What Happens When You Walk on Clouds

If there was some sort of a system of giving certain titles to the years of your life, I’d title my 26^th year as the Year of Awakening. It’s also because I began 26 in a not-so-sober-state. Post the drunken stupor everything is a rude shock.

A piece of advice before I elaborate the Awakening:

I know getting drunk on your birthday is really cool and all, but then it really isn’t. The person who got you into this world had to bear a lot of pain to push you out. She did not have the option of taking a tequila shot. She brought you in sober, and the doctor gave you one hard smack to make sure you were also sober. So being sober on the day you were born is a natural choice. Stick to it and you won’t have life smacking you back to sobriety. That’s the end of my advice.

When I think of my 26^th year so far, I see a caricatured version of myself with a crooked tiara on her head. Her eyes are shut because she is smiling ear to ear and she is walking on clouds. Below these clouds are people looking at her, clapping, holding their stomachs and laughing. They don’t see the clouds, they just see me with my eyes shut, smiling and walking on what I think are clouds. When I woke up I saw the same.

It’s tragic and comic. I woke up when the clouds decided that I was to heavy to walk on them. They didn’t tell me that they were going to give-away just like that. They did, and I fell with a thud on the marble floor of my house. That was the first why in the string of whys I have been asking since then.

"Why did the clouds give away, they could have told me I, I would have moved?" 

The now awakened part of me said, “Sweetheart, there were no clouds. You were high on something, it was this very marble floor maybe you got confused with the colours.”

"Why were all those people laughing at me? I knew some of them, they could have told me that I was not walking on clouds."

Awakened me said, “Honey, it’s rare to find an idiot who thinks she is walking on clouds. Everyone likes a good laugh, so they built more clouds for you and laughed even harder.”

“No one’s ever going to tell you the truth. They should, but they won’t, it’s for you to figure out. And you will once you fall flat on the marble floor. What you figure out is always going to be wrong according to someone else. You’ll be told that you were walking with your eyes shut. And that’s not entirely inaccurate. But now that your eyes are not shut anymore you can stop serving yourself up as entertainment to others.”

That was enough of a lecture to put an awake person to sleep, but it worked the other way round for me. So Awakened me and groggy me got together, we sighed and said the last ‘why’.

"Why me?" 

We could spend the rest of the 26^th year looking for an answer to this question. Or just say, F*** this S*** and figure out a way of building more reliable clouds to walk on. For starters, let’s lose some weight.

Awakened me nods, and votes for option two. So do aye!

  

The Magic of Ink

It was red and teal. My first ink-pen. Then it was the first step to growing up. Pencils were for kids. Twelve years later it’s not very different.

I had a terrible hand-writing, so my teacher in Class IV would not let me use an ink-pen. The rest of my class, however had made the transition.

But the inevitable happened, I was in Class V and everyone has to write with a pen in class V. I spent hours at the local stationery shop, looking for my first ink-pen. The Chinese nib ones, were not good. Our teacher was particularly critical of them, so they were a big no. Parker or Pierre Cardin were not for beginners, Mont Blanc was out of question.

So I settled for a red and teal ink-pen with a silver nib. The ink-tank in that pen had an injection mechanism. This made my very ordinary pen, very cool.

Thus began my affair with ink-pens. My hand-writing was still not very good. But I believed that a good pen would make a big difference. So I spent a lot of time at the stationery store, trying out different pens.

Then on a certain birthday my father gave me the most beautiful ink-pen ever. It was black with golden rims. It made paper feel like silk. It made my untidy hand-writing legible.

We were perfect together. It set in my palms, like it was made to be there. Writing with it was a pleasure. Exams, class notes, homework as long as there was something to write. 

I’d start all my exams with that pen. With it I managed to clear most of my tests with decent grades. It was good, it could not have been better than this. I had found my magic.

I was writing my final exams for Class VIII. As always, I had my beautiful pen with me and we started out on yet another examination journey together.

English language and literature papers were always very satisfying. After once such paper, I told the girl who sat in front of me about my beautiful pen. About how well it wrote and how good we were together. That the colour and the model of this pen was not easily available in the market now. I was very-very proud.

Then, before our next paper, my pen was gone. It was very disturbing. I had just kept it in my box, where could it go?  I bought another colour of the same model. It was horrible. It looked the same, but it wrote like dried wood.

Before our last paper, the girl who sat in front of showed the new ink-pen she had bought recently to me. It was black with golden rims. She said it wrote beautifully. I knew it did.

I shed a few tears before going the bed. I cursed the day, I told her about my pen. I cursed her for taking it away for me.

After that, I did not write with an ink-pen again. My pen was gone. It was with someone who did not even value it. It was over.

I moved on to gel pens. They were new and cool. I collected loads of them in different colours. I had my favourities there too. Then I fell further and moved to cheap disposable ball-point pens. Now, it’s mostly the keyboard.

After almost 12 years, I thought of going back to the ink-pen. I went to the staitonery shop and asked for one. They looked at me like I had asked for a dinosaur egg. They threw the Chinese nib ones at me, and I said no, instantly. Then the owner walked in and pulled out some old, dusty boxes.

I automatically went for the black pen with golden rims. It was not the same. So I settled for a simple grey pen.

When I wrote my first sentence, my hands quivered like they did when I was in Class V. I am re-learing and re-writing. It‘s like I am writing for the first time. The feeling has not concrete definition.

It’s like meeting a long-lost friend. Or meeting someone you liked after many-many years and realising that you never stopped liking them. Then you wonder, why did you ever give up on them, if you liked them so much in the first place?

I don’t know how it works with people, but I know that I can hope to find my magic again. I have found my long-lost friend. I have found the one I always liked, and I am not going to stop till we fall in love with each other. Together we will weave beautiful stories. We’ll create worlds beyond and our dreams.

….and this time I am not telling anyone about us.

Ageless

Ten years ago, we were the same.

We had no clue about the worldly game.

We giggled at the wrong time,

and played the same tricks again.

The numbers grew every year in those ten.

With them we learnt a few things.

But when we met, we did the same things.

Giggled at the wrong time,

and played the same tricks all over again.

Oh! Such a Big Mistake!

Correction as a profession is a bad deal. Imagine always having to correct people. No one likes being corrected. In our minds we are always right. Everything we do is correct.

So when someone sets out to correct all these correct people they are bound to question the correctness of the person correcting them. Which also means that the person correcting them cannot be incorrect, because if the corrector is incorrect then her/his corrections will not always be considered correct.

If you are bored of this blog post already, then try counting the the number of 'corrects' in the last two paragraphs. You don't have to tell me the answer, keep it in your head.

It is inhuman not to mistakes. Perfection is not a human trait. It is best left to vampires. Even God or whoever it is that makes things function is not perfect. If they were, they would not have let evolution progress beyond apes. Guess that entity had a laboratory mis-adventure and there came human beings. Now imagine if that entity had done everything correctly. Humans would never have happened.

Mistakes are nice. Some can be terrible but as long as you can look back at them and laugh, they are tolerable. There are some which might make you cringe in embarrassment and some which you hope know one knows about.

Mistakes make for interesting story. Things become exciting when you goof-up, when you go outside the circuit and do something wrong. You do something least expected. You make a mistake. At that point it kills you but then later you have a something to remember. Mistakes can actually make you famous!

What else, let's see... Are mistakes unique? Well if we classify them, then there are some which are stereotypical, like dating the wrong girl/guy, ordering bad food, buying something wrong, stepping on a banana peal, crashing a car. Most of these are made over and over again. Making them a habit might not be a good idea, but one should commit at least all of these once.

Then there are the unique ones, which only you can make. Perhaps no one wants the unique ones to be shared. If they come out in the open, they won't be unique anymore.

Some mistakes however can kill you. Those also make for interesting stories, but the person who made them can never narrate that story. It's always another person's version and it's not always true.

As I write this, I am trying to make a mental note of all the mistakes am yet to make. The list is quite long and am scared my brain might not be able to hold on to it for too long. The cops will have me on their wanted list soon. I am all set to make a lot of mistakes. You'll know. I will be famous soon.

REVIVED FROM THE TRASH CAN

I was going through the list of my unpublished posts and found this really short one. Guess I wrote it when I was fed up with my previous job. Here it goes:

To quit or not to quit is the question. I know Shakespeare just turned 360 degrees in his grave. But then its time we contemporise him a little, or rather remix him.

Coming back to the question.

Why is it so difficult to just leave it?

To stop and then start again.

To act like we are playing a game.

Pause and then choose to restart.

A new day, a new life and a new game.

OFFENSIVE

Once every month I hate being a woman! The anticipation and the pain kills me. It reminds me there is something happening in this body and can be only stopped briefly if I make use of it. Or I just have to wait and get older and older till its gone forever.

This, one of the very woman things is responsible for a lot of stuff imposed on us. So woman can't do hard work because for a few days every month they bleed like pigs (am not sure if pigs bleed a lot I could not think of another animal). They cannot be good at sports because movement could be troublesome during those days.

They should be confined to their homes and locked in isolation because they are impure, probably toxic. And they better not enter any of the sacred religious places because God or whoever that thing is does not like impurity.

Well if ovulating makes us impure once a month then men should be kept in isolation all their life! Aren't those things they have always in great numbers throughout the year and throughout their freaking life!. Even vampire males seem to have a good stock of it. They don't bleed because of it but the sight of a bosom makes it rush.

And since when did God or whoever it is start turning up his nose to impurity? Well She/he created it so they better deal with it.

Then comes the hard work and being weak bit. Guys, try shoving out a live human from your body and then talk about your strength. Even when that live thing is in our body we work more than you do.


You complain about women getting preference when it comes to the job market, or getting a house? Do a double check and see all the preferential treatment you get away with by just having a lifeless thing hanging between your legs. Something you are super proud of.

But hey guys you need a woman to get that thing working (unless you are gay)!

Cut!

Sometimes I imagine my life to be a never ending film. While I sit and write, there is a cut to something that is happening in my life. I can't see it but someone can.

I'm curious now. But hey! I have been cut off. There is no way of finding out. There is no script. At least I don't have it.

POINTLESS

Crazy is not really the correct word. But then thats exactly what the past few weeks have been. But there is a difference between a good crazy and a bad crazy. Fortunately for once its been good crazy for me.

If I want I can write a novel of a post here. Paint a beautiful picture of the places I visited, the wonders of nature I saw and conversations I had with myself. I guess that explains a lot.

Talking about a novel, I have to complete my unfinished one. Its going to be an year since I started writing it. Well that way a lot of things are going to reach the one year mark except my age which is doubling in double figures in a weeks time.

Thinking back in time is an amazing experience. When I take myself a year back I see an unemployed girl having a time of her life in a deserted hill of a campus with other unemployed people. ODing on romantic comedies and mooning, looning and drooling all over Hugh Jackman and Hugh Grant (whats with these Hughs, are you sure the pronunciation is not HOT in some other language?). Unfortunately the Vampires had not entered my life then.

Wow! that was just a year back? really? It suddenly seems like I have not had the time of my life for ages now.

A STUPID BLOG POST

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

Yeah! I know I am getting cooler now. Quoting songs, that to English ones and famous ones.
The song sort of just sums up a lot we do every day. It can't get more obvious than this one.

It occurred to me that perhaps I saw one tiny bit of my life coming to a circle. As usual I am not to sure if the circle is complete. As usual I will need some help from the wise ones to figure this out.

So 20 years ago I had my first peek into celebrity world and since then I never really looked out of it. The whole array of good looking men saying and doing all the right things. Living a life which suddenly became the type of life that was the most ideal.

To add to the all the beautiful fantasies were those absolutely beautiful books. These books are even cooler. They let you decide how the hero looks. So books and movies dominate my life.

20 years on nothing changes.

However, the sad part is that most of these great looking actors were born almost over a decade before I was. Very sad. It always breaks my heart. But then I say to myself so what! and continue my romance with men behind the screen.

After almost 2 decades I have come across a book which just leaves me asking for more. I am exposed to the world of Vampires and I read about the most beautiful one! Wow!

Then I watch the film made on this book and the guy who plays the Vampire, is absolutely stunning. And the after so many years there is a man behind that screen who is my age. Sigh relief!

But it put a lot of things into perspective. I thought of my niece who is four now. In another 10 years she will also join this little world. At that point of time she will probably like this beautiful Vampire too. Watch the movie and the trail will follow.

And bang she will find out he is as old as her aunt! I know how it feels. The first reaction is that you start hating your aunt!

And at the same time she will find out her aunt too is a smitten kitten at 30 something, single and hopefully very preety atleast by then!

So thats coming a full circle. The circle of life.

This is the stupidist thing that one will ever read or write. Sorry for this torture my friends. But I am sure you can sort this out for me.

SUNS MESSENGER

I see her everyday,
frowning at the sun.
In her mind she probably says
oh! you have finally come.

The moment she opens her eyes,
the world begins to work again.
She has no time to sit back and think
what a beautiful morning it is today.

They all wait for her to wake up
for her to begin their day.
To shake them out of cosy beds
and tell them the sun is here again.

Are you the suns messenger mom?
you always bring him to us.
Your sweet smile has more warmth
than the sun can ever impart.

HOPELESS ATTEMPT TO WRITE WHAT THEY CALL A LOVE LETTER

Dear...
I have no clue who you are. I don't even know your gender. But then am still writing my first letter showing emotions of love to you. This was not something I was wanting to do for a long time. Writing something is better than staring at multiple tabs on Mozilla FireFox.

So i don't know you. But i expect you to be a decent person who believes in respecting fellow human beings. If you are a man then you must surely know how to respect women. Secretly I also pray that you are a good sport and the word sport means a lot to you. That's the little I ask of you. If I start putting up conditions, you will shy away. Its impossible for a single human being to meet such high standards. And I don't expect you to be perfect either. When God is not perfect how can any of us be.

Coming back to my mortal feelings. The fact that I am expressing some emotion for you is a sign that i have a lot more to express. But don't expect me to express it all at once. You have to make the first move. You will have to walk up to me and tell me that you love me. Please don't say it over the phone or worst over Gtalk or on Facebook. I will never reply. If I do give you a reply it will not be an instant one. So don't get me wrong. I might say it a day later but I will say yes.

I am already putting a lot of conditions on you and probably stifling you. If you ever feel so come and say it to me directly. Don't spoil another woman's life by cheating only to get your space. On my part I can only say that I will not cheat on you. But if you torture me and cheat on me I shall do the same to you.

As I go along, I see there is hardly any romance in this letter. This is only because I seek a long committed life with you and not a 5 month fling if I may call it so. And something which is forever might lack romance at times.

I am at a loss of words suddenly because I don't know what people write in letters expressing love. Maybe you could help me out with this. Maybe you could tell me how it feels to be in love with someone apart from your own self. I have spent most of life living with myself and loving myself. Maybe you could add some perspective to it.

My emotions do not reveal themselves too well here, but I must tell you that I am really excited about meeting you. I hope you are able to prove my convictions about men incorrect. I shall wait for you like I have all these years.

Hope to see you soon,
Lots of love,

ANGER HANGOVER

Its been one of those days when everything angers you. You wake up late and miss the gym again. The pigeons coo in the loo even louder than before. The Internet is extremely slow and keeps getting disconnected. All this gets just one emotion out of you.. ANGER.
It can be handled if its just one day of anger. But what do you do if you have an anger hangover. When you slept angry and woke up with more anger because you went to sleep with Hugh Jackman and woke up to find your faithful room mate still wrapped up in her quilt. Angry!

So on a very very angry day I stepped out of my house very very angry.

Angry because i had to reach work early,

Angry because I did not eat lunch,

Angry because I saw that damn auto wallah adjusting his mirror to get the perfect view of my assets.

So the professional part of the day began, drab boring and all boxed up. Like a machine I finished one task after another feeling more and more angry at being so mechanical.

After all this a supremely evil and wicked woman who I refuse to call my boss, calls me and tells me I have done it all wrong! WOW! I AM SO ANGRY! I could kill anyone who crossed my way. The volcano was about to burst, the lava ready to burn anything it touched.

And then my roommate from Pune called. We live in the same city but have not seen each other for over a month now. Of all the places she was coming to see me in my office. Pah! I thought! why here. But still.. yeah! I'll meet my Kamri today (that's what she calls me a Hindi translation of roomie). Like one excited child I sat waiting for her call. I kept smiling at my monitor and am sure he was surprised because am always scowling and growling at him in normal conditions.

The call came and I sprang up from my chair, so excited that i forgot the way out.
Well finally I made it! We hugged each other and at one moment I wanted to cry out aloud. I had never thought I would be so happy to see her. But I was. We did not sit down we just stood and spoke. In those few minutes we caught up a lifetime.

Aah! she really made my day. I did not want her to leave. I told her lets run away on your new bike Shubhe! She laughed and said, you are mad Kamri and that was it! all those moments of anger were doused. I was happy and skipped back to my seat smiled at my monitor and got back to work smiling.

At the end of it all my anger is starting to pile up again.
But am happy! At least all the backlog is gone.

WHEN YOU UNLOAD ON THE ROAD

Everything was perfect about that day. The sun was in the right direction, there was no sign of clouds, the traffic was pushing along at the speed of 20 and random men were staring at random women irrespective of their age, size or beauty. It was on a day like this that I, brace yourself, stepped into Shit.

It was some sort of Marxian dialectics happening that day. The conflict between the ideal and the real landed me into some solid human waste.
After the most satisfying workout, I stepped out of the gym, happy that I made it the second time in two weeks (okay I work night shifts and early mornings have stopped challenging me anymore. Its only early afternoon). The plan ahead was quite clear in my head. Reach home, take a bath, eat, get ready and push off to work. I took out my cell phone to call up my mother, who refused to visit me because of the new threat to human existence rampant in the city .
It was in that moment, when my eyes switched from road to the cell phone screen, that shit happened.

The SMS from my service provider reprimanded me for crossing my usage limit and then as if punishing me for ignoring the warning, they send another message telling me that my STD (the one related to telecommunications. Please!), had been blocked.

My face at this point of time bore the most hideous expression. The forehead was wrinkled as usual, nose scrounged up, mouth half open in disbelief and eyes wide yet narrowed in anger. Of course my left had was up in the air completing my surprised and disgusted look. My legs were the only ones not participating in this exercise. As if in an attempt to make its presence felt, my left foot suddenly landed into something plauchy, pasty and later I realised, decomposed.
The erstwhile hideous expression got even better. My body froze with my head turning back and looking down at my left foot incredulously. Oh Shit! I exclaimed! And that’s what it was, deep yellow and partially black blob of human bowel, disfigured by my left foot which was resting on it.

Surprisingly, more than my foot, it was the sight of my brand new Puma floaters in direct contact with that ‘thing’ which made my temper rise. Whoever unloaded themselves in the middle of the footpath was definitely not getting good ‘movements’ for a few days.
Well what had to happen had to happen. It was time to move on. I pulled my foot out and dragged it on the pavement to get rid of the extra, loose pasty element on it. Of course a lot of it was already embedded on the sole which could only be dealt with at home. I walked back home with a deeper frown on my forehead, not knowing what was worse, landing into someones insides or not being able to make STD calls.

As soon as I got home I took of the blessed pair of floaters, which now I realised smelled repulsive, and put them under hot water. But why would it all come out on its own. Everyone likes to enjoy their tiny moment of glory over someones despair, so why would this thing which we usually flush down everyday not act up!

“Fine!” I thought and took my toothbrush which needed change and started scrubbing the thing out. The toothbrush was definitely in for a huge shock. So far it carried nice smelling toothpastes, into the mouth and got washed after being used. Suddenly the poor fellow was vigorously scraping out something which is usually in a place diametrically opposite to the mouth and would soon land in the dustbin.

Any how, after hours of scrubbing and scrapping it was all out of my floaters and back to where it belonged, the drain. My floaters looking even cleaner than before were out in the sun to finally end their traumatic experience with shit. I still had loads to do, clean the bathroom, take a bath, eat and figure out what footwear to wear to office.

The shit is out of my floaters now but the one in life seems to be of some other variety. Guess I have to buy a new brand of toothbrush to scrub it out totally.
Can’t wait to dry myself in the sun!