Time traveller

Kafele means "would die for"

Layla means "born at night"

Kafele: Why do you think it is not possible to travel back in time?

Layla: There's no need to elude the existent for something you've already lived through.

Kafele: But the intent could be one of making an impeccable past.

Layla: And then? Travel in time again through the flawless past to reach the present?

Kafele: That would actually facilitate populating the old life and re-living it.

Layla: What ground would one gain by perfecting the past? E.g. if you travelled to the past you would only peril our togetherness for all you know.

Kafele: So you think you won't be there in my sprawling new present, if I returned from a journey in time?

Layla: If you correct and check and watch your moves in your last past you won't set out looking for me, my need would be eradicated completely.

Kafele: Arguably it is also possible to travel forth in time, so perhaps I should do that.

Layla: Why would you wish to send yourself forward in time without experiencing the intervening?

Kafele: I want to familiarize myself with my future; just a glimpse and I'll be back.

Layla: What bearing will it have on the current scheme of things once you're back?

Kafele: Why should anything change?

Layla: May be you'll see your prospective form to be an accomplished and affluent merchandiser and when you return you'd think of ways of becoming potentially rich. You might sell off all your cattle. You wouldn't need a shepherdess like me then.

Kafele: So you think you won't be there in this same treacherous present, if I returned from a journey in time?

Layla: Work brought us together and need knits us close, when you're wealthy and refined, my presence would reduce to mere indignity.

Kafele: I'm stuck in time! Where's the exit?

Layla: Twenty aeons passed on Earth when you last travelled to space for 2 years and still all you wish to do is forsake me and go?

Kafele: No wonder nothing quite makes sense to me anymore. That would also include you!

Layla: You are like an astronomer who feels complete and accomplished when he looks at the sky to find some points and decides that put together they look like a deer.

Kafele: Those points make great constellations and the brightness of the stars makes great stories.

Layla: Look between the constellations into the black of the night.

Kafele: You are looking in the wrong place.

Layla: "There are just as many stories to be narrated in the dark spots as there are in the bright stars." [Jodie Picoult]

N-aimless

Just when my blog was entering remission I revived it with a jolt. The story "a Janus me a Janus you" was to have 3 chapters, 2 of which never saw the light of the day. That speaks of my love for my blog.

Most people who blog, write addressing an audience, assuming people would read and appreciate their writing. But mine are always monologues with me being the script writer, the Deliverer and the audience. It's not that bad actually coz that ways I find out how badly I suck plus I also know that I'm not naturally humorous! I pretty well can do the same with a Diary but I'm too lazy to buy one and scribble on it. Actually I'm not even sure if I can write, as in write write, on a piece of paper anymore. I can at best doodle random line art or draw crazy circles on paper while painfully enduring and traversing the entire length of breathtakingly long meetings and sessions where gothic people keep haranguing for hours throwing words and phrases like long-term strategy, vision, capitalize, monetize, customer delight, net-net, diiferentiator, we are here, we need to get there, bottleneck and profitomania and lossophobia.

Umm...I can't retrieve when exactly I started preferring the tak-tak of typing over the joy of holding a pencil [{(I enjoyed sharpeneing the pencil more than writing with it. With due excitement I would take on a new pencil but half way through it's length I would get bored of it and start thinking of ways of diminishing it's length. Then with growing age I upgraded my pencil interests and got to using mechanical ones, in myriad of colors and designs, how I adored them!! But they couldn't hold my ineterst for too long either. Then came the era of fountain pens in Vth standard I guess. To start with I got the really cheap as in inexpensive ones coz I would break the nib every second day. And then the next upgrade in Level II i.e. in the domain of pens happened and I got a Parker. Boy! some joy it was to write or glide with it. Then needs became more functional and time as ever shrinking as it was, got me using ball pens. Ball pens aren't great fun though but they make you feel good when you exhaust the refills and write really fast during exams. Actually in my engineering days it became more of a contention to exhaust refill after refill filling up the scripts with illegible and unintelligible formulas or "rough work" for your mathematical problems. I used to take pride in the fact that I could, on a conservative estimate, finish 2 refills during each semester exam; inadvertently I was the university topper.)

This non chalance is deliberate btw. I am determined to not think while writing this one time. Actually I want to see what I land up with hence I'll be all over the place, totally unstructured and uncontrolled in this post. The exercise to follow this bold act of flippant writing revelation is to self read what I have churned out and analyze my thoughts and the speed at which they transform and calculate the frequency at which they ditch me. May be I'll be able to draw out a pattern, graph is more like it and give it some name like the thoughtospeed curve or a non linear notioncaustic ellipsoid.}

{This fact, that I change my thoughts more frequently than required, dawned upon me when I got verbally sledehammered by my Arch-nemesis for sidetracking from a conversation and hopping onto the next one when my Arch-nemesis was least prepared for it, rather hadn't got done with his lengthy and profane last speech. (all his speeches have the aforesaid attributes, obviously by virtue of being the Arch-nemesis I can't give in to liking any even if I want to, this he would say is self control btw)}]

So I can't figure out when exactly my fondness for the keyboard outgrew my love for pencils and sharpeners and erasers. I'm also and avid stationery collector FYI. I still buy pencils and erasers and post-its and pens and more. The deal is I buy a lot and I spend a lot which some people say is unhealthy and detrimental to your finances in the long run. But I make my investments in time and save (only a meagre amount) every month. I put my money in ELSSes, MFs, NSC, PPF, LIC, recurring deposits and fixed deposits, what more? I'm doing good on that front plus right now I'm thinking that while I say this I sound like Rebecca Bloomwood of the "Confessions of a shopaholic" fame.

(I also have to throw in intelligent stuff into this writing so that later when I read it myself I know that I am witty, it's just a feel good factor and an early morning boost.)

I think I lost my interest in pen and paper when I got my first laptop, actually not completely though coz I still used to write mock CATs which gave me enough proximate opportunities with paper and pencil. It's PGDBM that did this to me, yes it's PGDBM!!!! The feeling of holding a pencil is so alien now :(

It's been years since we parted ways. A strife with pens aren't over completely coz there are those Sudoku and Crosswords days but pencils...sigh! not anymore....

{(I don't even know how to name this post now. I really can talk a lot...of sense!! and this can't be lengthened anymore coz I don't wish to get a graph with a high error factor.) Office work (meaningful tak-tak-ing) beckons!!}

a Janus me a Janus you: I

Recently I've moved into a new house. So while I was de-cluttering I came across this diary-o-mine which has been with me for ages now. As I was leafing through it, I chanced upon this story of a 22 year old who used to cook for me when I was posted in Bangalore; Nikhat Rehman she was called. Nikhat used to work her days off as a pantry maid for a Bank and in the evenings she used to cook for me. Nikhat had a strange appetite for distinction and emergence, she'll come out of the cocoon and grow into a beautiful butterfly someday she'd say. I loved her for she was in many ways a reflection of me.
Nikhat had a story. I never saw her as satiated as she looked the day when she poured out her heart to me and served me a platter full of her life for a meal. It was then that I'd decided to play the raconteur for her for her story deserves public acclaim and her life demands appurtenance.

As fate had it for her Nikhat lost her husband when she was 20. Yakub Hasan was an intercity taxi driver who met with a fatal accident en route one of his journeys homewards. The exuberant, bubbly, chirpy Nikhat was now reduced to a vapid widow.
"Don't overdress, stay black clad", instructed her assumedly well wishing khala, her only pivot in being. Nikhat followed the societal norms that were too stringent for a 20 yr old, so at times she purposely faltered, she would wear scarlet lipstick behind closed doors and try on the racy lingerie that Yakub had bought for her. For hours she would adore her image and sleep contentedly that night.
In their one year of attachment, they lived life in its entirety. Yakub was a level headed, dependable, strikingly attractive man and Nikhat was a compelling beauty. They would dress up for social gatherings, proudly check themselves out in the mirror, their appearances a reinforcement of their being a heaven-sent couple would appease them beyond measures. At the parties they would be flooded with compliments and whenever their eyes struck each other’s the corners of their mouths would curve up to bring out a beaming smile and a gleam of pride in their unflinching gaze. After returning they kissed passionately, the kiss that opened all the flood gates, a kiss that kindled yearnings. They writhed in unison, rhythmically as if riding a tide. She demanded and he served without judging her, they looked into each other’s eyes, the look had streaks of passion, love, commitment and comfort. She fitted like a dream in the nook of his arm and his tender embrace would do away with the tedium and vehemence that usually features in every couple’s lives. Such was their love, of support, of consolation, of relief, of compassion and encouragement was their story.
Yakub’s death turned Nikhat into a mere dreary, somber frame of a woman. The world buried Yakub but she continued to live with his ghost.

A borrowed thought....

I am the one who is long in the tooth. I am the cold dregs at the bottom of a cup. I am the merchandise no one wants. I am the untouched tin on the back shelf.

I don't bleed; instead I store within me the spores of a million hates.

I carry on my back every fear, every dark whisper, and every tormented thought that can cross the human mind....My name when spelt aloud reads defeat.

This is how most of us think when inflicted by the deadly self persecution disease...Dense and unfathomable ain't it?...Sharing will those who haven't read the book...Borrowed from Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair.

The Control Operation

We are bigtime freakshows!!! We trip on the smallest opportunity given to us for exercising control.

Interestingly today evening at the Delhi Airport I saw a mother-son duo truly exceptional in their ways. The tiny kid wasn't wearing ANY warm clothes, was left defenseless against the ruthless cold, glaring in the Winter's face and still darting around with joy, while the mom herself fully loaded with all the layered protection didn't freak out at all!! This happens???? :O

Had it been a mom from my "mother's clan" she would be inanely anxious with sweat beads adorning her forehead even in winters...They just can't let their kids out in the Winter the way they want to.....

I think all of us vicariously do away with our insecurities by forcing things upon the others lower in order to us, the ones who succumb to our controlling tendencies, the ones who can be taken for granted, the ones who seldom react....

We did that to machines as well!! Someone remembered to add a Ctrl key to the keyboard, another remembered the conrol function in interpretation and processing of data....no matter what every result is completely specified by a rule ALWAYS!!

Therefore most of us end up doing what we OUGHT to do, not what we WANT to do, with due consideration given to all the parameters that control our existence.

It's hard to imagine the world with all of us breaking free some day from all that binds us down, all that is non-pivotal for our survival...Turmoil or Harmony????

Expectations

It is a funny word...amuses me like nothing else. I know not much about etymology and stuff..but had learnt during my MBA prepartions that the word has a Latin root; exspectare where ex means OUT and spectare means TO LOOK. The Latin coined the word and left it onto us to run with the baton...

A queer thought struck me today...Why do we never say a woman is carrying or developing an offspring? We instead choose to say she is expecting...There you go, the setting happens right before the time a child has arrived, that's his first and formal introduction with expectation. Even before a baby is OUT we start TO LOOK for precast beliefs, set our hopes and aspirations from him, device/design his role in our lives. He is expected.....he is not invited or awaited or longed for to live with us the way he desires, he's expected!!

Funny isn't it how homo sapiens are programmed to expect right at inception. It is injected in his blood stream before marking the natal arrival. An embryo is expected to plant itself right in the womb of the bearer, in case he doesn't he's surgically seperated from the host even if it means terminating a life. And this modus operandi and several other manifestations of the same in the due course of life never ceases to exist and amuse me!!!

The True Mirage: a short story

Like a rejected pariah they threw her out, just the way people discard disposable paper cups after drinking to the bottom, never to look back at her. She trudged the path shown to her, only to be invested with gloom and despondency with the setting sun. Like they say..whatever happens life has to go on, so it went on!

Her dreams had the imagery of a real, true mirage to pursue. She tried to detach herself from this relentless chase but the heart wouldn't give up. Wild thoughts of unpuzzling the mirage tugged her, and drawn was she time and again. The world wanted her while she wanted her oasis of bliss. She would set out everyday on an unyielding journey, ignoring the world and rest until it became her cherished passion. With every setting sun the dream got pushed farther and farther away, and she closer and more connected to her surreal goal making it a crying need. Tears couldn't wipe off the desire so strong and persistent nor could the wretched world!

A mysterious dove perched on her roof one morning to tell her that the mirage wasn't very far from where she stood but the cruelty of life would demand complete oblivion and a cessation of wordly ties, she could never return to where she belongs.....

She had a dialogue with the dove, she wanted the mirage with the world. The dove was resolute, would give her one or none. She had a dialogue with the world, the world was resolute too. Moreover, they promised her a similar mirage not too remote with no enforced stipulation and with all the goodness of the world. In haste they lead her to the place where she thought rested her fantasies in deep coffers.

In the flurry of events and thoughts she at once decided to let go off the old pursuit and hurriedly openend the coffers only to find the bugs of woes and pain. The looming plague prompted her to run back to the world, her haven which she had decided never to betray. The world knew her no more, she didn't belong anymore, her woes were not to be apportioned and addressed. Like a rejected pariah they threw her out, just the way people discard disposable paper cups after drinking to the bottom, never to look back at her. She trudged the path shown to her, only to be invested with gloom and despondency with the setting sun. Like they say..whatever happens life has to go on, so it goes on!