Saturday, July 26, 2014

Ramblings

I have not done a rant post for a very very long time and since I do not visit my blog often these days, I thought I'd do one. Life has been going on with sadly,not much happening. I joined Zumba for a month or so and am back to my Yoga. It is always good to workout at home. Why you ask? You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to pay anyone and you don't have to change. Nothing's more comfortable than your home PJs and of course you have a tab on time so you know when to stop.

It has its disadvantages too, the biggest one being that if you do anything wrong, you won't really know because there is no one to tell you. But then internet videos/CDs and books help. Another drawback is that since you know you just have to move from your room to your exercise area (sometimes the 2 being the same) you tend to become lazy. That is a pro and a con.

I was thinking ...life turning out to be good or bad, purely on the basis of karma, is just a matter of those 10 minutes. What I mean is this ... You have to get up in the morning to exercise, but you sleep off for those extra 10 minutes. You have to go out to meet friends, maybe do some work but you laze around and eventually quit the idea of going out. On the contrary , if you decide to let go of those 10 minutes, you end up doing a lot! I am not generalising a trend, but that's what happens mostly. Think about it.

Another thing that has been occupying my thoughts lately is the internet. Most people who know me, know what a huge internet addict I am. Internet is an overload of information and a major reason why it is more important now than ever to draw a line and decide for yourself about what is right or wrong. Take health for example. There are people who say milk is important and people who say adults should not drink milk. There are loads of articles on how it is a good idea to drink fruit juices and an equal number of articles that will tell you to eat fruits and skip the juice. I am giving these examples because these are a few things I search for and get all sorts of point of views. I mean anything and everything has lots of goods and lots of bad points about it. Same goes or cosmetic product. I was looking up or a MAC concealer and there were hundreds of women saying how awesome it was, another hundreds saying that it didn't work for them and that is true. Obviously what works for one will not work for another. So after running round and round in circles, we come to the same thing. Internet can help you show all the aspects for you to make a decision but it will never make a decision for you.

Moving on to the other things, I have been meditating on and off and though I have been doing it for as long as January ,everytime I do it, I feel like I am doing it for the first time. So far , no mental peace has approached me and I am not sure of how much of an "alpha" state I reach. All I know is that when I sit and try to meditate in my cab for that endless journey to office and/or back, I doze off wonderfully. So, I don't complain about the long hours anymore -- unless we get stuck in the rains or something. Even the evening it was raining, the driver was gracious enough to leave the lights in the cab on. So I could happily read my Game Of Thrones. So I did not complain even then -- except for a sore bum. I am entitled to at least that. Things in office are nothing but idiotic and I don't even want to talk about it.

I do want to talk about writing. Although I have not been writing here much, I am doing something called morning pages. Look it up in google and you will come across the book Artist's way by Julia Cameron. She coined this specific term although many authors before her have advocated the same idea. Write 3 pages of unconscious writing. Basically, without stopping , you write whatever crap comes to your mind. It is a lot of fun doing it , provided I get up in the morning with enough time in my hands to accommodate writing, Yoga-ing and rushing for office. Sometimes I doze off while writing and end up writing extremely non coherent matter in context and in writing. Once out of nowhere, while my pen was slipping and I was dozing off, i wrote " I don't know who alexander is" right in the middle of some blah things I was writing about. You never know what your subconscious is up to and that is why it is so interesting.

I have been pretty regular in my writer meetups and I am not sure how I do there. People there are too sweet to give you any negative criticism whatsoever. I once read a story after which there was pin drop silence. No claps, no good, no bad. The host was nodding his head , one guy was staring at me and others seemed lost. Eventually one really sweet female said some good thing followed by some other good things by some other sweet people. This happens almost everytime, leading me to believe that I am pretty okay or every time I read something people are just searching for words to get over me and then move on to the next reader. But I love my time in the writers and actually look forward to it every week. Sadly I missed it yesterday but as I said I manage to go there almost every week.

I am still far from being perfect but something stirs in me when I think about writing -- a feeling which says, " Not everything is bad in the world". I think that feeling is enough to hold on to the craft. These days I am heavily inspired by Phil and Sarah Kaye and I am trying my hands on spoken word poetry. I attended a workshop and participated in a video made by campus diaries. Although, obviously I am not propagating the video, it is not bad. But I haven't told anyone about it (Except Rahul ofcourse and another Writer friend who happened to stumble upon it himself) and I have no plans of putting up the link. I am sure other poets are doing that well enough!One day , if I gather enough courage, I will perform too. But that is not immediate.

Being a (sort of) writer allows me to be a part of a completely different universe , feeds me with thoughts that are alien to my otherwise IT-ed mind and I love that refreshment. I need IT for the money and though there were these cruel students I met who were like "Oh poor you" "Oh thats sad" when I told them I am from IT, deep down, I dont regret it. I feel like clark Kent, who gets to turn into superman only in weekends. But that is so so so much better than those poor uncles in my workplace who don't have anything to do other than attending calls, paying EMIs and smoking in the smoking zone. Seriously! So so much better than them and when those uncles make fun of my reading habit, I cannot help but feel sorry for them.

Anyway, I have taken this rant post too seriously. I hope to come here more often. See you later! :)

Friday, July 25, 2014

The story of a six year old


This was supposed to be a story of a 6 year old
About how she was like any other 6 year old ...
Special and ordinary in her own way

This was supposed to be a story of a 6 year old
Of how she was energy , laughter,life, tantrums and lessons woven together.
Of how she used could never sit quietly ...no 6 year old does these days

I don't know her really , but I do imagine her
I see her running back to her father spotting a cockroach
Hiding her little face in those broad shoulders and laughing at herself ...if you listen carefully , you can hear the chuckles
This was supposed to be a story of a 6 year old girl ....learning,forgetting,hugging,fighting ,loving ...being loved...maybe just like you and me... This was a story of a 6 year old

Instead, this is a story of how life was trampled when it had completed only 6 years.
Instead ,this is a story of how she was touched, scratched,groped, forced ....

Instead this is a story of her shrieks ...were they allowed? shrieks with questions ....seeking answers, seeking justice . This is a story of how those shrieks were silenced ...how the eyes were silenced.If you listen carefully, you can still hear that silence. But make sure you cover your ears because there is nothing more deafening.

This was supposed to be a story of a 6 year old girl.
Instead,it became a dark memory.


Friday, July 4, 2014

The First Time ...

Back in the days when people did not know that there was such a thing called a hug, did they ever realise the magic of touch , accompanied by a touch of magic? History tells us that when the first man discovered that his food tasted better when fire touched it, he broke into a small jig of sorts. Maybe that was happiness calling out to him. Did he ever register that?

Imagine the first person who broke something because he was angry. Think about the first person who wrote down his feelings because he did not know what was messing up his head. When he kept his pen down and exhaled -- that must have felt good!

Imagine the first two people who fell in love -- When they didn't really understand what was happening to them ; when they thought that the butterflies in their stomach was actually because of a bad meal they had or when they broke into silly smiles and thought that was highly unusual -- would they know their hearts would break too?

Imagine the first guy who experienced a heartbreak. Do you think he felt the same physical pain that you and I have felt sometime or the other? When a small drop of water peeped out from his eyes and his vision blurred -- did he worry he was probably losing his eyesight because he lost the person he loved the most? Do you think he felt the urge to cry unless there were no tears left in him to give it to the one who gave it to him in the first place? Do you think he still could not understand why he always felt that someone was kicking him hard in his guts all the time?