The sun beat down through the trees as they walked away from the car. The heat was everywhere. Seeping through their clothes, barely half a minute after they got out of the car. Drawing out the last wisps of cool, airconditioned air from their skin. The heat!

They looked around as they turned to cross over. Just then, one of them was tapped on his arm

"Can you help me cross the road, please?"

An old man. Neatly dressed, his unremarkable shirt tucked into his unremarkable trousers. Holding a tripod cane.

They obliged immediately. As one stopped traffic and guided him with his shoulder, the other held him by the hand and walked him across.

He began to talk to them. As is the wont of old men. He used to be a doctor once.

"Now he'll want some money", one of them thought. "To 'get home' because he 'lost' his wallet."

"I used to treat people, often for free. I must have operated on atleast fifty people. I saved their limbs. I gave them the chance to walk again."

He didn't want anything, except to say what he had to say.

"I have no one today. And I'm paralysed."

He just wanted someone to say it to.

"God has cursed me."

His voice cracked. Tears.

They walked away from him, as the sun beat down through the trees.

"When I find out all the reasons

Maybe I'll find another way
Find another day
With all the changing seasons of my life
Maybe I'll get it right next time
An now that you've been broken down
Got your head out of the clouds
You're back down on the ground
And you don't talk so loud
An you don't walk so proud anymore..."

Expectation is the root cause of all misery.

Why do I care?

I think, therefore I am.

I think, therefore I doubt.

I doubt, therefore I am.

Not?

"And I don't want the world to see me,

'Cause I don't think that they'd understand."

I'm unsure.

Of what exactly I'm unsure, I'm not too sure.

Is that a concentric paradox?

I'm in some sort of a limbo. I've been working so hard over the last month or so, I've lost track of time. I often find myself asking people, in all seriousness, what day it is.

But all this work doesn't seem to be paying off. Or if it does, it's not immediately apparent.

Caged.

It's how I feel. On that last mile, but not knowing if the prize still awaits.

I've been bingeing on that fucker Vir Sanghvi's writing. He's quite good, and since he's India's best food critic, I'm gorging myself while reading his stuff. As a result, I've put on a coupla kilos in the last 3 days. Stupid Gujju.

I only hope it works out.

No, strike that. I know it'll work out. Somehow, deep down inside, I know.

There can be no other way.

"There's something deep inside of me

There's someone else I've got to be..."

I think that maybe, just maybe, I am not very good at being a people person. Maybe.

Maybe I shouldn't think so much.

"We might survive as brothers, yeah

Or perish here as fools..."

It's been coming a while, this want. This need. The craving. The urge to get.

Chinese food.

Flied lice and some remon chicken, maybe?

I've just realised, I've turned into such a whiney bitch.

I've just realised, no one reads this blog anymore.

Which isn't such a bad thing.

Now I'm free to say whatever the fuck I want about whoever I want.

But I pretty much did that anyway.

I think I spend so much of my time worrying about or being annoyed at other people that I don't have much negativity left to write about.

Is that a good thing?

I'm missing something here...

I suspect my thought processes are so fast that I distract myself by branching out randomly. Through the typing of that sentence, I've already (truthfully) linked thoughts, trains of thought, fast trains, random if-train-A-leaves-Delhi-at-1-pm type problems, the TGV, SNCF which is on the TGV's nose, Jay's pics of the bullet train, branches, the banyan tree, the baobab tree, the Yagga tree, James Rollins.

It's no wonder I couldn't concentrate in class. I'm actually surprised I'm even educated. I do remember once falling off a treadmill because I got so absorbed looking at my legs move and trying to calculate my speed by estimating how long my strides were.

Of course, this has little to do with anything else.

Much like everything else.

"Oh well, whatever, nevermind."

Friends. Lovers. Love. Emotion. People. Thoughts. Circumstances. Futures. Pasts. Feelings. Hopes. Sorrows. Anxieties. Desperations.

Why doesn't life have a Del button?

“ Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.”

- John Green (Paper Towns)

"Oh how I want to be free baby

Oh how I want to be free

Oh how I want to break free."

I miss my old car. Soon, I'll miss this one.

"I do, however, feel sorry for the machine itself. It’s sitting in its shed now, wondering what it’s done wrong. Why did it not fly yesterday and why is there no sense that it will fly today? Why is nobody tinkering with its engines and vacuuming its carpets?
And what was that last flight all about? Why were so many people taking photographs and why, after 27 years, did every single one of Heathrow’s 30,000 employees turn out to watch it do what it was designed to do?
I like to believe that a machine does have a heart and a soul. I like to think of them as ordinary people think of dogs. They cannot read or write or understand our spoken words. But they understand what we’d like them to do in other ways. Go left. Go right. Go faster. Sit. Lie.
So go ahead. Think of Concorde as a dog that you’ve had in the family for 27 years. Think of the way it has never once let you down. And how thrilled it is when you feed it and pet it and take it out for a walk.
And now try to imagine how that dog would feel if you locked it up one night. And never went back."
Clarkson on Concorde

I feel empty.

There's that hoary chestnut about good guys finishing last. Well, there's a new addition.

This is where the scum of the earth finish.
Bad people with a little good in 'em.
Regular folks, with a dash of evil.
Regular folks, with a dash of good.
Good folks, just a tad bad.
Good guys.



Me.

I am acutely aware that my biological clock is ticking, having observed that I attend weddings of my friends and peers on an alarmingly increased basis. Not to mention welcoming the odd child into this world.

But just look at what the Internet has chosen for me. I mean, WTF?

They say that if you're old enough, you will always remember what you were doing on the 22nd of November, 1963, when you heard.

I will always remember waking up to 2 messages on the morning of June 26th. And rubbing my eyes, hoping they weren't true.


"Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me..."

It's a ridiculous mix of humour and irony. If you were to observe it from a suitable vantage point, your mind would mend at the absolute mockery that is made of all plans and feelings. Predictability? You've got to be kidding. It's just so damn hilarious, it would, as a spectacle of entertainment, wipe out anything invented by man.

Ain't life a bitch?


"...but trust me on the sunscreen."

Trusting. Friendly. Cheerful.

That's what I used to be.

Over the last few years, I've learnt two things. The first is that people aren't what they seem to be. No one is. Not your best friend, not your lover, not your brother. Everyone has their own agenda, and most people will nary bat an eyelid before doing you harm to further it.

The second is more, er, useful. I've learnt that I have a capacity for rage that is disturbing. I can hide and nurse a grudge for months, maybe years, and wait. I suppose this is a good thing.


Romans 12:19

She's gone. He took her away. And I stood and watched her leave.

I used to wonder why everyone refers to automobiles as feminine. Just this one time, I understand.

"...and I miss here now you're gone."

All great tragedies are made of many smaller tragedies. Stories of despair and desperation. And these stories have their opposites. The sterling silver linings to their black clouds. For it is often the worst of times that brings out the best in men.

"The general manager lost his whole family in one of the fires in the building,"
(Ratan) Tata said, referring to Karambir Kang, whose wife and two sons - aged 14
and 5 - were killed. "I went up to him today and told him how sorry I was, and
he said, 'Sir, we are going to beat this. We are going to build this Taj back
into what it was'."

It made me cry.

My life, I have realised, is the pursuit of happiness, riches, and love, probably in that order, though being interrelated, there's no order really. Anything else will take care of itself.

If it doesn't, there's always a jack rod.


"Walking in the race of life
Looking for my own pace
Not always wanting to but I have to
Sometimes feeling like I've bitten off much more than I could chew
But the wind goes though my hair
Lifts me up with ease not a crease
Hair full of grease no weave embracing me
It's you I see
I am you and you are me."