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Those thoughts

It’s 2:54 am on a Saturday night and I’m brimming with excitement that my music mix sounds decently professional! But there is a part of me wondering if this dopamine-filled-low-margin hobby of mine is a waste of time.

Why do I care if there’s no good music these days? And every time I say that I feel like I’m turning into that old dude who talks about the glorious back-in-the-day musical golden age and how contemporary music is noise. Maybe that’s who I am. Maybe I am being dramatic. Or perhaps it’s quarter life crises. Or maybe it’s just the caffeine in my system.

After all, what am I trying to prove and to whom?

God damn it, if only someone made any good music these days, I’d have plugged in, calmed my nerves and would have been fast asleep!

What next?

So my best friend for thirteen years and I are talking about gardening these days.

We both agree that this has to be the lowest point in our friendship.

So technically the only topic we laugh and joke about is the fact that we don’t have any topics to laugh and joke about. Sometimes, I’m glad I don’t have many friends. Otherwise, imagine the scale of this problem!

You know how you vividly remember some useless incident from childhood for no reason at all? The incident whose memory, you wished, was replaced by an important answer that you were desperately trying to remember for an interview? I remember one of those like that when I told my sixth class teacher, with all my brimming emotion, that sixth class was the best year of my life. Partly because she gave me five more marks than I deserved on a test. She had this warm smile on her face and came up to me, held my shoulder gently and told me to STFU as politely as you could to a child. And said “I’ll see if you still say the same after you finish your college.”

She was right. College was amazing! Sixth class can go suck on a lemon.

But now that you’re done with that glorious time, the question is what do you do? What do you do so that I can write about it after ten years whining about how glorious my previous ten years were and not talk about experimenting with peepal saplings in a garden full of chameli!

And of course, if all else fails, we can still talk Ex’es and Why’s of our lives.

But how does it get interesting from here on?

What next?

Le Art

It takes a rainy day to inspire you. There is something about the gray in the weather that brings alive the colors within.

You fling open your box of magic and start concocting your pallet with excitement. You’ve done it a hundred times but this time you choose to take a slightly different path. That tinge of devilish deviation which you know is going to make all the difference!

You already know it’s going to be good!

And then you turn up the heat till you you and the art become one, till the colors of your creation reflect the tasteful strokes that made them, until it brims with passion and crescendoes to oblivion!

And then settles down with a sigh of contentment!

That’s how you make glorious, magical chai!

Until someone takes a sip and utters the words “Maybe some biscuits will make it edible”

No joke

What came first? The joke or the laughs.

Seemingly a trivial answer, yeah? But think about it. If we had never learned to laugh, how did we know how to respond to the first joke?

I mean, that question can be answered for a specific case. What came first, the bad joke or the laughs? Clearly, the bad joke did, because the other one never did come. But the general problem is the hard one. It’s probably NP hard, right after traveling salesman, vertex cover and marriage.

And don’t worry if you don’t understand what NP hard problem is. Trust me, noone does.

Clearly, I should stop doing so much leetcode. That’s too tempting but currently I’m in the 18569000th position in this rat race and Imma totally win one day.

I’m not even joking.

Nothingth of a post

There was a time when I was irked about not finishing a post. Swarms of thoughts fluttered around me and not one landed on my blog.

I envy that now. It’s been what seems like an era and thirty seven minutes since I even felt like writing anything.

On the bright side though, I’m not having the PTSD (See what I did there! 😏) of writing a crappy post. See the pun there? No? Ok. Really, though?

Although, it feels like these days life’s busy getting crammed into pockets of time and being shipped off to the past faster than I have time to stop, think, breathe or write. If this is now, what’s the North Star? Ugh. North Star? Really? I write a post after an era and a forty five minutes and that’s what I came up with? North Star? Even my word choices feel corporate these days.

Still don’t see that subtle pun? Just checking.

Ok, thirties, we are a bit south of a great start. And by a bit, I mean a lot. For starters, just the sheer enormity of that number. Work your magic and give me something worthy to write about, God damn it!

Ok, any luck with the pun yet?

And so, as I navigate through the uneventful nothingness in a spectacularly average way, I managed to write a whole post about all the nothing that’s brimming over in my life right now. Great! This is what it has come to.

And seriously, how can one miss an ingenious stroke of absolute genius? The pun is right there!

The rain

Oh boy, the rain!

I’m home after so long, and it’s raining here right now.

The retreating monsoon also brought with it a gust of all those memories that I left behind when I flew away thousands of miles. So far, that I say ‘miles’ now.

It’s the same warm shower that I tried to avoid with a notebook over my head, running home from the bus stop.

Same rain that poured outside when a chaotic bunch bonded inside a rundown dabba noodle shop.

That same tropical drizzle that showered on some unbearable fights and some unforgettable kisses.

The very same rain that made the roads worse and the music better during those long college bus rides.

…Oh boy, the rain!

When…

When you find yourself walking down the isles bordered with boring white cubes instead of lush green trees; when you make yourself a coffee doesn’t have caffeine, with sugar that’s not sugar, and milk which is, well, not milk but a synthetic corporate byproduct of capitalism in an endearing little packaging that is sneakily named as ‘creamer’; when you have have the “small talk” while making that coffee with a Kevin when you really don’t care about where Kevin hiked over the weekend; and when the period between weekends is the fundamental building block of your life, that’s when you ought to know something is wrong.

… Or maybe that you’re making a crapload of money.

Hm, actually now that I think of it, perhaps I am that corporate byproduct of capitalism in the endearing little packaging that I call my career.

Productivity and other lamentations

One of these days I had a faint what-am-I-doing-with-my-life moment. I realized I am just another thing in this universe that’s wafting through space and time, only some times changing course to gravitate towards free food somewhere in transit.

I think much of this realization of mediocrity started in a weak moment (you know, like when your inspiration swings up like a dot com stock in the late nineties) when I searched for some article on getting somewhere in life. And then, the internet pulled up its sleeves and decided to send a deluge of pages my way. I went from reading about habits I need to develop, things I haven’t done, stuff I am not doing, how many hours I have missed being productive… there was even a point when I almost typed “I am sorry! :(” into Google search. Almost. But, apparently, well… wasn’t productive enough.

Heh! I am pretty sure I’d reading this 20 years later wondering why I was being unproductive by writing about not being productive. Well, I’ve news for you too, old man! Think of all the time you’ve been unproductive by reading about you being unproductive and judging my unproductiveness!

Life has come full circle now, congrats!

 

 

Avva

Avva,

I remember your rusty old suitcase where you stored all the new sarees you got for Diwali every year and never wore them because they’d get old. I remember how you used to like mirchis that dad brought. And I remember how you nodded your head to dialogues in soap operas on Sun TV. I remember your oval plate. I remember one of your gray nails. I remember that you asked me to get a blanket for you this time when I come home.

And I am really wholeheartedly sorry!

I am sorry for not having changed channels when you wanted to watch Sun TV.

I am sorry for fighting with you when you hung my inners in the balcony to sun dry them.

I am sorry that if I ever ate the last mirchi.

I am sorry for having made so much ruckus while you were sleeping.

I am sorry for being too busy to cut your nails.

I am sorry for not being able to get you the blanket you asked me.

I am sorry you had to be away in the end.

I am sorry I wasn’t there to perform your last rites.

I never imagined this day. I always took you for granted. For me you were always around. You told us you didn’t have anyone. You had us. You had Appa, Amma, Kiran and Charan.

It is beyond comprehension how much I miss you, avva! Rest in peace! 😦

– Forever your loving grandson