Today I saw the death of the constant. I saw the world turn, I sensed destiny spin and I felt the ground shift. I learned today that the foundation of your life can in fact become unstable. I saw love take a back-seat to the most unnecessary things.

I refuse to be a part of this. As a man, I'm beholden to my words. They are immutable and unchangeable. There is no honor in a system which allows me to back-track. But here I realize a large part of the mistake is mine. I have made my family believe that I'm a child. If I want to be taken seriously as a man, I have to start behaving as one. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to make some of the most difficult decisions of my life. Unfortunately, this means leaving behind some of the most important parts of my old life.

But I'm glad she came into my life. I feel a sense of elation which I never believed I would. I feel free and unchained. There is nothing beautiful about the Indian. It is a world of unasked for complexities and unwanted necessities. I'm leaving it all behind, as a part of the past I'm neither happy about or proud of. 

I'm a constant disappointment. I've tried hard not to be, but my best just wasn't good enough. Therefore I shall remove myself from the game. I shall no longer be disappointing because I shall no longer participate. I'm going to play a new game now. A game where I am what I am, and nothing more. The people in my life will the people who can accept this. 

In the midst of all this turmoil, I shall reject God. Absentee motherfucker. All through my life, I have weathered my storms myself. The one time I ask for a lifeline, and he's not there. I begged for his help and his guidance. Now I know what I should have known a long time ago. Amar Chitra Katha was just that. A good story to entertain the mindless mass that is the general public.

I reject the god that rejects me. I reject the family that doesn't see my feelings. I reject the culture that enslaves me.

The value of words...

What is the value of your word? At what price do you forgo your self-respect? Can you stand strong when the way out is ever so easy?

Though the reason for this posting might be seemingly trivial, it provides the bed-rock for assessing the integrity of an individual - the value of their words.

I had a wager with a colleague about an important event at office. I was confident of victory as my web was spread far and wide and I was aware of the decision before it was even contemplated by others.

My colleague on the other hand, was swimming in the deep-end with a perspective which was mired in opinion. She was so convinced that she bet a significant amount on that opinion. In the end, I won.

Now comes the interesting part. I offered her a way out - say one sentence. That sentence merely required her to state how I'm right, as always. Though the sentence was irritating, it would have helped her avoid the payment. Considering how her views typically irritate me, I fully expected her to grab on to the life-line I had thrown her. She flat-out refused.

People are strange. I don't get them at all. Just when you expect sand, you come across a mountain. It got me thinking about my price-tag. I'm fairly confident about who I am. I have faced, and continue to face, a never-ending barrage of criticism for every single step I take and I weather it without regret. To the point that arrogance has become my calling card, and I walk tall in the delusion that I have no price. But here, I offer a way out, and in my opinion a simple way out. And yet, there are no takers.

This is the kind of randomness which reaffirms my faith in the human race. No matter how rare, you still see people who value their words to almost illogical levels. Words are powerful. They grant you control, they shower you with fame, they make you infamous, they reward you with audience and yet there are so few who really understand the sharp edge of the weapon they wield. 

Tested in Fire, Born of Steel

Inspired by the latest Adidas cricket ad. I loved the words, and tried to make a few of my own.

The walls just keep getting bigger,

The crowd is yelling, mocking, daring,

Spotlights bear down like an angry sun,

My body screams of pain and sacrifice,

While the heart and mind are numb to all,

Pressure only increases, the rewards decrease,

Voices of support die away like an echo,

Taunts and failures become my shadow,

And just when reason is about to die -

I'm going to stand up one more time,

To shine forth and eclipse the sun,

To bear down and silence the roar,

In this moment, at this place, I am invincible

The Sapphire Wind

Today is another sweep down the eternal corridors of a never-ending spiral. The fanciful flights of birds break the dawn, and yet the birds are an after-blur set against the cold light of an alien moon. Here we belong, and here we remain. Even though the air that seeps through the puerile soil reminds us that suffocation is a mercy, we smile through the dark curtains of our own facades. The waves of our dreams and desires break upon a shore of our steadfast morals and sure-footed assumptions. Like dolphins we prance, little realizing our flights of freedom were confined to a plastic bowl for the amusement of the masses. Dance, they scream - and we do. Little aware that they dictated our actions.

Like puppets on an infinite string the minions fight, over Gods and Demons, over Love and Hate, over what we've already forgotten. All in all, the stardust seems to have broken down over and over till all thats left is mud. The endless crowd of insomniacs soar into the world of broken awareness. Vivid in the monochromatic shades of opportunity, the colors fade into a shapeless, formless amalgamation of constancy. The innocent laughter of children echo through the malignant walls of the abyss. The populace crawls within the belly of progress, churning and turning with the movement of insidious constellations. Some remain on the precipice, the sapphire winds blowing through raven locks. The final step to all the others that need to be walked remains hidden and locked away in a fortress of fear.

Woods that spoke

We walked on in woods that spoke,

Of lost dreams and shattered hopes,

In the rain of the last light of a dying sky,

Forever judged by silent eyes,

And yet when we slept, we marched on,

The purpose colored in vermilion,

And still we gave our eyes to see,

A glimpse of our Utopian insanity,

Where every success is steeped in loss,

The singular bite of a million faults,

The future cried a mother's sigh,

As still-born, we all arrived,

But yet we listen in the heat of anticipation,

For the breath of our own salvation,

And in yearning all faces turn to behold,

The silent bell, resplendent in gold,

But hark, this bell does not ring,

And tonight, no Myna sings,

For here and now we begin to walk,

And yet another day is lost in thought,

Eternally judged and found wanting,

Our backs are turned to the world taunting,

And we find our way into an absolute truth,

When you live for someone, your life bears fruit...

And time stood still

Every now and then, we stop as the world speeds on by. Through the incomprehensible blur of the constant landscape and the streaks left behind by the ghosts of memories, we slow down and breathe. In that moment, clarity becomes a beacon we cannot ignore, and through the gray haze of confusion, the future begins to form.

I wish we knew how to switch off our "Auto-Pilot" feature. We tend to become comfortable, averse to risk, rigid in mind and broken in spirit and we forget that sometimes risk becomes a key to a lock that we had forgotten about. How can we justify our complacence in a world where wonders never cease? But then we keep marching on, like mindless drones to the sound of a piper whose pipes were broken a long time ago. The music that leads us on is abhorrent to our ears, but the comfort we gain from numbers advises us to forgo the cacophony and believe in the merits of conformance. Through rain and hail and smiles and pain, we march on while always losing something intrinsic and beautiful along the way.

I was looking through the Facebook profile of one of my school-time buddies. He's married to the love of his life, and now with a child to herald a future of promise. Surrounded by friends and family. The best part about his profile was that he took a picture of every moment of his life. I was going through his albums, and it left me thinking about how blessed his life is. The pictures bound me to the screen, each picture another chapter in his story, rather their story. And it made me smile a little. Simultaneously, it also made regret how I've never wanted to be in photos.

40 years from now, I would have almost nothing to remind me of how much I've lived. I hope my mind will hold these memories in a chest which I will dust off then. Though I might have seen quite a bit of the world, I do not keep souvenirs. I maintain that I will return whenever I want to. But there are things which I want to cherish and there are times which I can never return to, and these are the hardest currency of all. For having gained it, I would never trade it - but I never accept it in the first place. Recently, I took a chance on something. The chance I took was something so out of character for me, I have a hard time believing it myself. But that chance led to something incredible. My days have grown brighter and my life feels rich. I am lost without words for I really want to describe in words the sheer freedom of leaping off a cliff and learning that we all have wings. We ride on starlight, and sleep on the moon. Our words melt and flow for now we no longer need to speak, because we already know. In being we are all we will be, absolute and pristine we shine. And the genesis of this post, the picture of a man and his son, the conversation of expectation and the response of unmitigated joy and pride was conducted in a picture, without a single word visible and without a single motion comprehensible...and time stood still.

Driftwood

Born into a reality that he had no hope of defining or affecting, he accepted the cruel trappings of fate. At a critical moment, he woke from a lucid dream of never-ending mazes when he chose to tread the path less chosen. On his awakening, there was clarity - and never was clarity bestowed on another so bereft of reason.

The hollowed out shell of the world he participated in screamed out in utter silence. Oh, he still had his options, but his options were too limited to be different. All in all, the beginning and the end was what he chose to perceive it as. Saddened beyond the infinite stretch of human hope, he woke that fateful morning to relish everything he had. He held what he always had in a way that lingered into eternity, his body striving to record everything like the parched desert soil absorbs the rain. Into the darkest corners of his emptiness, he let the light shine. He tenderly reached out to the promise of a future he would not behold.

With a single tear rolling down his left cheek, a symbol of the hallowed seas of fate, he stepped into the busy double-lane traffic - closing his eyes just as his feet touched the asphalt, imagining what heaven would hold for the broken...