I love you

I have been with you for close to 7 years now . I have seen you grow from girl to woman in these last 7 years . Over the last month i saw you in two halves , one of a woman not ready to give up at any cost , the other a little girl whose lost at a picnic and is looking for her dad. As i tried to keep up with one half while holding the hand of the other i fell in love with you again. While we fought the darkness around us with smiles on our faces and hope in our hearts all i could think of was you. I didnt know your dad very well , it is in you that i discovered him in this last month . Your strength gives me hope every day , the way you face up to every morning after every crushing evening flattens you makes me want to fight harder , strive longer and be better at whatever i do. You keep asking me how much i love you , i try silly answers everytime but the truth is i feel blessed to have you , i am the luckiest man alive that you chose to hang in there for this imperfect , lazy , eccentric , selfish , self absorbed narcissist . Thank you for being who you are ! I know our lives are tough but as long as i have you i dont give a flying fuck ! Everything will just HAVE to work out for our lost little girl ..

While we are all here..

Read this article by Amish Tripathi on what clicked  for him in making him a "million plus books sold" gold standard writer , he mentions his wife talking about a parallel universe in which all characters from all stories exist and how writers get a key to that place . So the writer through his book is in a way really setting up a travel agency to that alternate world . Letting more and more people into the world that he unlocked , taking them around on a conducted tour chapter by chapter. If you really were given access to such a world would you let others in or would you keep it all to yourself ? The former and the latter are probably how we know writers and lunatics better. Every lunatic is probably a "million plus books sold"writer who really saw Xanadu and is still roaming the streets wide eyed , too engrossed to find his way back and finally put up that travel agency board.

The year that was.

Couldnt squeeze in a single post for a full year. As i sit hear reading some of the stuff that i wrote over the last few years i feel like writing again as if to compete with that younger (better) me . I am not sure if i am as funny as that younger guy anymore .. all mirth is kind of lost in balancing EMIs all around . Its humour of a darker stickier kind that pervades me now , i seek humor in strange places these days . Humor in predictable mails from your ASMs ..POP demands in the first week, "special" client requests in the 2nd ,  stock cribs in the second half of the month. Steady , periodic , funny. I see the funny side in the random internet service guys complete inability to sort out my issue or the absolute Modern Times clockwork pattern in which every 121 callcenter guy thinks. I seek my pound of humorous flesh from the clicketty clack of opening seatbelts barely 2 seconds after the wheels of aircrafts touch down and some dark part of me secretly wants the pilot to brake sharper or do something to make these numbskulls fly through the air and smash like pumkins on the aircraft walls around me . You can probably make out a few things about the year that was from where and how i derive pleasure from now. I hate salespeople, i hate their plastic smiles, their greasy palms and greasier tongues .. I feel like the world is producing too many maggots that dont deserve life.. and these incompetent monkeys are sapping the life out of me. I am travelling way too much and would love to sleep in my own bed atleast 20 nights a month. Also i would love to laugh more often on stuff thats genuinely funny like Calvin and Hobbes or Mamata Banerjee rather than the vitriolic bile that im aging inside of me.

Here we go!

5 years is a very long time. As i sit here tonight hours away from signing on the dotted line it feels like I'm watching someone elses story unfold that evening 5 years ago. The guy in his blue football jersey the girl her eyes and her hair resplendent in the afternoon sun. It all seems so long ago , so far away. 5 years of train journey , flights , lies , subterfuge , fake excuses to find small moments together in which we could peel away layers off each other . Can i claim to know her completely or has she figured out exactly what makes me tick ? I dont think so and i would be the happiest man on earth if i can still answer that way 10 , 15 , 25 years from now.. god knows we have made that effort and i think thats what makes us click the amount of effort we have put in to make this work . People say love flattens mountains and parts oceans . I think the credit shoud go to the lovers who make these seemingly impossible things happen and not to love . Its been a long march these last 5 years.. we are finally there welcome home love.

Visual Communication

I nod, he nods back , i nod more vehemently adding the side to side motion now sticking four fingers up , he nods slowly almost in slow motion eyes crinkled up in disgust at my linguistic shortcomings or entreaty ..not quite sure which as he motions with 6 fingers now. Quick calculation 6 kms - 60 bucks ...not bad considering my core body temperature is rising at almost 0.5 degrees per minute .. gives me approximately 8 minutes to a sunstroke. Resigned shrug hunch shoulders .. climb in. Another triumph for the CADU.. Chennai Auto Drivers Union.

Bombay

No explanation really why it took me a year to get back here except maybe that in the past year Bombay happened . Bombay is a phenomenon that needs to be lived and experienced to be understood. Its way beyond what Raghu Rais coffee table books would have us understand.. way beyound but not exclusive of the causeway.. the trains .. the taj..bandra .. the sea link .siddhi vinayak .. the street children .. the posh set.. Its essence is a sense of inevitability about actions and how they unfold. Like the inevitability of a journey between andheri and bandra taking atleast an hour.. nothing in the world can change that,or the ubiquitious dour taste of the humble vada pao being almost inevitably the same ..everywhere ..everytime, or the complete and utter exhaustion that a day in this megapolis leaves you with as you drop to bed . Survival , excel sheets of credit and debit, the inevitable drinking binge to forget all, the occasional impulse purchase the horror of which will come back to haunt you in the aforementioned excel sheets. The tiny moments that you would have to snatch from the citys hands like a shrill scream to pierce the drone of humdrum life . A stolen moment here , the quiet daze of ones living room floor there , the perfect fried rice and beer dinner which you have no one to share with. The pain of being away most of the times the liberty of the same sometimes. The joy of watching a new life cry,writhe, blink, smile ,burp, grow. A companionship so strong woth someone with whome you hardly spoke more than twice a day like fellow surfers negotiating the same waves with different surfboards. Bombay like i said is not one story its 1.25 crore different stories living breathing everyday in unison in their routine.. disparate in their content

Apocalypse now...

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land
Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane

Not quite the post i intended to start my new year with but nonetheless here goes..

The end of days and the end of life as we have known it for the last couple of years is here. 2 hours from now i'll be turning my back on these portals one final time as a student. It brings back images of various hues as i sit here on my computer with the familiar and comforting view of the campus walls laid out in front of me .. nights of euphoria.. nights of endless despair. Images of distorted reality.. images of exaggerated happiness and pain.

I take away from here a deep sense of awe at what a free mind can achieve when it decides to fly.. that we truly are a medium for ideas and all we need to do is be receptive . I take away friends with whom we have shared and experienced so much in the limited time that these 2 years afforded us .. I take back with me a deep sense of love and gratitude for someone a thousand miles away for deciding to stick by my side when no one else would have stuck on.

I really cant get words out that do justice ..maybe some other time.