White Oleander

I could do so many things right now. I could just leave this city and write a book. Spend a year with a business tycoon and go to places he goes, meet the people he does, chronicle his life for him and the world, I could be famous in movies, I could just turn out to be a certain someone in direct marketing, I could be someone in advertising as well. There are so many things I can be right now. The possibilities have expanded. I have a choice.

A choice for the good or for the worse? I dont know. But yes a choice. SO much like a white oleander, white, pure, virginal, pretty, full of possibilities. And poisionous.

Am not quite sure which way I wanna go or what it is that I want to become eventually. Everyday opens up so many more possibilities and so many more ways of growing, being someone and doing something.

Some would say its the time of bloom after the long winter, a change of landsacpe. But to them I would only say that yes it is. I am living this too just as I have braved the dry winter. But am not sure which way to choose, the one which will make me instantly famous or the one which will make me toil some and then get me fame.

Do I want fame? The only thing I have really wanted in my life. Yes. I want to be famous. Known for my work. Known for what I do and how I do it. I have always wanted to prove my worth and this is perhaps the time when I have the opputunity to do so as well.

I can choose any one of the choices and excel in anyone. Just need to choose.

Which one, remains to be seen.

It's Time

"i suppose you are right. there isnt a reason to keep on living and feeling sorry for yourself. I have been jilted in love too and not just once. there were always more people in his life. more women and more fun it seemed, i was just a tiny speck of something which was once valuable. professionally am not going brilliantly either, am just doing a job because it is a job and thats what i am supposed to do. am I good at it? was. once upon a time. now am just a relic. i am so many things today. so many things which were, i have done my time and paid my dues, done my sadness and done my pain. at the moment am empty, devoid of everything, emotions and any hope or anything else. day is all about jsut breathing in and then exhaling in the evening, if i was to vanish tomorrow i dont think many would care or want to know. i hardly have friends, those who are, are only till a certain limit. I just want to rest. in peace. dying is the easy way out. i just dont want to do any of this anymore. and that is my reason. what does one do when one is just empty of everything else? "

May You Rest In Peace

"May you rest in peace, for a mistake such as this shall never be repeated"

Reads the peace memorial at Hiroshima Nagasaki. The world celebrates Friendship Day today, as some 60 years ago this was the day when one of the most barbaric acts in living history of mankind were being plotted. August 5th was the day when perhaps the final touches were being given to the plan, the final details being planned and the flying routes discussed. This was the day when Mr. Truman perhaps deliberated with this followers and gave the final go ahead.

Over a 1,25,000 people died in the immediated aftermath of the henious event. Every year more names are added in the list of people who have died ever since, for the effects of those nuclear explosions still echo in the nervous systems of people who survived. Maimed, disfigured, cancerous, tethering on to life somehow, these individuals have only known pain and suffering in the short life that they have.

Really, May Thier Souls Rest In Peace. For I hope a mistake such as this is not commited again.

Hotel Rwanda

"There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad, you must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us... say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as if you are reaching through the phone and holding their hand. Let them know that if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help."

I am amazed at how the world just sat and watched 1,00,000 human beings being salughtered in the violence and genocide in Rwanda. How all the tales of atrocities reached homes and white houses and no one, no one even sat up and gave it even as much as an afterthought. Where did we loose our sense of resonspibility and decide that it wasn't our problem anymore. Tales of people dying becomes the headlines of newspapers we pay to read, suffering ofothers seems to be value for money for us.

Mad World

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World

And then...

"You said you loved me."
" I meant it at the time. "
" Well what was it, a viral love? Kind of a 24 hour thing?"

I

"I dont want to need you, 'cause I can't have you."

Fatso!

Thanks for the Memories

Gratitude, appreciation, giving thanks. No matter what words you use, it all means the same thing. Happy. We're supposed to be happy. Grateful for friends, family, happy just to be alive...

Whether we like it or not.

Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful is recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciate small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for things we'll never know.

At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing ...

... is reason enough to celebrate.

Desire

Too often, the thing you want most is the one thing you can’t have. Desire leaves us heartbroken … it wears us out. Desire can wreck your life. But as tough as wanting something can be …the people who suffer the most … are those who don’t know what they want.

Drowning On Dry Land

Disappearances happen in life, people can suddenly fade away. Lovers go missing. We open an album to discover the pictures are gone. It's unexplained, it's rare, bit it happens. We call it memory lapse, say we never saw it, any explanation but the truth.

That life is full of vanishing acts. If something that we didn't know we had disappears, do we miss it?

Disappearances happen. Pains go phantom, blood stops running, and people fade away.

There's more I have to say. So much more. But I've disappeared.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Its very interesting, how you go on with life and the small pleasures that you used to get previously no longer appeal. What is even more interesting is the simple fact that how after going through with something’s in life and in love, the same things no longer give you any pleasure as they did before. That’s what’s been happening to me at the moment. There are those who seem to be romantically interested in me, trying hard to get my attention and I am not even remotely interested in them. Its very strange, my reactions which are so subdued, my expressions which are next to nothing.

I have been having these out of body experiences, for a while now. Life seems distant and the past even more so. I see myself somewhere from a distance, hovering above my physical self, gazing down to see me function, sometimes perfect but mostly it’s the imperfection, which catches my eye.

I don’t even know why or what or of if any of this makes any sense. Its my lunch break and I need to write something, so here this is, my post, trying to make some sense out of the current me.

Untitled.

me

The past few days have been weird. I am doing quite alright at work, they seem to like me and my ideas so far. At home it has been peaceful too. Nothing specifically disturbing so far. Somehow the other night while I was trying to sleep, I looked at the ceiling and felt like crying, for no reason. I had a sea of tears welling in my eyes, ready to pour out. I have no clue why did I have tears in my eyes, but I just wanted so badly to cry and take it out of me. And then, just as they had come, they disappeared.

Mother's Pride

It's 1:16pm and am sitting and typing this on the day after Mother's Day. I hadn't spoken with my mum for a while till she called me yesterday. It was a usual phone call, full of the nagging - why havn't you called, did you eat properly, are behaving at work and all that. That just made me think of so many things together. Someday I will not have her to nag me or call me to say any of these things. She will too cease to exist as so many other people. I will miss her, terribly. She's been the cloest to me all this time. But the thing is I haven't been close or honest to her. She hardly knows me at all. She doesn't know any of my secrets or my trials and tribulations or why I left cities or why I left jobs or why I spent weeks in a monastry once. These are questions which neither she asked or I told her about. She has an image of me which is nice, sometimes very irritating but overall a very nice guy, it's just that I am far off from that. I have a secret which could possibly shatter her world, without which I may not be who I am. I know I can tell her anything, but this one thing is something she may not have full understanding of. What do I do?
She is my most favorite person on this planet & I can't tell her the truth. how sad is that?

New Office

I dont want to write anything about the new place am working at, it seems that each time I end up jinxing it. Superstitious? You bet.

At the moment am enjoying my honeymoon here, everyone is nice and sweet and things are okay, am waiting for the big moment, when I get jolted out of it and wonder when life isnt so neat and quiet anymore. It will happen I know, they always do without fail. I used to make my people perceptions very soon, decide who I am going to like and who am not, in the blink of my eye. Here, am trying a new approach of chances. Of giving everyone enough time before deciding if it is love or war.

It is an interesting place, most people have their own perceptions about me already. I am the outsider into their cozy little world, so it is going to be a slight uphill task of breaking their mould. I normally make easy friends with women, here am still to find a someone who I can think of being friends with at the moment. I sit isolated in a corner room with the airconditioner constantly working to make sure I am an icicle at the end of the day.

I don't know what to make of this unccany manner of things. Everything is so reminiscent of my past. The way I got this job or the position am supposedly hired for, the way am travelling to work everyday, the distance from work to my present home, the attitude of my workmates..just about everything I can think of. Even the ex boyfriend factor. He was there then too, calling me at weird hours of the night to ask for directions of some place or just to know the meaning of something, or to just ask if he was sounding drunk. I took those calls, gave answers and disconnected. I am still doing the same things all over again. I ran away from all of this a few years ago, for reasons best left unsaid. I wanted to escape it all and not have to fight. And now its here, with me and I am living it.

Reading Mr. Coleho, I understand that life gives you a second chance to things the right way, to make some sense out of everything. Perhaps this is it, this is the unfinished business I was told I need to finish. The battle that began back in time needs to end, I need to do my part and not look back at this. I know I want to do bigger and better things, maybe this needs to finish first.

I just need the strenght and the brain to do it right this time.

Beauty in the Breakdown

"Love was enough."

I can't imagine her pain or her ecstasy as she said those words to me. Sitting in a B grade bar, on a rusty stool with no piano in sight, this acclaimed singer/musician was batting her now almost gone eyelids at me.

Having seen the small shrine she built to her immortal love, just a little while ago, I didn't know what to say to her, a few paintings he had made for her, an autographed book, a few now yellowed pictures and her wedding ring.

Their was a story which was worth talking about, a 50 something man in love with a not yet 20 something girl. If age wasn't what worked against them, there was also the media pressure and the public images they both carried. One who was a famous writer and the other who was just about beginning to know what being famous felt like. It was all very new to her, to him she was his third wife. The fact that he had children from previous marriages didn't bother her, it was love.

Today after 10 years of loving him and some 15 after losing him to life, she sits and looks at me, as if it was all still happening, she was still with him, there in that rundown bar.

She doesn't have the money, anything from the inheritance of the books, the estates, its all with the children or the other wives.

" I didn't want to loose everything I have, the memories of him over some cheap squabble about who will have the money. Love was enough."

I wonder, about her, the love and the beauty of her breakdown, taking a sip of the cheap beer in front of me, I call for another round.

For me. For her.

Dream of someone else

"What about you, is there someone else? "
..
....

"No."

" No, but, but there's the dream of someone else."

RoadBlock

There is something to be said about roadblocks and my life. The minute I hope and think that I will manage a way to careen off the pothole and just in nick of time, I find myself deep in muck. You climb out of a ditch hoping that it will be okay the next time, that maybe this will be the last and the next pothole will come a lot further down the road. But no sir that is now how it is supposed to happen I guess, its like a series of potholes, sewn together at seams. Like those on a perforated strip.

Most of my posts seem to be in a similar vein, I wish I could write lighter, happier posts. At the moment tho, I cant seem to bring myself to do that, or do anything for that matter. It doesn't do well to dwell on the past and forget everything else I know, but when your past seems to haunt your present? When recurrent memories seem to repeat themselves in present for some reason, aren't you supposed to talk about it? Think about it?

Right now I imagine myself in a small little drive in restaurant, serving people the day's best - apple pie in some long forgotten town. One of those small places you see in many of these hollywood movies. I would be very content with that kind of a lifestyle, going back home with a porch and a forest at the back, sitting with a mug of coffee and hearing the crickets, as the moon glides across the sky. A small isolated almost content life. Would it really be too much to ask for?

Sideways.

The sky looks pretty
Normal and so do the trees
I woke up pretty
Early and I could see
That I've been walking
I've been thinking
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
I've been moving
I've been dreaming
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
I have no problems
Dipping in my feet
But the trouble comes when
I have to jump.
And all the reasons not to
Seem pretty good
At the time
Cause I've been walking
I've been thinking
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
Yeah I've been moving
I've been dreaming
I've been looking at you
Sideways.