Stones of Understanding...

i spin around my stones of understanding every single time...
words words and nothing but words in this reality...
make or break my faith in the rest...
of which i am an integral part...
am i supposed to just undo my understanding every single time..
whenever it surfaces and...resurfaces..and yet again..surfaces??
it takes a huge toll on my existence for all it is worth..
this reality makes it more difficult to deal with..
a fragile being caught in the rapture of the so-called life..
instantly..i create an alternate dimension to move to..
to sustain...to cope...and rebuild the faith..and continue..
in this vague yet intimidating reality...
how am i to keep the stones within..
when getting rid of them makes more sense..day by day! --some earthling

Dazed & Confounded

So what's new other than being sucked up into another vortex of life? I warn you, before you go on - this is a bit of a philosophical/existentialist rant(like many of my other ramblings). There's enough things in this world to really throw you off balance just when you think you're figuring it all out. I sometimes really can't fathom whether to laugh at the absurdities of life or marvel at the irony of existence. On the one hand, I love this thing called 'life' because it offers you a perspective of the world that no one else can see. On the other, I hate the concept of it, because it's packed with affirmatives and negatives that are often juxtaposed together and gives you the feeling that life just doesn't fuckin' make sense. I mean, why? Why, for gosh sakes, are we really here? I mean, who cares? Say something happens to me or you, like right now. Other than the people to whom we really matter to, our existence is totally vacuous. Ok then you might say since there may be a few people who do care about your absence, it should make some sense. But then, they are gonna keep living on, maybe with you in their memory. So I feel like, why the hell should I be attached to things and people in this reality? But then, however objectively I look at life, the subjectivity of it all just screws up the knowledge and wisdom you've gathered. How much ever I feel like detachment is the way to go, there's something so strong that pulls you in the way of attachment. But then again, attachments don't matter eventually. So there, see I've put myself in this thinking-time loop. I think I get it and the next second, I don't get one bit of it. These days my cynicism seems to get the better of me. But something just keeps gnawing at your insides that I should be doing this or that. I feel good when I save a dog. Why? I jus' don't know. So despite all the negativity and chaos, I feel there's some purpose but can't put a finger to it. And that angers me, because there seems to be no focus. And you have to fight the good fight to live the life you want to. So I guess the only thing that gets me off is purging out these thoughts that get churned out by my thinking-time loop. And until I strike a balance and get off the chronos, you gotta put up with this existentialist crap. Have fun!

Not a dog’s day

(Ok, this post is atleast 2 weeks old, just found the time.) Perhaps the highlight of today is sitting at a coffee shop in the second floor of a shopping mall, in ‘mid-town’ Chennai and sipping on a cappuccino and looking out the glass window at the rain-mud-and-filth soaked traffic below. I neither feel pity nor wear a smug smile as I witness the rat-race because it really hasn’t been long since I was in the sludge, wading through murky waters which are obviously a result of our freakin awesome drainage system. Don’t get me wrong when I say that I’m in the shopping mall and contemplating life in such elite quarters. Mind you, I’m not a fucking elite, though I can be and sometimes act like one(and that’s a whole different argument altogether) just to empathize with things on both sides of the spectrum. I just freaking hate mindless consumerism but I will hate it from inside a glitzy shopping mall. I’m a minimalist, a bloody local with thoughts verging on the extreme. On the rare instances I will pay Rs.90 for a coffee with which I can sit comfortably in a lounge-like ambience for more than a couple of hours trying to make sense of Dito Montiel’s interview in Filmmaker mag or Arundhati Roy’s incendiary  ‘Shape of the Beast’(ok I ain't going for pretense there). As I wait for the guys to get back, I thought, ok fine, with all the commotion outside and inside my head, lemme vent out stuff.

Why is today not a dog’s day? Well, then don’t ask me if every other day is a dog day. Not for me, it’s not. Today, as with any other day I travel/commute, I witnessed about a 150 dogs, bitches, bitches with babies inside them and pups scattered all around in the rain doing what they would normally do. Experience a ‘dog’s life’. Having the life of an ‘underdog’. Spending a Dog day afternoon. Groundhog day. See? More references. No wonder we termed it so. (ok so groundhog doesn’t have anything to do with a dog but still they sound the same)And today was more than normal for them, especially with the cold and almost omnipresent uncertainty that the rains bring with them. And earlier in the day, before we came to Chennai, we had to transport 5 wet, shivering pups (who’d been taken away from their mother) from the soggy paddy fields to our humble abode in the village. Back to the 150 canines, their faces were so full of implication, that I could write a page each about what they were thinking. I mean, if they actually do. Or do they just live in the moment? Taking each day as it came? Surprisingly, many of our human kind seemed to have the same expression, or were they worse? Can’t tell. Really. But these days, my guess is we humans are becoming pathetic in more ways than one. So, pretty soon, to say, ‘it’s a dog’s day’ will become NOT a bad thing after all. Because, as people, especially as Indians, we suffer more than we can endure. No I take that back. We suffer uhh…more than what we think we can endure(coz we can endure shit-just-about-anything), but as we get accustomed to that, we reach the next phase of suffering and we endure that too and the chain continues. So henceforth, thou shall pat each other in the backs, in congratulatory delight, because we love to revel in our hopelessly romantic status as sufferers. (pic from google)

Of the mind...

Just when you think you know it all, you get a reality check, a real fucking hard slap in your face. A lesson in humility, modesty…about the greatest ever lesson ever taught or will be taught – life. Yes, you can swear or scoff all you want, but it sometimes feels like an existential crisis out here, I mean, in the mind. Maybe ignorance is really bliss. Why do we have to try to learn so much and suddenly have to realize one day(that oft repeats itself) that you gotta unlearn it all and then relearn it all. Arrrrrggggghhh, the irony of it all!!!