Wake Work Sleep Repeat

Our generation is the most advanced that has ever lived. We live longer, have access to more food, better healthcare on an average than any generation before us. This however, also means that we spend more of our lives working, doing jobs. 

We go to school, then college then get a job, get married have kids, pass our genes, help them go through the cycle and then die. We live our days like an old typewriter, typing in the same words in different ways each day the carriage returns, we run from once place to other pushing things into place, doing chores, making rent, feeding ourselves, making plans, executing plans and entertaining ourselves. There are enough distractions to keep us occupied and away from thought until our bodies decay and we eventually but surely die. 

Do we ever stop and wonder with the bemusement of a child? Why should one become a brick in another wall of humanity and all that it is right now? Why should one work or have a job? Why have money dictate who we work under and who works under us?  Why does society seem to have a mind of its own and why is its mind so narrow? Why are we here, where were we before this and why weren't we consulted? If we have a finite time here and if our deaths are both uncertain and unquestionable, why should we spend most of it doing something we don't like to buy things we don't need? What is true happiness at the bottom of it all? Is it finding love and companionship, sex and orgasms, everything that money can buy, or is it finding god ? 

How wonderful it would have been if I could just choose one. Money is good option because it can buy almost anything even god and companionship. Almost every big temple has a VIP entry and there are plenty who prefer moolah over mush, presidents over passion. 

A part of me passionately disagrees, a part of me knows.    

What is dead may never die!

"Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium": Erwin Schrödinger

It is difficult to deal with death, especially when it is someone one knows well and is a big part of one's life. It is just one of those inevitable truths in life that seem to shock us despite how conspicuous things may be.

I have a difficult time dealing with death. I feel nothing about it. I don't feel good, I don't feel bad, I just feel an empty void.

I lost a friend when I was in 12th grade. He had been close but had drifted apart over the years. I still met him on a weekly basis. We had spent quite a lot of time together. I had known him for at least 9 years then. My friend had lived away from his family and his family had always made sure he was never spoilt, so that he may study hard and make something of himself, ah the irony! He died when he was undergoing a cosmetic surgery because of an overdose of anaesthesia. It was a depressing sight, his parents and all his relatives gathered around his corpse and beat their hearts out crying. His father stood outside his house, talking to people as they came in "I came here to surprise him with a bike and he gave us all a surprise!" he said as he wept uncontrollably.

I couldn't shed a tear. I know of strangers who could have.      

Journey into Smokelessness

The most overused cliche about quitting is the Mark Twain quote, "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world, I know because I've done it a thousand times" It is overused though, because of a reason, it resounds with anyone who's ever tried to quit a few times.

As I begin again, I feel that familiar discomfort which makes me feel nostalgic of the last few times I tried. What has helped though is that the monsoons are beginning to set in. The monsoons bring the air pollution down (quite literally) and water Delhi's trees with acid rain. Tragic as that may sound, it does provide my lungs with what is remotely reminiscent of mountain air.

My ideas seem detached and distant floating in a endless sea of obscure musings, as I struggle to bring words together to form a thought. Construction workers persistently hammering away, chipping of parts of the building I'm in, form my soothing soundscape. I find myself fantasizing about a nice big drag of that deliciously disgusting sweet poison, only to be slapped my own mind.

There is some joy to be had in this struggle too. Stepping back and looking at oneself fight with an invisible enemy. An enemy that's a product of an unchecked habit.  

Numb

A relentless excruciation
under engulfing anesthesia,
a dead laconic lethargy,
making the chaos mundane,

a slippery raddled slide,
onto snapping teeth of steel,
felt betrayed by agony,
ecstatic at the thought of pain,

life is a box of chocolates, she said,
each is better than the next,
with a dwindling hope we did move,
into intimidating uncharted seas

The Present

I see myself as a man of faith, an image of my own past. I have had a few moments in which I might have wanted to turn back time, but then does not everyone ? The world is a culmination of its yesterdays.

Elixir

An elixir can distort your perception, help you discover an unknown world, its like being on vacation, where the problems of the real world seem immaterial. It is nice to be on vacation as long as one remembers that they live in the "real" world

Futility ?

I set out to find a theory for everything,

A ray of light at the end of a dark alley,

the reason for love, life and laughter,

the eternal truth and its righteous path,

and when I found the truth untold,

oblivious to the seeker and the soothsayer too,

I found a nay I could not parlay,

unlike as outlined in a million fables,

I understood that I knew nothing,

and felt enlightened at that thought,

for some think we`re but prisoners here,

for some, we`re life in a hand-full of sand,

for to feel one`s hair stand out behind the neck,

at the sound of a solo on a Spanish guitar,

or the tingle at the edge of a the tongue,

over a mouth-full of melting pie,

or the flutter in one`s heart,

on a walk beside a gushing ocean,

against a million sparkled sky,

and finding that one`s not alone,

or the despair, pain, and agony,

and teardrops on the countenance of wailing kins,

the sinking heart for letting a loved one go,

and become specks of sand again,

I run sand through my hands,

and see our existence slipping by,

I find solace in blood, sweat and tears,

and life in a million eyes