!

2008-07-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

2008-07-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

This isn't my dream occupation. Yes, I know everyone else thinks it is, but gaining unsuspecting hollow victories by means of questionable tactics and virtually comprehensive knowledge of procedures I myself don’t follow is my passion in life. I love what I do.

In all seriousness...shouldn't there be more to that sentence? This isn't my dream occupation because..?

If you’d asked me when I was ten? A policeman. I was recently warded off by a policeman outside the Russian consulate for trying to video it for a news story. Such is life.

It seems redundant to dream of occupations at this point. There’s no unknown, glamorous adult world for me to dream of entering anymore. A dream should seem at least remotely attainable, and frankly, if I’d really desired another occupation I’d have done a better job of getting myself arrested in front of the Russian consulate.

And I think there are better things to occupy one’s dreams.

Business, there's a thought. One i haven't completely abandoned. I probably never will.

Although...if it’s not too late, I confess there is a certain appeal to being a wildlife correspondent on Animal Planet.

2008-06-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

"Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.

Dear Blog,

I reserve the right to comment anything on my actions this following month, i find myself interning at an english news channel, NDTV. Now, dont get any ideas - i dont know what i am up for or against.

The interesting bit however, its Mumbai. That should tell me a lot, it doesn't. I am also apparently the only person selcted for NDTV from my college, that too tells me veyr little.

On the upside, i cant wait to try on my new tie. :)

I still remain, regretfully,

Rahul Raman.

2008-06-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

i fractured my ankle.

Damn.

2008-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Rahul spends over thirteen minutes every night on a balcony with himself, batting around improbable solutions to the world's ills, fending off ghastly mental images, and--most astonishing of all--occasionally lapsing into a shared, perfect silence. No notion is too ridiculous to contemplate.

"I'm sorry," he says, knowing full well the words are worthless. An apology can't raise the dead or ameliorate pain or even get you drunk.

"Although, i guess you get that a lot."

He's also sorry for allowing conversation to take a turn for the grim.

"Conventional wisdom would have us believe grief is a process. Five stages--grueling though they may be--and you're done. Like earning a merit badge or beating a video game. But more and more I'm inclined to think it's something you simply have to learn to live with."