When you're on the phone with them late at night and they hang up, you still miss them even when it was just two minutes ago. ELEVEN: You walk really slow when you're with them. TEN: You feel shy whenever they're around. NINE: You smile when you hear their voice. EIGHT: When you look at them, you can't see the other people around you, you just see him/her. SIX: They're all you think about. FIVE: You realize you're always smiling when you're looking at them. FOUR: You would do anything for them, just to see them. THREE: While reading this, there was one person on your mind this whole time. TWO: You were so busy thinking about that person, you didn't notice number seven was missing ONE: You just scrolled up to check & are now silently laughing at yourself.
One 27th Jan 2010 as I stood looking out from the Chittor fort to the wide expanses... I said a formal farewell to my friend Arghya .... aka "RGHY" ...
He was taken away from me on 28th Sept 2009... right after he turned 26 yrs 9 days ago... so suddenly that I could not even mourn him, it did not sink in that he was gone.. not a day went by that I didn't imagine that his phone no: will flash on my cell ph and he will call saying It was all a big stupid joke or something!!! .. just that he was back.
It's taken me some time .... 1.5 yrs to build up d courage to write this... becoz although I said Good bye standing there on Chittor fort which he had visited in 2009 Jan- Feb .. hoping that through the fabric on space time continum he somehow was right there with me and could hear my silent thoughts.
I have learnt a lot of pain in life but I have also learnt there is no greater pain than death. If you fight, break up or move apart atleast you know that the person exists somewhere ... but in death you cannot reach out one more time... I have over the past year or so hoped I can change the last thing I said to arghya, but I can't so Now I try not to leave with bitterness I fail sometimes... bt I wish I get a chance to change that .. soon enough with anyone I meet.
And I still cannot believe that My Friend is gone.......... I wish I had spend more time listening to you, having more coffee, exchanging more books ... & not being a snooty idiot that I was... I hope you are at peace where ever you are & NO I am not at peace .. miss u buddy ...!!!& if there is an afterlife may we meet again & this time I hope we cn remain friends forever.
"Those roads we walked can never be the same When life has been taken away & death has won the Game. In all honesty I pray that you are at Peace Yet my however I try my mind is never at ease."
" You know what your problem is? You have too many options in your life. You are always moving from one to the other never making up your mind."
Blissfully nonchalant to any & all advice skipping through life's not so nice episodes, wiping from memory all that did not go as planned, creating boxes of memories that could haunt & stashing them in storage and successfully losing the keys, there I was moving through life in a delusion of satisfaction of having snipped all the lose threads & letting go off all regrets, & then Life came right back & punched me in the face.
So here I am clacking at the keyboard & ranting my thoughts.
There comes a time in everyone's life when we hope to have choices, as far back as I can remember he had been the blessed child always having choices, never coerced into anything by anyone, always independent, read - Allowed to make my own mistakes & never learning from them.
In my last few months of graduation a choice of a MBA or a PG came along, I chose. I became cocky & over confident with always having an option & a choice. So I kept choosing sometimes badly. So now when I sit in my office & wish I could do something else I know it was a choice I made. May be that's what is wrong with this line of thought, had I no choice may be I wouldn't have any regrets......
Every time I come close to giving up & returning to boring reality the melodramatic life I day dreamed for years catches up & I flow with it, just can't seem to give up on the adrenalin rush of finding new choices ... new things to try ....
I make cupboards where I stash Blue checked shirts but they get out, the red t-shirts keep sneaking up on me, the "suit up" remarks haunt me, the black espresso keeps pouring, the school buddy makes a comeback as a friend who you can't refuse, the recluse & boring one turns into a butterfly & dazzles my eyes, a silly billy billy you ignore makes the oddest statements of depth that boggles you mind, your adult life's major crush says they like you ... & then everyone expects me to just be normal & decide.
How the hell does a person decide?
Who can survive this serious need for sanity. I seem to be doing fairly well, I am just so lucky to have had so many adventures and come out of them with my life, may be with a broken and bruised heart, but at least with some satisfaction that all this is so going into my autobiography. I tell my friend you have such a dramatic life, but OH dear lord if anyone decided to have a conference of who knows this girl they might just find out what a roller coaster life I have had.
Well unfortunately it's not been all fun, I have screwed up few times & a few lives. Someone said men regret the women they don't have relations with & women regret the men they have a relationship with. I think I can say it safely not always true .. sometimes myopic folks miss the most obvious things like whose into you & whose not. Since I am such a movie buff, I can't help stating they ought to have made that movie years ago... "He's just that not into you .." etc.
I am ranting today cause I just found that our stupid melodramatic, insanely ridiculously movie script words can haunt a person & ruin their lives. Am I saying I did not know that words had power? Not exactly. We are mostly concentrating on what is hurting us & not really matured to see what our words are doing? Hell they are like tiny daggers which apparently we have been throwing at folks who, & I quote " Love Us" doing what would only seem like a bad case of Target Practice.. anyone else thinking of Jai Baba Felunath... & Lalmohan Ganguly pinned to the board in fear...!!
I tried writing with Beatles playing in the background, mind totally went to a strumming guiter at midnight, then to long conversation on the road, then to bitter sweet confessions & realisations .... so I have turned that off. I am listening to Himesh Reshamiya - Ahista Ahista....
Gathering my stray thoughts ....
I seem to be doing perfectly ok, mostly repeating the lyrics of Comfortably numb from pink floyd & hoping to god I never learn how to shoot or Hand guns become availble in the free market here. I read Rage by Stephen King wriiting as Bachman, & shudder as the images of the School corridor metamorphose into the reception of an office building, I wake up before it becomes a nightmare. Then I wonder what someone says "explainations without belief are excuses" or "Am I surviving or living" I put the pros & cons on the yellow legal pad & cross out everything to start from scratch ....
There were these events which are so tightly packed back to back & all 'cause everything came with choices & options,& I couldn't just chose without finding what lay behind the Door No. X.. I moved around the Mansion running through the floors never realising how life moved past outside & so did everyone, I simply forgot that this was a dream & where was the Exit.. call this my Inception Hangover. The events are all stashed somewhere & foolishly when life confronts me with on of the characters from my soap opera of life I jump into the scene with no homework & no history, & then I sit & unravel the history to find the sad truths.
It's a been a decade in this dream maze & I thought A trip to the desert & back to purge me of the Ghost of Barney "RGhy" Stenson... people visit Ganga I went the opposite way... to dig up a cornor of that desert & ditch the guilt, to stand in front of the fort & hope that crossing the space time continuum somehow someone knows how sorry I am.
I think now I can come back to reality where the top stops spinning....!! But I have forgotten the password.
Every time I steel myself & think I am walking out of the mess of a decade - the infamous 20's - I am faced my a ghost from the decade gone past & I remember I can't out run my past however fiercly I try to lock it up & throw away the keys, it always slips out ...! So I just think its best to give up 'cause no way in hell is this going to fall in place..
But the mind is a funny machine it dreams up other realities & deja vu it becomes a reality, I get what I wish for only I don't like it now.. That's the fundamental problem of choosing between options. We choose something from the menu & are told it is not availble & it isn't going to be available ever, out of stock, so we settle for something else, & bam!! it's back on the market & hell now you can't have it, or if you are a spendthrift like me.. you end up with both, & realise you don't want one of them & just because life is so perfect it's the one you don't want that lasts, & the one you wanted just vaporises.
When you least expect it Barney "Rghy" Stenson sneaks into my thoughts & I know there isn't any excuse or explaination for all that I have done, Except that it was all my fault. So there, after all the rambling... the few nuggets of psychobabble..
You chose & hope that its the right choice
When you chose it isnt a bad / good choice, only when the consequences surface you know what you have done.
You are given options to test your skills like in CAT, there is always the desire to go for a few smart guesses but there is the negative marking.
So, just when you think you have made the cut offs one nite's conversation can screw up your chances with the creme de la creme of the management students.
You chose personal happiness over professional glory then realise it's your work that actually keeps you sane.
Your head is so messed up from the levels of dreams you have created that at the same time, Blue cheked shirt, Silly hilly Billy,Ghosts of decade past haunt your reality or dream, wait; you don't know which because you have again chosen to forget.
You hope in vain Shoes, Perfumes & gadgets will lull into believing this is the reality you have & not what you left 10 years back in front of the optician store. Does it really begin there?
We meet folks almost everyday and we pass them by never really noticing them and I am not speaking about passerby but folks we spent 8 hours a day, at work may be. We just don't look at them beyond their tasks and position. Somewhere in time I had prided my ability to get to know people. I had foolishly pursued a course of study called Human Resource which I thought will bring me closer to people. But in the professional life I became a cog in the machinery and now when I look at people I don't see or feel I just look through them. Why Am I rambling about this? Because recently one of colleagues reminded me that how much I loved getting to know people and how less I was doing that. Looking at this fellow I assumed he was shaky in confidence, he was too raw for the corporate responsibility, seemed to have trouble communicating, in fact I lost my temper with the wall that stood up whenever we tried to communicate. Exasperated with all this I gave up!
But things changed don't know how and confidence that seemed to be non existent flickered on, with some helping hand and a bit of responsibility there was a positive improvement. After this I got an opportunity to spend time with him out of office and as we walked on the road chatting casually I got a glimpse of a beautiful person who had had his share of pain and joy and I had not bothered to go deep into any of that. Here was someone who had gone through life with so many experiences and those had left indelible impressions. I saw the impressions only and not the stories behind them.
And today I was made to realize how grossly pedantic my judgments have become off late, how Quickly I judge and brush aside people assuming they have nothing special to interest me. Just when I least expected I meet someone who knows so many different things that my own ideas and opinions fall flat, I am shocked how carelessly brazen I have been in dismissing people. I can't believe that in my high place I have disseminated what I absolutely hate to be done to me, a judgement that puts me in a box which defines me. I have started putting people in boxes marked or unmarked.
Thank God for this jolt, reminding me to look beyond the obvious faults and turn offs and to look for deeper meaning and to discovering beautiful people amongst the folks we live.
The talk show Koffee with Karan this season may have been about generating media controversy but the episode with SRK was different from the previous few shows. There sat the King of Bollywood on the famous couch and he talked of his fears, his failings, his regrets, his happiness, his blessed life & ultimately about not having Friends. With all his open heart thoughts that spilled out, what stuck with me was those words he repeated a few times, “I don’t have friends.” This even prompted Karan to open one segment with, “in conversation with my Best Friend.”
Detractors will say this was a performance, but I am not one of them, during the show I felt here was Man who was successful, and had led whirlwind of a life and at the ripe age of 45 he has taken some time out to look at his life. In taking a deeper look he finds that his life is blessed and he is a superstar, may be he is a Great actor but He is also Alone. He has his family which includes his wife, kids and Sister, but even then he feels he is alone. A man cannot merely survive on Family. I have always believed so. There is need for interaction of other humans, there is the need to build and forge other relations not just of law and blood but of hearts, of life experiences, of love, of spiritual journey.
So, being this hugely successful individual does not lessen the pain of not having friends. During the course of the Show SRK seems to journey from accepting that he does not have friends to the realization that he has problems keeping friendship. He finds that many people have been around him who he considered to be his friends and then realized rudely that they were no longer there. They were taken by death or by misunderstanding. Being successful comes with a lot of baggage which he feels unable to carry. At the end of the show he says that he will call people who are estranged from him. He will make an effort to get back to them. He feels his inability to sustain friendship is his early loss of his parents.
But this is all conjecture, I know myself that some of us have had trouble keeping our friendships. Somewhere we became complacent, or felt that new friends would replace the older one’s. There has been many a time when we have failed in our duty to keep friendships. We have taken the easier way out blaming work, time, distance and what not for it but truth remains, and it is very clear to us if we delve deep within ourselves, that we have let our friends down.
I cannot say that I have been a good friend to many, I have been a good friend may be to a handful of people. That is also a statement stemming from a bit of Ego. Yes, friends boost our Ego and they make us feel good, they remind us life is tough but beautiful, that we are never faced with a task unless we already have the ability to achieve it. We can never survive without our friends. At least I can’t.
I have this whole list of people who have been friends with me and I have let them down and not even bothered to say sorry. There are many on that list who I wish I could have called back and begged to stay. Then there are those who misunderstood me and I in my Ego Cloistered existence ignored the signs of cracking foundations until it was too late to save anything. In the same way I have, thankfully, a list of people who seem to have been there, on and off, always, often, sometimes, but There… for me. I can never really understand why. I try telling them, “I wouldn’t be my own friend.” I am such a pain sometimes, I am loud, moody, temperamental, psychotic, paranoid, foolish, bully, what not. But people on both the lists have survived as long as they could. But unlike SRK I realized early in life that I need my friends. So, every opportunity I get I remind myself and them How absolutely Blessed I am to have them in my life. Words turn into poetry or a manuscript and they seem like forwarded sms or mails, or a rip off from some movie, but these are genuine words for the genuine love I feel from my friends. I cannot imagine a life without them.
I have had the misfortune of losing a friend a week back, to a whole lot of bitching (my doing) and her insensitive behavior. I cannot lie to myself about one basic truth that never in the last 3 years have I made an effort to tell her what is exactly that bothered me about her behavior. I have never shared with her my irritation with her insensitive attitude towards our other friends. Yet that’s exactly what a Friend is supposed to do. So technically I had removed myself from the responsibility of being her friend and now that the friendship has turned sour, I cannot complain.
But like all things in life, no door is closed without another window opening somewhere.
I am thrilled that I make new friends & meet so many wonderful people. Although I have never really believed in New Year Resolutions, but I d hope that this year I can keep my friends and not lose any over some silliness.
As always, Love you folks, you do truly make My WORLD go round.
As is the popular cultures dictat we must look back at the year gone past and pick the Top /Bottom popular choices, so, every magazine & newspaper worth its salt has been out doing the Popularity Poll, thank God our Govts. are not selected like this, or may be they should be! No time for serious political debate. This post has been brimming out of my head for sometime & the only reason this is so late is because I was too lazy to obtain the required photos for this Blog. Yes, I will give you my top 5 of movies & tv series right here. Only Disclaimer to it is that I suffer terribly from the Recency Effect, & as I am generally lazy I will not bother you with the WHY I chose the one's that I did. Only one explaination I can put in here is there were a whole lot of choices and the reason for my list to be limited is my lack of patience and Ofcourse I haven't watched all of the movies/tv series currently on air. I can of course graciously provide you with a list of Releases in the Year 2010 for Ind and USA, that should be good adventure for some of you.
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