the lantern in the sky.

I was walking back from my best friends' hostel after being unceremoniously kicked out from one of their rooms by the other one cause I have had an exam at 8 but I wanted to watch a movie.
The road was empty and yellow with the halogen lights. I could see my shadow in the centre of the road in front of me and I was walking thinking about how narrow my shoulders seemed. I would have made a good female model if only I had the face...
I looked to the left into the dark empty park as I usually do when I'm walking back alone in the middle of the night. It's something about the dark that gives me peace. And no, this isn't the serial killer in me talking.
I notice a yellow light in the sky. I squint my eyes a little since I'm not wearing my spectacles. I see a red balloon glowing faintly over the yellow flame. It was a sky lantern drifting gently along, carried by the breeze which only the bats in the sky were fortunate enough to feel.
A sky lantern at 3:16am in Pilani, where only zombies and I walk on the streets this late. It seemed odd.
I hurried my pace a little cause some trees were blocking my view of it. I whip out my new phone to try and take a picture of it, but all its 6k ass could show me in the viewfinder was a yellow dot in a perfectly black sky. Not the glowing red hood over the flame and not the flicker in the flame. It couldn't show me the two things that made the sight beautiful.
I am now in the clear and can see the lantern descend more rapidly. It wobbles and I wonder if it will tip over. At this point I am standing in the middle of the road just looking up at the sky. It seems like a better thing to do than trying to capture it in a photograph.
What's the point of a photograph?
It isn't to preserve a moment. Cause the moment includes what you feel - the coolness of the still air, the silence of the place, the faint smile on my face and the sheer innocence of wanting to have that lantern.
A photograph is meant to remind you of a memory and in trying to capture the lantern's flight, I was missing out on the memory itself.
As I watched the flame flicker and the lantern fall somewhere in the park, I noticed myself turning around and walking towards the entrance. I entered the park and looked around for the pack of dogs that generally get territorial when you walk on their turf. They were nowhere to be seen.

Perfect silence.

I walk to the middle of the park, use my cell phone light as I get off the stone paved path onto the barren ground... It was there somewhere. I start looking. I check intermittently to see if someone was watching me walk around with a bag on my back looking curiously at the ground like a little kid. No one.

Relief.

I smell the weird smell of freshly molten wax, the smell you associate with Diwali or of summers in UP where the electricity  never fucking comes. I walk around the area looking for it. For the lantern. I don't even know what I'll do with it when I find it. Well obviously it would satisfy an engineer's curiosity on how a thing like that was flying, but that wasn't why I was looking for it.
I wanted it cause it looked pretty.

I check the time. 3:17am. I'll look for it for another 3 minutes, then I'm done.

Sigh. I smell it, but I can't see it.(It's time like these when you wish you had that cheap ass phone with the torch instead.)

I look up at the sky. I don't know why, maybe hoping there is another lantern in the sky.
I see no lantern, but I do see something else.
The sky is lit up by starts. I can see a whole blanket of black covered in tiny little specks of light. Twinkling light. The trees are all on the periphery of the park and the view is breath taking. (This is definitely a consequence of the rom-com I just saw.)
I look at the star lit sky and suddenly I don't feel like looking for the lantern any more.

Epiphany.

The lantern had served its purpose. (Straight out of The Matrix, I know.)
It was there to make you feel nice, happy, innocent, child-like, curious... It was there, floating across the sky out of bloody no where in the middle of the night, making you think where it had come from and who else was watching it. But the key here is that the lantern was supposed to make you feel all this for a moment.

A moment.

That's it.

Just one moment, maybe two. It wasn't going to make you feel that way tomorrow, an hour later or even after you step out of that park.

That's the thing about little things. They're little. Yet from the second they catch your attention to the time they just disappear into no where, they are your world.

Get it?

Every time we have a chance to be happy for a few moments we waste it trying to make ourselves happy in the future.

A kid plays with his favourite toy without worrying about breaking it, cause he knows (unconsciously) that he'll find something else to play with once this one breaks.
A kid is smarter than us.


Just like that kid and his little brain that isn't really that little.
 

not much to say today.

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knots.

Sometimes you just have that feeling. The weird feeling in your stomach. It's not the sinking feeling and it's not just knots of nervousness or excitement. It's a mix of the two. Maybe it's a new feeling all together, one that I still haven't been able to label.
I have it right now.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Nothing. It's still there.

The weirdest part is, that there is no reason for it.
Okay, that's a lie.
There are more than one reasons for it, but I won't list them all. Mainly because those people whom it concerns read the blog too (at least I hope they do).

Some of the reasons:
My friends aren't here. They'll be back in a few days. Some of them are here but they're busy with something or the other.
I found out last night that I got 1 on 60 in a test. That's 20 less than the average and that's 20 less than what I thought I'd get.
I've just come back to Pilani after a week long stay at home. Home, is something playing on my mind.
Yesterday I got nostalgic and had a long over due heart to heart with old friends. That's playing on my mind too.
There is another reason which I'm not going to talk about.

There are so many reasons. Yet, I'm not convinced that any one of them could cause physical symptoms. But then all of them together causing my stomach to curl makes no sense either. All of them are independent incidents that bear no correlation with one another at all. And none of them create any chaos in my life at all (well other than the 1/60 which holds the potential to wreck my future and see me selling sperm to earn some money, which also wouldn't get me a lot of money as no one would want a kid with a potato for a nose and a brain that gets ones on 60; you get the point).

Let's try drawing analogies here.
Imagine a kid who got a report card that has an F, expects to get back his favourite comic (read Playboy) tomorrow, expects his friends to come and have a party tomorrow, has an exam day after, and his younger brother just told him that he was adopted. Imagine the kid's state of mind. He's going to be a drug dealer. You can see it, can't you?

Let's try another one.
Imagine a teenage girl. Now now, don't get carried away. Imagine the clothes too. Now now, the clothes should be on her and not on the floor. Better.
So imagine a teenage girl WITH her clothes on. She was told her jaw line is too strong, she expects to get a new designer bag tomorrow, has been invited to a cooler set of people's party tomorrow, has her beauty pageant try outs day after, and her mom just told her that she'll bloom only at 19 cause that's how it runs in the family (Guys, I really spoiled her for you now, didn't I?)

Anyhow, I guess you have an idea. There are things to look forward to, there are things to dread and there is a lot to be done to not have to dread those things you have assumed you will have to dread anyway.

There is the fear of rejection, of failure, of the unknown. There is the happiness of... well happiness. And there is the general anxiety cause you think too much.

I guess it's just hormones. Oh wait, I'm not a girl... I guess it's just the shit that fucks things up in the bitch that's life. Oh wait, I'm not 15 any more either. Damn!

I guess it's just a lot of nothings given too much importance cause nothing really happens around me.

Yeah, I guess that's it.

The knots are still there by the way. But I must stop my ramblings cause I have to bathe, shave, clean my room, study, watch a movie, study some more and...


stop writing.

we got played.

What I have come to learn with my little experience of the world which is actually, 'my entire lifetime', is that 'the future' is just a big marketing strategy. It's a ploy to make us work.

When we were tiny little kids, we were told to study so that we can get a toffee or so that we can go out to play. So we studied that day so that we may wonder, "Melody itni chocolaty kyun hai?" and life was good.

When we grew a little older, we were told to study so that we may do well in our exams. If we did well in our exams we would get a new bicycle. So we studied the whole year and some of us actually got a new bicycle. Those who didn't knew that even though they didn't the bike, they couldn't let their grades fall, cause if that happened, some privilege would be taken away, and we continued to study. Then one day, when your bike was too small for you, you got a new bigger cycle and were told that this was the cycle you were promised, and even though it was a couple of years late, you were more than happy to accept it.

In senior secondary school, you were told that if you study, you'd get into a good college and some new liberties would be given to you. But by then we had learnt that all these 'rewards' that we had been getting for studying were bound to come our way as life went on and were not things you had earned by studying.

So, some of us chose to study, while some didn't. The case is the same in college.

How was a future a marketing ploy then?

What people in marketing do is that they launch a product with an irresistible offer like buy one get three free or something of that sort. In our cases, the toffee.

We use their product a few times thanks to their scheme, by then we get used to the product, or we reject it. But no kid can reject a toffee, so we get used to it.

What the marketing people do next is that they gradually withdraw the offer and offer schemes just like their competitors, but they now have some of the market captured. In our cases, the toffee was given as an incentive only on those days where we absolutely refused to study, on most days we would cause we had realized that other than being boring, studying wasn't really that bad.

The main principle behind marketing is to convince people that they would be happy to have a certain product. They might not need it, all you have to do is make them believe they would be happy to possess it. Everyone needs to be happy, so the customer believes that he needs the product. The money he has to spend for it is the only consideration. In our cases, it was time and in some cases popularity in social groups that would have to be sacrificed to study and excel in academics. There was something else - joy.

Some of us got fooled (myself included), that if we keep spending our time and energy into studying, we would get some product that would make us very happy. Unlike buying a product, in which case the product is delivered to you in your hands and you feel satisfaction or joy immediately, our product never quiet gets delivered.

We have worked to get into whatever college we are in, looking to be happy. We are now working to land a job, hoping that it will lead to joy.

We will work hard in our jobs hoping for more money, which would bring happiness.

We would continue to work and work and work till we get that happiness.

One day, we will die hoping to find it in heaven.

What I have come to realize is that now I know the marketing strategy. I am not going to invest forever, waiting for a product that will never be delivered. I will just invest enough to get a decent house, a decent car, a decent wife and enough money to raise a decent family. Other than that, I will do things which bring me joy right now cause there is no bank account that is keeping track of the amount of happiness you deserve. There is just one in your head that keeps track of how much you have received. And I'm gonna make sure that the counter on that account is always ticking.


NOTE: This post started out as a comment to my friend's post (Dreams. Future; near and far) but became a full fledged post.

judgement.

Judgement: The final conclusion in the court of law after examining all available evidence and considering all testimony.

Testimony: A form of evidence that is obtained from a witness who makes a solemn statement or declaration of fact.

Fact: Verified information about past or present circumstances or events which are presented as objective reality.

Circumstance: The existing conditions or state of affairs surrounding and affecting an event.

The problem with all these terms, as you may have noticed, is that they are used in each others' definitions. That means all of them are inter-related. And this also means that if you mess with one of them, you mess with them all. Mess with circumstances and the error finds its way to the top.

Sometimes in life, you can't give the complete testimony to the jury to clear your own name. Because that testimony would require the details of the circumstances around you at the time in question, so you mess with the facts. You don't fuck them over entirely, you just condense them to protect someone (not yourself, but someone). In doing so, you add your perspective and that changes objective reality into perceived reality and that changes judgement.

And when your friends start judging you after the chain of events just explained, things start to go wrong in your head.

It is especially tragic when you live your life on the very simple principle of "I don't give a fuck about what he thinks, cause he doesn't know me."
When the people who you do know, and who know you start judging you, some shit goes down.
You start to wonder whether you are what you think you are, or if you're just trying to fool yourself, as you have fooled the others, into believing you are a genuine kid.

And hey, what if you've actually changed? Consider that. What if you are losing your innocence over time and are actually becoming a shrewd, thick skinned, UP gunda-type motherfucker who knows only three emotions: greed, anger and lust.
You always thought you had it in you. It was just a matter of how well you could suppress it. What if you can't anymore? What if that beast is out and on the prowl for new prey. What then? What do you do? It's not like you can hit Ctrl+Z and everything goes back to normal. I guess you write about it on a blog that you maintain to make yourself feel important and which you use like your very public confessional box.

Maybe what you do is forget about it. Maybe you just become what you always knew was the best way to be; you become comfortably numb.

cowboys, space.

Yesterday I was watching Brokeback Mountain. It's one of those movies you keep for a time when you can watch it all at once, without any interruptions. Sadly, all the movies I watch are of that kind, hence I haven't been able to watch as many as I'd like.
Anyway, I was watching the movie. You know, the one with the gay cowboys, yeah, that one. And what caught my attention, other than the gay cowboys, was the skyline and the tranquility of the place where all the 'action' took place (the silence being broken occasionally by the squeals of the cowboy on all fours. This role was being played alternatively by the 'corrupted' Prince of Persia and a coke snorting, face painting clown).
Watching the movie, I felt a lump rising in my throat, (one reason was that the most masculine form of man, the cowboy, was going at it with another cowboy. A cowboy for Pete's sake!), the hustle bustle of everyday life had left too many emotions to dead with in a hostel room, I wanted some isolation. Some peace. A river, mountains around me, not a soul in sight. I want that.
I'm one of those people who needs his own space from time to time. If I don't get that space for a year, I would crack. In spite of all the space they had, I wonder at made those cowboys need someone's crack.
They both had hot wives, the Prince of Persia obviously had the hotter, sluttier wife, while Mr. I Snort Too Much Coke had a nice country girl in a small room. The problem was that they got these wives of theirs after their workouts on the mountain. I guess we all need some practice before we can do it right. Maybe the cowboys were just trying to get some practice. Yeah, it's that for sure. Cowboys aren't gay, are they mommy?
This is too much for me to process, I need some space. Some air. Funny I can't find anywhere to go in a bloody dessert.
Whatever it is, cowboys aren't gay. If they are, the only symbol of manliness had been corrupted. At least I have Toy Story. Oh wait,Woody's a cowboy and Buzz Lightyear is a... what did they call him? Astronaut - na, space warrior -na, space hero - na, I guess it was... space-cowboy.

No.

Nooo!

the good boy.

Outsiders' inside:
The good boy. The mama's boy. The boy who does things right. The nice guy. The decent fellow, who was raised right. The apple of the eye.

Insider's inside:
A compulsion. A need to do right. The need to be the light in someone's dawn; to be the cotton candy in a fair on fire; to be the meth in a junkie's drawer; to be the right in all that wrong.

Outsiders' need:

Something to look at and feel hopeful. Someone to talk to and feel nice. Something to remind them of morality and make them think it's okay to be bad, there is some good in the world to take care of the rest.

Insider's need:

To do wrong. To be mean. To be an ass-hole. To be the motherfucking jackass he tries to despise. To be the one who doesn't give a shit about anything. The guy who wants to bang a redhead and go break something in the parking lot.

Outsiders' and insider's reality:
I'm working on it.