Deciding a Gift or How I Got Anxiety for No Reason

The dates of a calendar mean nothing much for work means weekdays and some sacrificed weekends. But then it’s a particular day of some month and you realize that an event is about to occur soon for which you have to be prepared. The preparation involves very less about the physical make up of your attire or body and in the rarest of times remotely constitutes which you are an expert of. It is in concern of a composition, well thought out, expertly crafted, uniquely suited and fashioned in pursuance of conveying a birthday gift. At that point, with a pen or spoon or phone in hand, or standing, lying, sitting, jostling as the case may be, you encounter what the astronauts often talk about - ‘zero gravity’, except in your case, you have those feet firmly planted where you left them to be, attached to a body that has not left the known neighbourhood of solid ground, and yet you are now losing yourself rudderless in a maze, starting with the question –“What to gift?”

There can be no right answer. Trick question.

In the recent months to come, there are several occasions of such quality which will present a similar dilemma. Batman has taught me to have a contingency plan ready, but being a generally bad student, I have no plan prepared yet, although the thought buzzes annoyingly around me. I have begun to take longer walks in order to have time to think and figure out the perfect gift. I have become a brooding monk, and as the days fly away in the dust, the mad scientist at the verge of discovery will gradually take over. I hope it won’t come to the stage of a desperate and cornered politician. Nevertheless, I have learned a valuable lesson, something I learn every year but every year with flowers and the paddy, once the harvest is cleared, the lesson too fades away. I realise I know nothing about the people close to me.

I know something about what they like or they don’t because I have my choices to catalogue them by. However where I have no point of reference, the librarian simply jots them down in pieces of paper, stuffing them anywhere that is handy at the moment, and promptly forgets afterwards. I have listened to these people talk, enthusiastically, ardently, compassionately, honestly, but I have absorbed nothing. A sponge has more retaining capacity than me I am sure. I tell myself that it doesn’t make me a bad person. Unfortunately, I am not that confident that those persons will tell that to themselves about me too when I end up giving something that, when ripped out of the wrapping paper, doesn’t scream out “THOUGHTFUL.”

I honestly love people. I love their stories and minds. But I find no energy to judge them on the encounters I have with them nor the information I obtain. I simply immerse myself in the conversation, like a holiday maker in some beach, sitting on the sand, cradling a bottle of beer, looking at nothing but seeing everything, and leaving the beach unburdened. Conversations, when they don’t involve work, shouldn’t be like work, having to sift through for broken knowledge. Because that’s what assumptions precisely are. We find the pieces spread across many interactions under incomparable circumstances, and expect the jagged, scarred picture to be what the person is. It’s easy to just ask what they want and gift them with something they would truly enjoy. Instead I am expected to find something they may just like enough to smile saint-like, and hopefully not put it away in some Narnia closet, never to be found again. The worst case will simply inspire the three R’s of gifting – Re-packing, Re-gifting, Re-cycling. And by saving that person from suffering through this same anxiety of having to decide what to get as a gift for another, I shall consider my stupidly overthought gift to be the best one actually.

As I said, there cannot be a right answer.

Un-deading a Writer

It didn’t take long for life to squeeze out my dreaming and fantasising self. It was a mostly painless process. I imagine I was like the frog that thought it was enjoying a Jacuzzi while slowly being boiled to soup. It was the end of creation, nothing Armageddon-like, just the quietest of deaths in general. No one mourned for no one noticed nor cared as quickly surrogate amusement increasingly became part of the daily routine. Somewhere in the virtual drug induced sleep, I lolled once too often, and let my creativity guzzle out the last spit of life. It could have returned as a vampire, nocturnal and sporadic, if I had given it a proper burial, but there was a growing discomfort of self-doubt that worked wonders to let the loss remain unacknowledged and ignored; it became a glob of putrefied old idea and the liquid stank of failure.

It hasn’t been great without that nagging and attention seeking self which would make me vomit out words one after the other to see if they made any sense as they appeared in some physical form.

But death cannot be eternal as life isn’t eternal too. So, I returned to the undead. I realized for another time that it’s not happiness or sadness that made me write, it was my stupid ego that pushed the cart over the rainbow bridge, hoping to avoid the absolute muck, and land on a semi decent piece of literature to remember the day by. I would forget what I had written just as soon as I put the last full-stop in place, and would write again the next day, the desire to express clawing at the keyboard in synchronized patterns.

The gladness of having made something that at least sounded good when read out loud satisfied me, and pushed away that heavy blanket that continually bows us down in. The thick cosy blanket someone had put over me, over you, promising safety and security. It is woven with the needle pressure of getting a good job, the thread work is pulled with the will of finding a profitable career, the covers hide well and present a functional family, and the frills uselessly advertise a life well lived though all they do is get dirty. This blanket or adult sized tent keeps you safe from the sun and the rain, the cold and the storm, but is the weather all that a place has to offer? You sometimes get curious to see what else is out there but a sudden breeze proves to be too chilly sensitive skin, and you never dare to pull it away from you. By the time you may have realized that you have lived the life of a slave with the total experience of a child, that tent becomes your shroud and all you have the energy left for is to lie straight with your eyes shut, waiting for the grim reaper to roll a dice and place you in your box.

It doesn’t matter how I started. I have reached where I was supposed to though I didn’t know it when I began.

Teaching is part of life

Teaching has become a part of the daily routine. It's been a decade since I started giving private tuitions to the local school children. I still remember when my grandmother suggested that I should try to earn my pocket money and introduced me to my first student. She used to teach as well but never took any payment. She believed that there is no price tag for education, it cannot be a commodity. To be frank, my financial condition prevented me then, and even now, to enjoy such a philosophy, but I have always made sure that I gave my full dedication as a teacher.

I have been lucky in my share of students. Although of various levels of intellect, all were more or less obedient. They were never "rebellious". The one thing about India is how we still treat our teachers with the same respect as with our parents. This has helped when I occasionally needed to be strict. 

Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked when I had this 7 year old as a student. 

To be honest, although I have spent a considerable portion of my life around kids, I have never felt much sentiment toward them. I'm not the one who likes to hold babies or pull a cute kid's cheeks. Children don't have the effect on me that people expect from me. I had been reluctant thus to take this little fellow as my student as well but the mother believed I had some mystical power of eternal knowledge and felt under my guidance her son will shine like a newly scrubbed diamond. (I don't make the propaganda, it just follows). Once I saw him I knew there would be a problem because that pampered little devil understood no authority. He won't even weep if beaten (his mother told me this, I never, could never if I tried, beat a kid) and didn't bother when scolded. His mother told me to punish him if he didn't behave (as if that would help!) and I was at a loss. 

The first four months were torture. He would not listen to what I said, wouldn't do his tasks on time, you get the picture. I would come home and tell my mother how I would definitely quit the next day. But I didn't. Somehow I went on. 

Then one day he asked me about zombies - how they were formed, what they would eat, how they could be killed. I promised to answer his questions if he finished his tasks on time. He did and I kept my promise. I have been keeping those promises ever since. 

-

It's nearly the end of the annual term. The mother says that I need to continue the next term for the son insists upon it. And she feels he won't respond to anyone else this well. 

I remember what my grandmother said to me and believed in. I know I am still not in a position to teach for free, I do need that money. But I do know how that kid loves to sit close to me when he would do his sums, how he loves to pull my cheek when he is happy that he got an answer correct and how he makes me smile when he proudly shows his mother his report card and tells the exam was easy because I had explained everything to him. 

I am not saying I'm a great teacher. I don't even know how much of his improvement is due to me. I do know but that he has changed me a lot. I have become a warmer, a calmer and more understanding person. Most importantly I have learned how important it is to treat people how they want to be treated rather than how you want to treat them. I think that makes me a little less self centered as well. 

What I mean to say is education isn't a one way street. It's a straight exchange between two individuals. A teacher is benefited just as much as a student is and there lies the true value of education. Or at least that's what I think it is, probably what my grandma wanted me to understand as well. 

Is this something I only think? No way. Is it something we should all think? I very well think so, yes. 

So let's not give up teaching, let's not be give up on sharing for that's also what education is. Even if you're not a teacher, never let go of an opportunity to educate someone, to share your knowledge . You will be pleasantly surprised of what you learn about your ownself. 

Dawn of Ju...OHMYFREAKINGGOD Look at Wonder Woman!!!!

Disclaimer: Spoiler free, I swear I do not mention her or any other character in these sentences below.

For the last one month, I have had tiny hopes riding on tiny nightmares about a Friday of March, not because it will be a thirteenth and all hell will break loose, but it will be the 25^th of March, when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice finally releases and all hell will definitely break loose. A slight turn of events (well, it’s actually my comic loving equal half) lead me to a glorious opportunity (that would have made me shoot myself had I refused), and armed with popcorn and stupid grins, us two happy beings eased ourselves in comfortable chairs for a premiere show of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice *dum dum dummm*

The movie unfolds like the pages of a comic book; it takes its time to go through each panel, allowing the viewer to understand the story, make out meanings of the surrounding, and to see the bigger picture with its own eyes and not just what the director wanted to. For Snyder is cruel when he is being kind. He shows us a lot of things, he revealed the full potential of the DC-verse, he didn’t hold back; he took a chunk of DC lore and shoved it in front of the camera and showed that DC movies don’t need separately scripted stories, they do not have to be untraceable adaptations, that DC stories are good, no, great, and they make the DC-verse spectacular. So he mashes up like maybe at least five stories, pounds on them, and moulds them into something singular, something new. So when you sit and watch the movie, you know which story is unfolding, but just when you think you know the end, just before the last page, you realize it’s the middle of yet another story.  And when the last panel is finally there, it’s a bittersweet feeling for it’s not over, and there is the torture while waiting for the next issue movie.

p.s if you want my rating, I will tell you to rate it yourself. Go watch the movie.

That's Batman protecting me

The Almost 3 am Post

This is one of those nights when I don’t really feel myself. Then again what is myself, what is this self, for I have been a different person a year before, somebody else again the year before that, and now that I lie on my bed, and feel my eyes glazing over as if a sheet of clear plastic shields them from the light of the bulb, I remember a different person, a different me. A different me with a different life, with a different love, smiling at different jokes, whispering different sighs. It’s all so different, my mind wonders along wisps of fantasy, and as the eyes find more whites and blurs, whether those memories are mine, or borrowed, I am no longer sure.

A yearning fills me, I can feel its threadlike fingers wrapping around my heart, cocooning it in a warm, dark net. I long for that person who made that different me smile, sigh, love. My fingers stretch forward and search for him, and I suddenly realize my face is buried in his shoulder, he is that close. I smile, and hope he can feel it, through his clothes, his skin, through the warmth.  I imagine feeling his arm on my back, holding my tight, pressing me against him, securing the hug, ensuring that it lasts. The other arm just lies there, dangling at his side. I don’t know what it is supposed to do, I don’t know whether I’m allowed to hold it.

I remember looking at that arm, for I’m afraid to lift my face and look at you, I’m afraid you will disappear if I do. But for all the reasons, known, unknown, right, wrong, I look up and you’re looking at me. But who are you? I know the smile, those eyes, that nose, that hair, that neck, but they are not yours, they belong to many, many others before you, many others after you. But what does it matter if I fail to give you a name? names have failed me before, words have betrayed me, more often than I can count. I will let myself gaze at those eyes, feel them calling out to me, feel their hunger, the lust, the love, for soon enough they will disappear, that much I know. Do you wonder who I am? Am I the “me” you were looking for? Or do you also see a different set of lips, a different pair of eyes, a different nose? Do you feel a different kiss, for I know we just kissed and it is a kiss that can’t be contained by memory, a kiss I will forget as soon as I will open my eyes. I do want to talk about the kiss, but it would break my heart, and I don’t want to mend a broken heart alone.

I am here with you, and I will be with you even after I don’t remember this. It feels good that at some place we are having this moment, letting it last through eternity. It gives me hope that someday we will be in this moment and we will remember it afterwards.

I will just be here with you for a while longer, with all of you, with all of me. A shudder runs through me as you pull me even closer. The heavy breathing, the loud heartbeats, the rushing memories create a heady rhythm.

Maybe before the dream breaks, she will reach out and hold that hand.

Dust on the Keyboard

Every time someone has asked me to start my blog again, I have had to sit back and wonder but write about what? The words were there, the ideas as well, but something always made me close the word document after the first line.

There’s definitely no scarcity of topics to pick from. One glittering boon of tech advancement is the bubbling and babbling pond-world of the internet, where you dip a finger, and there you have - all the mundane and not so mundane, the crazy, the brilliant, the loud, and the quiet, the ignored, the forgotten, waiting to be picked up, talked about. Type a few words, let the insta-search produce humorous, reader friendly socio-political articles, lengthy in depth, lived in, in situ analysis, and thesis about almost everything under the still warm Sun. Every thought, every fragmentary, partially formed shred of muse is documented, published, displayed. And witnessing this rumbling mill of activity, I feel stunned, and quite envious. For these armies of writers-analysts, who come from different vocations and practices, have so easily mastered the concepts of literary theories, producing engaging strings of words seemingly effortlessly, whereas even after four years of continuous training, I fumble about the idea of literature, poetry, frankly, intimidates me, and I struggle to find the confidence to pen down, to give form to my muse. I am a disheartening case.

Thus I have had to sit back and wonder if it is still alright to talk about the simple; autumn sky and the lazy afternoon, the tired salesman who asks for a glass of water, the rooftops and the memories, the failures and the fears. May be everything has be said and told and discussed, but there is a chance we will find something new if we start again. 

A Dull Poem

There is the crowd and here is me,

In an attempt to find unity --

I bridge the gap with eager steps,

Jostling for a place in the mesh.

It's hard to breathe.

It's hard to see.

I feel so tiny in this throng of human bees.

Buzzing and moving, to gather, to store,

An array of minds all synced to a single core.

I met Jack, on his way from work,

He’s a party loving and hardworking clerk,

He hates to be dull, and thus makes sure --

Like everybody, to follow the new haute couture.

His wife is happy, his second car works fine,

His boss laughs at his jokes and in fine hotels he loves to dine,

He hoped I was good, but didn’t ask for more,

His chaps were waiting with beers and cricket scores.

As Jack waved me bye, vanishing in the swarm,

Leaving me thinking, for a moment and few,

As I stood aside, watching the crowd pass by,

I wondered why Jack was called dull,

--- and not me nor you.