Procrastination, Writers Block and some Californication

I have written atleast half a dozen blog posts over the past 12 months and sadly none of them made past the draft stage/ “blog probable” folder on my laptop. And so my blog lays neglected ever since. I myself can not fathom to explain why I sat down to write something, gave a lot of thought over it and then simply abondoned it for lack of inspiration. Being the most lazy ass'ed person who accepts the fact in his own blog- too long have I blamed it on writer's block. Too long. I have always realised it time and again. You are the master of your own destiny, no one else makes you, nothing else matters. If I want to write something which I want to see getting published, I bloody have to keep writing till it actually gets so. Someday. Sometime.

I also began writing a short story for the first time ever- which has also stayed neglected for almost a year. More on that later.

So, here goes the piece which I began writing a year ago, and posting here without any edits. I am my biggest critique- and a very harsh one at that. I abandoned this post as I didnt like it without realising that this is the perfect way I would have liked it.

What actually inspired me to write this blog post is that Californication ended- for the uninitiated, it is a TV series. I have watched several TV shows from beginning to end. Some of the best and most thought provoking(in your face) being House MD, and Hannibal. But none of them enthralled me as much as Californication did.

Talking to a friend of mine about the show, and here's what she said, “Hank Moody is a commitment phobe, a drunken fool who thinks that he is above all, and fucks pretty much everything that moves.” I find that this is pretty much the common idea that most people have about the show. I concur that the theme is mainly sex, drug abuse, and rock n roll, but what most people miss out on is that all these are not central to the character. The central theme is love- always. Hank Moody has his faults, he is selfish, and an addict(well, almost), but he also is a romantic- a hopeless one for that matter.

The character of Hank Moody with constant references to (and inspiration from) Charles Bukowski, is that of a novelist/writer who made it big in Hollywood. He has the perfect girlfriend Karen, with whom in his own words he “lives in sin” and has a daughter Becca. The success and the pressure(read fame) which came with the job, somehow went to his head and takes a toll at his relationship with Karen.

It's not like Hank stopped loving Karen. But somehow, love got lost on the way. This is something which makes Hank realise that he did truly love Karen and keeps returning back to her. I found Karen amazing, she is portrayed as someone who plays this beautiful bohemian chick yet with a sense of responsibility and maturity which is inexplicable. The only character flaw I could possibly find is how she could always forgive Hank given his chronic fuck-up history with her.

The hedonistic lifestyle of Hank is what adds glamour to the show. “Bitch, thy name is temptation” is a filler for most of the plot. Temptation presents itself to Hank -far too often it seems, and tempts him, teases him till he actually strays off the beaten path. After having led him astray, it then comes back to bite him in the ass. He has no sense of grandeur about himself. He knows what he is, and loathes himself for being himself- something he admits to Karen way too often, sometimes even as an excuse.

I am here trying to convey- a mix of emotions trying to use as few words as possible, for there are too few that I can find. I empathise with the character, that is of course obvious if not already.

There might be several scenes which may be described as best in the show, but personally the one I really liked was the one where Hank blew a million dollar paycheck on an engagement ring, carrying it for months on end like a talisman waiting for the one perfect moment when everything just feels right, and then after a much predicted fight with Karen one day giving it away to a homeless person out of sadness.

Living Life: The Way of the Dunedain

 

People often remark that life is short. Be happy, stay focused. What these people will oft also reflect is that to do some things, they also had leave out some others which they had absolutely loved. For instance, giving up on some hobby like reading, travelling, playing a musical instrument, learning a new language. They often lament that how despite achieving a significant amount of success in terms of money, fame and even love. They had to give up on some things. Why?

There wasn’t enough time.

Last night I had an epiphany. I wished I were a Dunedain. Why?

Because they were tall, with dark hair, pale skin and grey eyes and benefited from longer life-spans (three times the life of a regular man) than ordinary men and could retain their youth until the very end of their days.


Fuck!

Thrice the lifespan and young till the very end! That is not just amazing, that is THE

DREAM!


In case, you still don't get the reference. The Dunedain- the Men of the West, were an ancient race in the Middle Earth who descended from the Numenoreans. All hail Tolkien! I love Lord of the Rings.

Currently, I

• Have books on my reading list, which if I were to read one book a day, may take me around 3 years to finish. And that is just reading them, thinking and talking about them will take an entire lifetime (a normal man’s lifetime, not the royally descended one as that of a Dunedain).

• I have enough music on my playlist that if I were to listen continuously to it 24x7, the playlist runs into years. With so many artist and their music still not discovered, imagine.

• Want to learn Spanish, and maybe French.

• Have projects/ideas which need time to implement and all my focus and energy.

• Maybe want to learn to play the piano or violin.

I want to do it all. I abso-fucking-lutely want to do it all. On top of this, I also want to enjoy doing it all. Sharing it with my friends, family and all the people I love.

Why we are as people limited by just one lifetime’s worth? We can only read as much, listen as much, and share as much.

Why?

The prospect of me thinking about all these things makes me excitingly happy and sad at the same time. Happy because these are the things I love. Sad, for obvious reasons and time being the limiting factor that I would have to give up most of these things.

My one and only wish is that whatever happens- whether I get to do it all or not. I just don’t want to have regrets. They say when you are on your deathbed, your life flashes in front of your eyes, I don’t believe it.

But, just in case.

If it happens, I want a brightly coloured neon sign which says, “NO REGRETS”.

It's your fucking fault

Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft Technologies. Yes, this is big news for him. Fuck! This is the definition for big.

Yes. For HIM.

Not for me, not for you, and certainly not for India.

Simply, because he is a person of Indian origin, yes that is how they refer to themselves these days. He is just that, he is not Indian. He is as much Indian, as Miley Cyrus is.

Let’s talk more about what he is not.

He is not an IITian, which means he didn’t enter the great Indian circus of- get into IIT, get placed big, make your life. He didn’t. He did get placed, and made his life big though.

To come to think of it, if even eight years back when I was preparing to be a rat, if somebody had told me about this guy, I would have laughed him off. His own parents might have been disappointed when he went to the private MIT of India, where I still wouldn’t go, because it’s Tier 3.

Who’s having the last laugh now? Not me.

So, why the sudden rant on this guy, for whom I don’t exist? (And an inconsequential non-existence for good reason as well)

Because he reminds me, of what each of us can be. What we miss out while we bum and wait for things to happen.

As I write this blog post. I am currently listening to some of the best modern music on Pandora, by using Tor proxy network, while I reside in Delhi- the heart of India. Only in India you will find that people will proudly proclaim Delhi being the heart of India. Apparently, we proclaim pride that our so-called heart is biased to the right and not correctly placed to the left. But, it feels right, so I guess it’s okay to put up stupid metaphors which don’t even make a geographically correct statement.

But I digress. Let me return. Pandora is restricted when it comes to India. You can’t subscribe to this super awesome service which allows you to listen to music for free. You have to try it to believe me. But you can’t. Because you will have to hack, you will have to do things which might seem more complicated than simply typing Pandora.com in your browser window. Why do we have such an insane amount of bozos running this country like Rahul Gandhi who is now in his middle ages, still not married, and who can’t do anything without his mother censoring him.

Our system. Anything. Be it politics, educational institutes. Everything. Everything has been designed to keep people out. It’s an exclusive system, and not an inclusive system. It’s easier to get into Harvard or any ivy league insti than getting into an IIT. It’s even more difficult to get your kid into nursery school than it is getting into an IIT.

Every year, year after year of bullshit. We hear the same story. Things don’t change. They never will. People have to change.

And if you want to change. If you wish to make a change. Fuck the people. They will be there when you make it big, they will also be the ones who pull you down, and they will also be the ones who will bury you deep in shit when you fail.

Who would have thought about some guy born somewhere in India, going to college somewhere in India (because it’s not a place if it’s not IIT) making it so big that the world has to stop because and take a look.

You did it man. You made it! Congratulations!

This is my cue to shut down my laptop and go to sleep.

Science is one tough lady for a person to love. She is not only difficult, but treacherous- She will leave you when you need her the most. However, for most part, She is fun to be with. Eager to lead you on an adventure if and when you discover her. The affair for itself is oddly amusing- open for the world to know, and extremely secretive where only You and your Lady know the intricate details. More people have died loving her, than lovers in a conventional romantic relationship. They have fixated and spent maybe an entirety of a lifetime exploring just a single part of her. So much so for foreplay.

While at times frustratingly quiet, for it speaks without words. The universality of it transcends our life in perhaps every possible way.

Einstein once said that that the biggest mystery and perhaps the funniest thing about that mystery is that we are trying to figure out something of what we ourselves are a part of. It’s quite a simple an observation. Delving into the depths of it, it is maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever come across. Literally.

I am not a morning person, unless I have some business or lectures to attend to in the morning. I find mornings very unproductive. Everyone is busy with their lives. Going to jobs they do not love, working for people they do not like, speaking what they do not believe in, talking what is certainly not what they are thinking of.

Nights on the other hand, are quiet. Calm. Serene. Listening to violin, cello, piano or any piece of classical music, away from home, alone, taking in the cool wind is oddly overwhelming.

It has been about three months since I last updated. I scribbled- typed basically a lot of random notes and stuff. None of it makes sense. Why does it have to? Why does it always have to make sense? Why can’t we embrace the chaos? Maybe the biggest problem is that we try to make sense of chaos. That is the problem.

The problem is not chaos, but the way we look at it. In mathematics, either it’s a linear system or a non-linear system. Why the binary? Why not accept something for what it is rather than for what we are trying to project it as?

What is life’s greatest mystery that we are yet to uncover?

I was watching Person of Interest, a TV series that I never heard of and a friend suggested it quite recently. A character Mr Finch says, “I am hiding in plain sight Mr Reese, I am there for all to see, only nobody notices me”.

What secrets of the Universe lay hidden in plain sight? What is most apparent, yet no one has uncovered it? Is it still there, or has it been lost over centuries of squabbling over the trivial, or our own selfish need have made us so blind to what has been the obvious?

Run away. Ran far. Run till you can breathe no more, feel your legs will fall off. Run till there’s a searing pain in your stomach. Run till you can think of nothing else. Your mind is blank. That.

Just that.

A Visit to the Doctor!

People often recall their first dentist appointments of their childhood with quite a fondness. So do I. It was quite a harrying experience, well not for me but for the attending dentist and his staff, and his patients and my mother. I write it so because it so happened this way.

And so I recall my story.

One fine sunny morning, I wake up and was brushing my teeth, as all good kids and adults do every day. And I notice that my incisors which had still not fallen, the permanent ones were beginning to grow over the old ones. I found it quite funny as now I would have a double set of incisors, an anomaly which at the moment was quite hilarious to me.

Laughing all the way, I tell my Dad about it. And his expressions I imagine because I can’t remember must have changed from curious to serious. As it still does every time he examines me. Doctors have this funny habit. But yeah, so cometh my mother next and she too had her time putting me under her scanner.

It was decided that the very same day, we would go over to the dentist and get the deed done. Now my milky incisors didn’t have any intention to come out just because they were of inconvenience and they had to be pulled out. My mother to some extent and my dear sister in every possible way tried to tell me that it was going to be painful. I somehow managed to not listen to everything that was being said, and I was quite forward looking to what the dentist really looked like. As such till that time I had never visited any other doctor. For all the world, doctor still equals “my dad”.

The clinic had a weird smell, I didn’t like it. But there were quite an awful lot of magazines lying on the table in the waiting area- Reader’s Digest, India Today, M. Oh yes! I still remember, I think at that age it was all about looking up the illustrations but it still felt good. The names were quite familiar, especially Reader’s Digest. I had quite a time for the next 20 minutes sifting through them. My mother I believe was nervously looking at my prelude to such a visit.

Our turn came. The doctor greeted us both warmly; it’s again quite amusing how every doctor knows every other doctor in the area. Engineers for instance have a penchant for living in an ignorant bliss. So I sat down in his large comfy chair. And he peered down my mouth with his weird looking strap-on his head. I still don’t know what they call that. But it was interesting all the same.

Now this is where from where onwards, things start going down the road where in I didn’t feel comfortable. The doctor took my mother aside and planned some conspiracy. He called his assistant, well one was already there. And prepared a syringe which was really bigger than any other I had seen. Even at that age I was familiar having quite used to being around them, that is when I was not at the receiving end.

So now the dentist wants me to open my mouth again and I see from the corner of my eyes the syringe coming closer. Bang! The mouth shuts like trap. I had had enough of the amusement and wanted out. I knew that syringes hurt. They used to hurt a lot when it was my backside and the mouth wasn’t going to “not hurt at all” as the doctor promised. I had seen enough. Now I don’t exactly remember how he prised my mouth open but my mother still recalls that it took his 3 assistants, the doctor himself and my mother included to hold me long enough for the doctor to give me a local anaesthesia and pull out my teeth at the same time. And imagine if you can, I created such a ruckus that some of the patients who were in the waiting area were actually kind of curious to the events unfolding inside as one or two of them were trying to look through the semi-transparent glass wall that separated the two cabins! My mother still recalls how the doctor had broken into a terrible sweat!

Now having the deed done and my mouth feeling numb, I was quite not myself as the anaesthesia and the screaming had me feeling tired and sleepy. My mother promised me ice cream, and that is the last I remember of that visit.

Years later, when I visit the same dentist again for getting a cavity filled. The first thing that he asks me is whether I would be screaming again!

The Missing Puzzle Piece

You often aspire for a lot of things-not necessarily materialistic; love, friendship, relationships. It’s like a constant search hardwired in your DNA. Everything and anything that you see around, things that appear to be perfect, things that are almost perfect, except for that one missing piece which fits into the symmetry of nature. You would admire it, maybe even acquire it, settling on a compromise, hoping that with time you’ll learn to do deal with it and the almost perfect will transcend into the perfect. But a little ways down the road, you’ll realise, that the missing piece of the puzzle was not missing, but it never was there, and is something that cannot be done without. For the puzzle is still incomplete, and there’s no fun in that. For all that is there to admire, but for that void, the nothingness, that empty space, is all that you’ll ever see and yearn to fill. Every now and then, maybe you would look at the puzzle, distracted by the sense of beauty that allured you once, you’ld be happy enough so much as to forget about the void. But the negative force generated by that void, is sufficiently great enough to overcome that happiness eventually ^[1]. The love, the happiness will eventually descend into the nothingness. And the puzzle will crumble into a million pieces eventually.

You’ll feel angry, and sad that it had to happen this way, but maybe someday maybe you’ll remember it with no regrets, and only the happen moments will flash before your eyes, and that it was fun. Life is oddly ironical this way.

I often surmise these thoughts with this quote from one my favourite books, Gone with the Wind:

 

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken--and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."

 

   

 

[1] This a practical physics result and has been verified experimentally. For any body which is perfectly symmetrical such as a hollow sphere, the integral force exerted at the centre by that missing piece is equal to the force exerted by the remaining body. It’s amazing how much physics actually holds true to aspects of life which otherwise can’t be quantified due to the absolute vagueness of idea.

 

Sunday!

Sunday is the best day in the week. Whoever created the days of the week was a total moron. Clearly, he lacked a foresight that some people would like to have more of “Friday” and “Sunday”. My Sunday’s are the most lazy-assed of the days. I hate working on Sunday- be it assignments or studying for tests. Whatever needs to be done, it shouldn’t be done on Sunday.

My Sunday begins with my morning newspaper which often leads me to think of the Origin of Life and Universe. If some people are to be believed then, ‘God created this World in six days and on the seventh he rested’. It further adds to my argument for not working on Sunday. I usually disagree with those people most times, but I guess they would be happy to know that on this occasion my thoughts are in sync, even if partially- though for my own practical selfish purpose.

Now this train of thoughts- makes me wonder, ‘What did God do on Sunday?’ Play golf with the Devil on some neutral cloud turf? Go out and take a stroll on water? Go on a long fly-by (I believe God wouldn’t care for cars) or simply catch-up on some zzzz’s?

Life in the Promised Land.

To come to think of it- am not sure about the existence of internet and other tech stuff, no malls- which means no bowling, or pooling. No movies, pizza. Beer would be a definite no. You can’t use money to buy things (money is substituted by goodness points) - you have to be goody-goody, which means no sarcasm either. Rise up early, go to bed early. Do all the chores, and you still have to be in line to get your licence to the  promised  “wings and the golden halo”. So till you get those wings- it means you can’t fly, assuming that apparition came later down the line of transport hierarchy. Plus, since you are an angel- you can’t click your fingers to grant yourself those wishes you always had. Why? Because it would a gross misuse of your power, and you lose out on your goodness points.

And after all this hard work- you wonder why you worked hard all your miserable life to be here, to be even more miserable.

So much so for a thought on a lazy Sunday.

Yeah, this is why I want to retire in Cuba or Hawaii.

 

PS: I have no idea about what I wrote above, and this is just 10 minutes past 12 midnight on a Sunday.  Yeah, Sunday is here!

Random Musings

 

My mind is actively churning thoughts and processing 24. So much so it gets irritating at times. I can’t just sleep when I want to- I have to be totally exhausted. There’s a train of random thoughts always. It becomes difficult to focus on just one thing at hand.

Randomly. My 3 favourite Dev Anand movie songs.



 

1)      Ye dil ha hota bechara

 

2)      Pal bhar ke liye

 

 

 

3)      Maana janaab ne pukara nahi