Dudify this

It's conceivable reality that in a matter of time conversations would start and end at the word 'dude'. Imagine a letter denoted to you : Respected dude, followed by regular blahmatism. Sounds strange, doesn't it? Why does it come into play that much these days? Why is there always a moral inclination to denote fellow dudes , by 'dude'. Believe me, it's like the byword of the language of persistent persuasion.

Think about it. How easy it has been to persuade people when you dudify them, how they can be cajoled into believing that they really are the 'quintessential dudes' , at least in the vicinity, if not in entirety. It has a certain hypnotic effect on men, the reason for which is hard to get. 

Another thing that works in favor of the entire 'dude' convention is probably its gender neutrality. Girls are equally comfortable being passed off as dudes. Dudette/dudess is the official word though. It probably shows their wretched desire to equalize men.( Yes, I'm a chauvinist pig, hands down) However, if I were a woman, I'd have chosen 'dudette' , for at the least it'd have given me an opportunity to feel slightly differentiated, if nothing else. Tiny things you see. 

Imagine one of your friends seeing you with one of those coveted girls, the kind for which guys are willing to ditch a thousand other women.  

After the event, whilst you're cursing yourself about how close you were to kissing her and how you missed the opportunity and all, he calls you up, and guess how he starts : with an elongated, filled with contempt, curiosity and carousal, Deeewed!  Unable to get a hang of the situation immediately, our protagonist replies: What dude? with a genuine pretension of ' I-dunno-wat-ur-talkin-bout' . Your friend on other side replies: Don't you dude me, dude. By this time, both parties are pretty clear on their concepts , as in they know what the other person knows. So, our genuine pretender takes away his mask of unknowingness, and replies with a sly smirk on his face: Oh yeah, dude. The friend , as if, to pat him on the back, says: Deeeeeeewd(h), with a sparkle in his eyes. Translated to Hindi, this would mean : Sahi hai beta! 

It's only to be seen how this innocent word can affect so many lives, say so many things, and still be qualified as slang. Well, I'm sure this would change one day. I'm sure, one day fathers would talk to their spoiled sons: Itne kam marks? Saari dudegiri nikaal doonga!  Corporate meetings would clamour 'Dude' in all shapes, colours and sizes. Mothers would worry : Pata nahi mera dude kab wapas aayega? Thakur would request Gabbar, hitherto much more persuasively : Yeh Haath mujhe dede dude, de na dude? The ageing mother, in Karan Arjun would go : Mere dono dudes aayenege! Mere dono dudes zaroor aayenge!!! 

Went a little too far, did I? The Whole Dude Syndrome dude! Come on dude, you gotta agree. Dude?

Are you on the same page?

Are you feeling sufficiently useless? Do you ogle at the wall clock, waiting for it to strike 12 so that you could guiltlessly ping the two three usual people you'd ping? Has this sudden revelation that 'I was much better off when I was at something' dawned on you too? Do you wake up in the morning thinking ,' how can I waste this day innovatively? Well, bravo. If the questions have had the better of you, I welcome you to the party.

Life has boiled down to the little things. Happiness is no longer in ' getting placed '.( Even though, I won't mind another shot at them.) It's in the tiny things that were otherwise irrelevant. From the anticipation of rajma-chawal in dinner, to the shiver of chocolate chip ice-cream in dessert, anything could make it worth living just one more day. Then there are also the serious things to live for. (h)Our holy parents. (h)Our ambition in life. (h)Our zeal to do reasonably well in life. But as I said, these are the serious things. Not that much fun to talk about. Boring Bhasad, you see. On the other hand, girlfriends are separate institutions. They're commodities to 'die for'. ( Khush?)

'Don't sweat the small stuff, it's always in the small stuff'. No, I'm not taking credit for having penned it. 

So, the little things, Oh, the little things. Stupid little things. Corny little things. Creepy little things. Life is in those sublime underlying moments, the kind you never even thought could bring about a change in your emotional momentum. Subconsciously speaking, these moments are precisely what give you, the kick, the spike in the happiness chart. So, it could be because somebody said that you looked a gram less heavy. It could be , because you know, you'll get to order Domino's in an hour. It could be because , for once in your life, you get to waste another day at your behest, without having had to feel guilty about it. 

Little things, you see.

Just to rub it in. 

The Other Woman

Time and again, the guilt of having left this blog all to the company of itself   keeps unwinding, almost unprovoked. She's( the blog, I mean) like this girl I'm still dating, while I'm in a relationship with another. If you'd call her, she's probably the first woman, I got into a relationship with. Does this sound convincingly bigamous? It ought to. 

So here I am, doing justice to my widow, making her feel , that she still holds some relevance in my life. For once , I let her speak , for I am merely the interpreter.
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Dear owner,

Ever since you started telling me your fuzzy tales, the first of which came sometime in 2008, I realised that you weren't one of those run of the mill men, who'd use me for a few articles, and throw me away as if I was a top you bought last week from Janpath. You were a tad different, not that I mean 'different' in a good sense.

You shared with me your stories, your griefs. It was only a matter of time that you allowed me to give your random strands of thought, a direction. You talked to me when you were sad, but you never shared your happiness, which was, so to say, perfectly acceptable, for it's only in bad times that you rely on the people you trust. I've seen you hallucinate, blurt the highest approachable levels of non-sense, and listened to it, more so, told it to more people, just to be able to get your point across. But those were old times, lately things have changed.

If I may bring to your notice, ever since you brought 'her' into your life, our talks have been more mundane than awry. I thought, you were sensitive enough to realise, how I'd have felt about it. If I must add here, you gave me not an iota of premonition that she was going to hijack our lives, but even then I was conscious enough to not let jealousy take over. I thought she was the 'second' woman in your life, the thought in itself was infuriating. However time determined that perhaps, I was the 'second'. You couldn't possibly imagine, how I must have had felt then, as much you say you try, you possibly couldn't.

To be honest, I never lost faith, never did I lose myself to the delirium of losing you ; a symptom you were most likely to succumb to, had something like this happened to you. I knew you'd come back to me, and that someday I would get to win you over, to make you realise who your real 'companion' was and is. Much to my anticipation, one day you did, and you kept coming. So high was frequency of your posts, that the pinch of being the 'other' woman almost faded away. But alas, it was that one cursed eve , when you discussed 'her' with me, giving all the importance that there virtually existed, the kind that I aspired to relish, to her. That day, you really hit the nail on the head. 

For me, it was over. We've been on amicable terms since then, and I too have started indulging in other men. The 1170 odd people who visited the blog, should give you an idea of the levels of infidelity I'm capable of( Ha, now you feel jealous), and I'm only expecting more, if my letter strikes a chord with your palpable but invisible audience.

Waiting for your reply.

Ms. A Beautiful Mind

White Noise

Literally, white noise , is a disturbance with a flat spectral density. That's what wikipedia says about it. What my own understanding helps me make of it ,is that it's a noise that enters one's system, and is there till eternity. It's flat , because it's not caused by something. It's just there. 

Sometimes it seems as if there's something running in the background, eating away one's bandwidth, forcing one to think in a direction ,you'd rather obscure from. The white noise per se.

So, I've been thinking, and thinking a little more about it and so it seems, that I'm almost conscious of this noise in my head now. A little off beat, but the one thing which I've been noticing has been my decreasing appetite for words. The effect is so poignant, that it almost seems like having lost an old friend.

All said, I'm back ,up and running , talking about the usual stuff. Trying to make sense of non-sense and least of all , adding value to myself. ( haha) Just thought it was important to laugh, for the morons may take it literally. Not you. Oh, not you too. 

So, before I could return to my dark sense of humour, let me open the pandora's box for you, and throw some updates. Life, over the past few weeks, has been like a lemon soda; you've had it before you know it. Friends have returned to their state of ignorance. A welcome change has been my self anointment in the "experienced in love" category and hence romantic advice has been flowing, unprovoked, and rather instinctively to those, who may or may not be needing/wanting/not-wanting it. ( Please calm your raised eyebrows, take a deep breath, I was just joking.)

To talk a little about myself, I'm seeing myself to be utterly indulged in the state of constant observation. Not that I've been doing much with the camera, but the sheer adrenaline to see a moment, which could have been captured, has resurrected in me a newly found curiosity, a kind that may even compel me to wake up early and hit the road ( hit-the-road !, think about it) without purpose.

Stretching it a little bit , I've come to see a kind of essence in doing something and sometimes everything ,without a sense of purpose. Sometimes , it's just this 'want of purpose' that is ,precisely, the noise, white noise as I've come to call it.

As somebody very thoughtfully said : The purpose of purpose, as such, should, quite purposefully be, kept purposeless.

Small Talk

Adoring the wind, fighting the mosquitoes and typing this post, here I am on the Kochi port watching ships race past each other. I should admit, the plan for the day wasn't an article on the blog, but an in-depth photography session. I guess sooner than later , even my camera will shy away from photographing things that I actually consider worth capturing. Can't help it. The breeze is perfect for nothing but thinking. I believe, had I been brought up somewhere near the coastline, I'd have been much better at intellectualism.

I don't have a topic for the day but I still plan to murmur. The things that I really want to talk about, aren't fit for an audience, and the things I'd rather say, are irrelevant . So, if at all you're reading this, you know what you're exposing yourself to ; irrelevance. Life is always such an irony. There's always something to think about, rack your brain for. Things can never be perfect, can they? But come to think of it, what fun would it be if at all it was perfect ? I think , I'd come to pity such an individual, an individual whose life is " just perfect " , I meant.

If there was one thing that I could take back from people in Kerala, it's got to be their simplicity. Kerala; a land where the richest of blokes, prefer to wear a dhoti on marine drive. The most fashionable couples, celebrate romance, over a cup of coffee and rice plate. There is an essence in their broken english. It's such a mystery too. What would have taken a 17 word sentence, they're able to both convey and get, in six entirely unrelated words. Autos; As compared to their counterparts in Delhi, they're bliss.

I don't want to be rude, but I can't help generalizing women in Kerala to be fat. That said, they're much soft spoken. Not a trait I admire or abhor, but again there's an invisible piousness surrounding them. They head out from their homes, anointed beautifully and variedly on the forehead, to their respective places of work. Call it personal opinion, but the sight is just feel-good. It's like a caricature of India's progress , minus the frill. The more youthful women though , are dressed as normally as women in Delhi, minus, again, the frill. A simple kurta, a jeans to compliment it, neat hair, a fragrance which is anything but artificial, and you'll come to draw a mental portrait of the architypical Keralite woman . 


Kerala, God's own country as they call it. 

Turning Twenty Two

So, the candles blown, hips shaken and gifts taken. I've succumbed to yet another year of existence, teetering the unit digit of my age barometer by a unit distance . In short, only yesterday , I turned twenty two. I can't but help confess, that as soon as I hit the full stop of the last sentence, I observed for a while, the cursor blink monotonously , just to be able to realise the seriousness of what I had typed. Yes, I am twenty two. I know that I am, and I'm trying to convince myself that it's as much an occasion to feel a little grown up, as it is to sit back , hold that cup of tea and think about what lies ahead.

Just a day before, I was the insane horse riding in wilderness, with its whims tugged tight to the chest, unaware of the dichotomies of an adult life. Quite in contrast, right now I'm this twenty two year old hound, trying to visualize stuff, that otherwise seemed direly trivial, with a well weighed acumen and a long term perspective. I can all but ask myself, if this transcendent shift in thinking is but natural, or a figment of of my own hypersensitivity. Either ways , I'm forced to consider it.

Responsibility, in general, is repulsive. Now that I seem to be half a year away from affording myself completely, I seem to be at crossroads.Insecurity is like a dog , wagging its tail at the very sight of food. The food, here would be success, or anything that you may fear to lose. You may try harder to keep it with you, and much ironically, you may end up losing it ,just because you tried a little too hard. I'd rather opt out of trying too hard, or trying at all.

That said, I think , it's time. It's time, when I balanced things up. It's time, that I realised, that there was more to life than just me and my ambition. It's time that I explored as deep as I could in myself, just to be able to figure out , what I'm best at doing. It's time that I assumed responsibility, and said : Look world, and keep looking.  

Ikkatees Maar Khan

The new year is approaching, and it's only expected of me to turn a little nostalgic. Or was that 'santimentalle'. The new year marks turning on the lid on a box of memories, some good, some bad, all mingled together and enclosed air tight. I know, it's only in retrospect that I'll get to enjoy them, the fact that someday I will ,is satisfying enough.

2010 was enough adventure for two years together, more so , it sort of compensated the monotony that college life has inflicted. I should  but I wouldn't talk about the past. For a change, I'm going to zoom ahead and try  asking myself, what I expect from the year ahead . It's a dangerous thing to make public, but unless I make a conspicuous assumption that nobody's reading this blog, I'm unable to write anyway, so I'd rather take the risk.

Of all things, I've ever longed for, I just hope that this year, I get , what they simply call : Satisfaction. 


Cheers 2011.