The problem with getting used to

Once upon a time I couldn't stand sitting in a car. Literally speaking, that's still true. But that is not what I meant. I used it figuratively. The closed doors. The unnecessarily muffled sounds. The used up air. Ugh. It made me sick. Never able to be in the car without all windows down. A/C? What A/C? I am struggling to breathe and you need A/C? Get out of the car! But I am getting too ahead of myself as most of the time it was "Let me out, just let me out!!".

Motorcycles. Ah, now that's more like it. Wind on my face. Arms flailing about any which way. Hair bike styled, standing there, with the dust, browning from the sun. Raising my perceived height by a few inches (or so a friend proclaimed after finding I was taller than her). Face parched from the lack of moisture. And yes, there were bugs. The first rain drops of the monsoon drenching everything but the steaming silencer. Twisting and turning in every nook. Stop where you wanted. Park wherever.

Now. In the car, I can hear myself think while driving. I can hear ear-busting music while driving. I can sing and shout at the top of my lungs! All that without the worry of consuming a new species of buzzing arthropods every time my buccal cavity is exposed. Significant reduction in chances of physical harm. And it has space. Think of all the things that can be done in that space. Yes, it curves, it purrs, it rages. Spoiling me. A few things amiss, Hair lost its stand, it just lazes around above the brow. The tan slowly fading away. Waiting in traffic! Damn high beams!!

Again, motorcycles. This time. They have 6 gears in a bike. WTH! KTM Duke 390. Whattay bike. The roaring blare of the engine. The pull back of the throttle. Wow! It scared the shit out of me. This felt like riding a cheetah through a jungle of puddles and bushes. Alas, it was only a test drive. Night driving took the fear to a whole new level. Could barely see anything in front of me, let alone the guy who just jumped out of nowhere to cross the road! Brake, please. I hit the break and it stops, where is the seat belt on this thing?? I forgot you can bend it around the obstacle. "Be like water" as Bruce said. I think he meant it for bikes. The rush blunted the chilly gust of Physics. Blindly curving hoping there would be no potholes.

The problem with getting used to is, it will also be gotten used to, and so forth.

P.S: It was Hero Honda CD 100 passed on to from my cousin to my dad to me, and now she rests with the mechanic, the only person who could service her needs. Forgive any exaggerations.

Experiment - 2: Give up or

Always wonder what makes one hold on to things. People. Places. How difficult it is to let that last morsel of adhesive, hinged by an inch. The joint is the only thing that keeps you together. Or so it makes you feel like, at least at that time.

If it comes undone, will it throw you overboard? Things haywire. Messed up. Everything going whichever way. The incoming currents leaks up way too faster than your hands can do to chuck it out. The rocks. The winds. Everything looks like it is out there to get you. And sure as hell, they greet you with their wicked grins. All you want to do is look for something to hold on to. Grab. Gnaw. Scratch. And when it gets calmer, you wonder, is that really going to save you? Then at the slightest shudder, hold on tighter. Run, looking for cover, for the next cooling zone. Wait until you can move to the next. Do you feel tired? Yes, you always feel tired. Tired of what is about to come, what is coming and what has gone past. Look for a poison, taking prescribed amounts just so that the silence gets less deafening.

Or... will it liberate you? Opening you to the world you don't know of. Things much clearer than they used to be. Pits you don't want, get filtered out at the top, leaving only an amalgam of rapturous emotions, to drown you. You float under the sun. Catching it with whoever cares to share. Moving, but unmoving. The sunlight doesn't blind you. Neither does the thunder rumble within you. There is only the search. No, not for an answer, the answer lies in the search itself. Run as fast you can. With no destination. Stop when you are tired, take in the high. Nothing to look for, there is no wait, because most of the things are now. Some things are going to be. You don't have to wait for anything. Everything you need is right there for your taking.

How long do we try not to give up? How long do we wait till letting go?

To complete the title, do you give up on something or do you let go of something? Some decide to give up, some to let go. Only time knows the entirety. Choice.

Stop-Start

Stop-Start

He says -
If my eyes glance upon your bright iris,
travel down your slender nostrils,
to the gap between your flush lips,
would you stop me?

If my shoulders grazed your sultry arms,
inch on under your uncovered biceps,
nudging into your silken skin,
would you stop me now?

If my palms brush your tarsals,
on towards the wedges of your calves,
back around your steaming thighs,
would you stop me now?

If my fingertips cruised along your perfect waist,
tracing a line through your tumultuous curves,
on the way, prodding the tips of your soft bosom,
would you stop me now?

If my lips slid down your well-marked neck,
flirting to sneak into the valley below,
snailing its way down to the vast, the paradise,
would you stop me now, though?

She says -
My dear,
why all this talk about stopping,
when all I am thinking,
why do you not start now?

Ready for life

So you start your day, everyday, there is traffic, some bug in iOS(damn you Apple), trouble staying awake at work after lunch, getting back sometime the same day, etc. Every day ordeals these.

This post is not about my or your everyday ordeals but what I saw today.

There was a girl. She looked at us. She couldn't stop looking at us. As if we had something that she wanted. So bad. The neglect. The utter expression of "why me?". Why can't I have what you have? She wants a normal life. A father, a mother, a place. A home with some warmth. She was surrounded by the same people everyday, spent most of her life with them. Yet she is as alone as anyone else in the room. Her eyes spoke what she could not. Her eyes beheld the tears within. Just a tinge, and there would be a deluge. Ah, the misery of youth. The torment of being a child unknown. What do you say when she says "Thank you"? "You are welcome" does a gross injustice to her gratefulness.

There were others. Some aware, most unaware. Too busy about how to use their fists to get some food into their gullets. What must be pain to them, I wonder. What must be joy. Yes I saw them laugh. They smiled back, they waved back. Coyly. A sheepish grin follows. And a twirl of the spinal cord. Then back to the dinner plate.

And there was another. I don't know how old she was. She looked small. But I could still see the years, they have been cruel to her. When we talk, she looks. Looking for dissent, searching our faces for what the exchange happening in our cold cruel tongue. But we smiled back, she tried. But she knew we knew she knew. She wished us a good night. And straddled away into her silence.

I feel I have a strong receptor for pain and my mind resonates with that pain when it is found. While moving among a crowd, I can see the pain meter radiating out of the crowd, and the empathy streams in like a gush of water released from a dam. And the cold sweat, a churn in the underbelly and a swallow of meaningless air. Waiting for the feeling to just wash over and leave me back. Yes, leave. Pain can carry one away, to a point where there is no pit deeper, no tundra colder, no vacuum more choking and no silence more stifling. Words are difficult to come by in these times. There is an absorption, a wait and an expulsion. The expulsion is key. Else I will be anchored there.

No, what I feel is not my pain. I am not sure my pain matters. But there was some light today. Illuminating the stony shadows. Some were, you could say callously, "ready for life". They do what is the most revered service to anything divine. Serving another being, nourishing them, caring for them till they can stand on their own. I wonder what gave them these superpowers. Then I was reminded, these people were in the same state what I see of the young ones now. Yes, hope. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Everyday ordeals melted. I could see the glimmer of the ray that made these girls smile. And live. And have a life that is almost "normal".

Yes, this date, ten years back is blurring, as the rivers flow,  the forests burn and the stars die. I have no cognizance of the duration of the events. But my vision is clear as ever through this haze of time. Soon I will forget today's eyes, today's glances, today's waves, and start drowning in my pains and pleasures. But tonight I am going to let the glimpses stay a little longer, let it ebb and flow over me. Wash me over. Again and again.

P.S: Not much fiction, but there is little where facts are not necessary.

The first stint

My first stint. At trying to build something **officially**.

In the summer of 2001, my friends and I dabbed at the artists within. We tried our own comic series. This was no ordinary comic book series. There were three superheroes, not one. Venom, created by Sai Krishna, inspired from the Batman by Bob Kane. The Dark Knight, origins unknown, created by a friend(who unfortunately got mixed up in the mandatory class sections change of '02). And the Black Scorpion, the self-taught superhero, created by me.

Venom - in a doodle by Sai

But truth be told, Venom had the deepest back story and set of villains than any other. So the other two became natural selections to form a trio of superheroes. I promise to upload more pics as and when I get them.

Our first release came after the class shifting, and thats how Rex And Yellow Cloud was born. Co founded by Sai Krishna and me, co-chaired by Sai's brother Sai Prasanna. The moment was christened with a marble in which was written "SAI ARAVIND" for our club in Sai's terrace, till date the headquarters of our foundation. We even had a flag and a emblem of sorts flying high on the terrace.

I think we successfully published three editions under our new club. The comics sold like hot cakes. Classmates, section-mates were starting to hear about us. But unfortunately we couldn't scale to the demands of printing out comic books for 50p a side to many people. So we went in with our next idea which was rooting in our minds.


Dragonball Z. Nuff said. That was a fanatic pull for any kid. Still is for many. Luckily for me, Sai already knew the whole storyline and knew the characters by heart. So obviously, I made Sai tell me the whole storyline before the show was aired, in India that is. Till date, I have no clue how he had access to that and more important remember every single detail. Literally. Sai was the artist. I was kinda sloppy at art.(Still am, not good, not bad, just sloppy ;))

We started off with simple trading cards with ever-"green" characters :) - Goku(obviously), Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Krillin, etc. We started with original proofs. Then photocopied and colored and did the finer details. From our earlier experience from the comic strips, each cards was priced 50p. So this time, each work paper resulted in 6 * 50p in earnings. We had an awesome formula! Our standard card had one artwork, details like name, power level, power ups and ki waves. Each special power came in a smaller card which can be combined with the standard card to get increase the power level of the attack chosen. Yup we had a game plan :D

Next, we brought in our next wave of characters. Characters kids hadn't heard of yet, but seen on their prized Dragonball Z pencil boxes. Yes Frieza, Cell, Trunks from the future, older Gohan, Goten, baby Trunks, Gotenks, Vegetto, Gogeta, Buu, every one! Hot cakes to smoking meteorites. The demand grew so high that we spent most of our weekends and evenings getting the cards ready.

Soon we had packs to make it easier to buy the cards. I don't remember the numbers, but the club was busy almost everyday after school to satisfy its customers. Then we wanted something more challenging, and new.

Candles. Play dough. Figurines. We had a stock of original Dragonball Z character figurines. we thought we'd share them with the world. For a nominal price of course ;). So the three of us, under the water tank built up an assembly line. The "business process" is as below :)

1. Take the dough, make it flat
2. Press the figurine against the dough to get a deep and clean impression
3. When enough impressions were ready, light the candle. Hold it over the dough until enough wax has melted into it. Then let it dry. 
4. Once dried, carefully apprise the wax figurines out of the dough using a compass or divider. Clean as necessary.
5. Ready for sale!

Note: I tried to replace the play dough with real dough(the ones you make roti with). Failed. Real bad. The consistency of the dough was not good enough. Probably not enough water. Plus it starts to get fungus in a few days :(

The figurines gave Rex and YC the biggest ticket to fame. There were kids who couldn't believe such things were possible. They came to me looking to verify what they heard about our "product". Kinda of flaring, but we showed them. Those were good times.

Our operations came to a halt when I had to move in '04. But till then it was one adventure after the other. There were lots of skills acquired, negotiations made, new avenues explored and a whole lot of accidents!

We had a lot of accidents The worst accident I can remember of,
On a work break, we decided to play some basketball. And we broke the water pipe in the terrace. The whole building's water went dripping away. Soon we did build our rep enough to get the terrace permits back. But that was one loong day.

Why Rex? - Ask my co-founder. Why Yellow Cloud? Clouds in yellow color are rare and close to impossible to find. What did we do? We tried to channel our passion and creativity to make some moolah so that we can buy stuff! Financially, our books were bad. We didn't know where the capital had leaked off to. The profits, if any, were hidden behind a veil, so don't know if it existed even.

Looking back, one might feel that sometimes things are bad, other times things are very bad, most of the time things are extremely bad, a little time they are tolerable and a very fractional amount of time things are agreeable. This was about one such agreeable period. I have to thank Sai a million times over, and it still won't be enough.


P.S: The post is full hyperbole and "business", I know ;). Possibly contains many historical inaccuracies, thank you for bearing with that.

Going gaga

Whats this about? No, this is not about Lady Gaga. She is weird. Anyway going gaga, you go gaga, everyone does. About what though? Some about money, beauty, complexity, simplicity, etc. People do that over the silliest of things. But why is that going to interest you? Heck, why would I be interested in it even? You take interest in it only when you are in, what-they-call-it, deep shit. You simply roam around places you wouldn't normally, do stupidest things. And not realize that, in fact, you are making a big dummy of yourself. But most of all, it's going gaga over someone else that tops. For some, money might be everything. For a few, a glance is all that matters. And you start building wonders, ones the world will never see, in the air. Huge monuments that weigh over every ounce of common sense you (might) have. The choices you make with such heavy things floating above your head is anything but intelligent. It would seem THE BEST thing that you could possibly do in the circumstances. But actually, you are just waiting for reasons to jump back into the wonder you built.

Dreams are good. Daydreams - that's a sign of a loose screw up-top, or say they say. Taking-off from reality to your Wonderland with you welcoming yourself at its doorsteps. Sometimes reality is too depressing to live in. Killing time, doing nothing, just let the time float away idly. But anyway going gaga is something everyone would have done, and everyone, well at least most of them, would at one point quit it saying "Enough with this already, I have a life to live" and go into another daydream. Just kidding. It sucks. No point blaming it though, Reality is what it can be, and it is trying very hard to get back in your good books.

Life is a series of daydreams, at the beginning of each there is a placard saying "This is it!". I have already mentioned the end, if at all there is one. Dreams you sleep in them, daydreams you live through them. Going gaga over things is fine because, it never hurts. I could be wrong, you go gaga over the wrong thing when with the wrong people, boy does it hurt. But not directly anyway, so I am right. Take it for granted that once you go gaga, you go goo-goo-ga-ga, nothing adult about that. It will bring out the child in you, who may not be as well-behaved as you "are". A bad end to that fantasy will mostly result in an explosion of that knowledge to many people you may need to be with in the future. That's not comforting, is it? But, nah, who cares. Some people think they are really careful with the choices of what to go gaga on. They could either, be tormenting themselves from within or actually be really smart people. You don't get that sorta people around here often, do we? You get a different kind of smart in real life, the ones with an ass at the end. I am digressing. To go gaga or not go gaga, that is the question. If you want an answer for that, you are looking in the wrong place. Some good things do come out of these gaga-isms. You get to know who you are, what you are made of, etc. kind of stuff. In a way, your passions define who you are. The choices you make are governed by that part of the brain which houses the gaga-isms. If you went gaga over a girl/guy once, it will happen twice. If it happened twice, then it would happen again. (weak ripoff, couldn't help myself ) If you went gaga over a thing, nobody cares, do what you want with it. So if you are gaga about someone or something right now, always good to re-think. And what have you learnt from this post? Nothing again.

P.S: You ask why I say "You" alone all the time? Yeah, fine, fine. We. Happy?

P.P.S: If you thought this "P.S" is just some random afterthought of mine, well.... you are right. ^_^

P.P.P.S: On a serious note, "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.Salinger is a book in which you bring in nothing, you take out nothing.

New turns on the road..

So the long road unwinds with a twist here and a bend there. I thought why not bend it as much as possible. Squeeze the life out of the road before it gets to you and does you in. And so I landed up at a completely new set up. Somewhere secluded, but connected all the same. Things seem a lot more interesting now, lots of x's waiting to fall into place and annotate the road map. The sense of adventure should never die out. It shows what life could be instead of what it is. Then you can follow it, and who knows your "could-be" might become your "is". But as with difficulty, it is going to be so, no comfort zones. When you are thrown into the wild rawness, there is no place for you to hide. Your true colors show up no matter what clothes you wear or how you look. This is rawness. Stripped to the core. You get to know who you are, whether you are who you think you are or maybe you just like the idea of who you could be and used to that. When you pursue something you know, is going to change you, you will feel that every second is a little less than an actual second. Every breath feels like a lot more of air in it. Every thought is amplified with millions of possibility. All culminating at your discovery of self. Consider your mind, you get a few hundred parallel thoughts, each creating sub-thoughts and flows, criss-crossing the neural, all trying to find a solution to the same problem. You can get so many options, that you can afford to keep other solutions for later. These solutions then add to your map where your conquest takes you. In search of internal glory, something that other people can or will never understand, same as you won't understand so many things in this world.

But what's in a road you may ask? Road stands for a link: A link between two places - From: the place where you "were" and To: the place you "will be". The road in such a case becomes you "are". The road is the present, because there will always be a "will be"(pun intended). There are stark revelations to be made at every one of these corners, the road never ends, the road will never get tired. The only thing true about the road is that it will be with you all the way and that will be the only thing you truly can call yours in this world. 

"Co-incidence is Jo-incidence with a 'c'". That's what co-incidence is, a joke. Laugh when you get it, move on if you don't. Paulo Coelho says in his book "The Alchemist" - "When you really want something, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true". May be true ,may not be true. Reading omens is different from waiting for one. It's just a method to understand the situation. That is always needed.

Adventure is always a harbinger of both pain and joy. The road ahead will be difficult, challenging and always taunting that you cannot do it. With the right support from the right people at the right time, truly it would be a complete adventure. Some times bending a road might fragment it, but only to join back at the end. In those times, a lot of self-confidence is going to be helpful, but really I don't have too much of it. I guess I will have to toil through.

It's a feeling of incomparable measure when you first look out into the ocean, trying to find the end of the horizon, trying to get a glimpse at the other side. It's not joy, it's not pain, just pure adventure. That's the feeling when I type this. I have taken this road. Others do ask me "why this", "why not do that", "why not do something from where you are". To them I say, "That's the way my road goes, and I will follow that". There is another poem that has affected me ever since I came to understand it,

"If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, 

broken,And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

 And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'

 Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

"If" by Rudyard Kipling.

More about it in my next post. Bye till then.

P.S: Read aloud the poem to yourself, rather than reading silently. You will note a difference :)