There is just something about rain at night. When you hear the pitter patter on the plastic roofs on the terraces. It can wake me up out of deep sleep, and make me think thoughts I am scared to have, when I am awake. It is a welcome break from the routine nightmares, to be awoken by the beautiful rain; and the quiet eeriness of the night coupled with the chaos in my mind can transport me to a different world. One where everything is alright. One where I want to be.

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
But I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m in love with a woman who don’t remember me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

10 confessions I would rather not make in the real world because I know they may be objectionable for various reasons:

1. I find the Beyond Here Lies Nothin' video extremely artsy and romantic in a very real way. It evokes emotions that I don't think can be expressed easily, but can be congruously identified with. The lyrics (just wow!), the music, and the video convey so much together. I find the end too beautiful.

2. I feel people who communicate using bad punctuation, wrong spellings, and awful grammar, just out of callousness ought to be sent to jail. Or at least ostracized from everyday society. To me, it is akin to, or even worse than, drops of spit flying right into your face, while the person continues talking to you remorselessly. I can understand when the person deliberately communicates with certain people in such a manner. But some people communicate with everyone, in only that one way. Those are the ones I am talking about.
I hate the sms lingo too. Yes, I use it extensively myself. But that is because I know it is not a criminal offence today. I will gladly give it up as soon as it is made one.

3. Once upon a time, at the root of my existence, somewhere, there was a trace of socialism. Somehow, I used to think there is something wrong when kids who had rich parents enjoyed and flaunted their wealth. I hated that 18 and 19 year olds got to drive around in swanky cars without having to work for it. I don't feel that anymore, but I once did, very strongly.

4. I love the air kisses thing. The pretentious cheek brushing and the muah-muah. I love doing it. And I love watching it being done. And I am a straight guy in my 20s, who would play hard football all day for no money, if the system allowed that.

5. There have been times when I have felt that Sex and the City is just as beautifully written as Seinfeld. I am still the same guy in his 20s.

6. I think we can help society and people better with a faceless online identity than we can in the real world being ourselves. I know I can.

7. Sometimes I wish a major natural calamity (not terror attacks or bomb blasts or shit) occurs right where I am. A major, high profile one. Like a volcano or a tsunami or something. I don't care as much for the fact that I might die, as for the fact that it would be something really exciting to witness and battle.

8. I feel at some level, education really leaves you emasculated. It cuts your balls off. I think I am the biggest pushover in the world sometimes. People can dish out (and have) any nonsense to me and rest assured that I will probably only grumble about it on some blog. I am not comfortable tackling a situation head-on, or picking a fight and resolving issues right there. Also, its not so much about being generally non-confrontational (that too!) because I love to argue and debate and stuff. Its more about overthinking and over analyzing consequences. That comes from education.

9. When I was a kid, I used to have some fabulous ideas about how I would be when I was 'grown up'. I didn't know what age that would be at. Even now, sometimes, I want to be certain, drastically different things that I am not right now, when I am 'grown up'. And I still don't know what age I am talking about.

10. There are several things I want, think about, and wish for, that I may never be able to admit to. Even on an anonymous blog.

Google is only second best...at best

My brother bugged me for the 63 millionth time in a week to clear some space up on our shared computer.

Confidently, I replied, "Dude, there is nothing that can be deleted, I just need all that stuff. You are going to have to back it up."
"I'm sure you don't need all of it!"
"Well, turns out I do. Like you know anything about data! Scoff"
He then swirled around on our new revolving chair, and randomly opened some folder and a file within it and went through it. "Are you telling me, you need to know what time you ordered a Smokin' Joe's pizza on the night of December 21, 2007? As cheap as you are to jot down the time of ordering, so you can ask for a discount when they overrun the delivery time, do you really have to maintain that record forever after that?"
I was caught unawares. "Uh, well, its just a text document dude. What do you need, 2 bytes of space urgently?" I defended feebly.
"Its not about the 2 bytes man. Its your whole personality. Delete some crap dude."

I ended that duel without an answer. But I pondered over it later. What he said was true. I am a hoarder. I big fat hoarder who is eventually going to run out of space. A hoarder of text documents with random telephone numbers. Hoarder of receipts from restaurants I haven't visited in ages. Hoarder of random internet links that I thought someone else would find interesting. Hoarder of clothes. Oh! Clothes! Thats a Pandora's box right there! I have a shirts and t-shirts in my cupboard that I have neither worn nor been able to fit myself into, since years ago. I hoard old jeans thinking maybe one day, when I am in dire need of shorts, or if mens' hot pants ever come into style, I would have something ready. I have a sweatshirt that must have last kept me warm when the Queen was still hot. I hoard pictures, I backup old emails and chats, I do it all. My security guy has asked me around 250 times if I wanted to sell my bicycle that hasn't been used for years now. I tell him off each time, with an unconvincing reason- that I will start using it some day. The real reason is that I am a hoarder and I can't let go of anything. Not the good, and not the bad.

It is actually a vice of sorts. It consumes you. Its an obsession with random things that once upon a time may or may not have been special. Preserving old pictures and gifts and books is normal, healthy even. But the separating wall between a museum and its attic is paper thin up here. And this attic has apparently rendered many a fertile acre of mindspace, fallow. Regardless...

I have come to realize that this is a personality thing. One, that hasn't been typified in any personality class (type A/B, X/Y etc). At least to my knowledge it hasn't, which is actually not saying much. So yea. Hoarding, and an inability to generally let go, is a part of a bigger philosophy that we hoarders inadvertently follow. I can't remember at what point I chose to be a hoarder. But ever since I have converted, I have been a staunch follower. Which incidentally, is another hoarder trait. We don't switch sides easily, if ever. Sometimes, this is confused with having a big ego and generally being stubborn asses. But the truth is, we get so attached to one side, that we consider switching sides as an act of betrayal. Betrayal unto our own selves. Which is why we just blindly refuse to budge from our positions. For better or for worse.

One more hoarder trait is that of not being impressed easily. When someone recommends something to us, be it a movie, a restaurant, a book, anything, we find it difficult to appreciate from the get go. We like to explore our own stuff and to get attached to it for life. By ourselves. If the recommendations come from a fellow hoarder, then they go down a little bit better. That brings me to another point. We seek out hoarders. Active as well as unaware.

A somewhat helpful, but definitely not confirmatory, test of a hoarder is good memory. It indicates how much random stuff has been well-indexed in our well-oiled brains. Some of us may not be able to rant out old dates and times. But give us a scent of a memory indexed up there and we will easily trace out the entire day before and after that...with the crucial details.

There are several such traits I can cite. Thats not the point. The point is we are. Personally, I think hoarding makes us more endearing and more enriched as people. People who are able to easily let go, may be more blissful and happy in general. But I find them too shallow. Like a flat plate. Like a computer with a small page file memory. They exist in the extreme present. We exist mostly in the past, and somewhat in the idea of the future. I find that cute. For all its pitfalls and potential for self destruction, I wouldn't want myself to be any different. So in a way, what I told my brother was actually true. I actually did need that stupid text document. To be who I am.

So here's to it all. All that is in here. To stay. To the files and the folders. To the shirts and the shorts. To the bicycles and the books. To the times and the people. The shitty ones and the jewels. To the ones who escaped, and to the ones who stayed. To the ones who returned and to the ones you thank your stars didn't return. On behalf of the hoarder community, I thank you all. For it is all of you, that make us the awesome people we are!

Actual conversation:

Boss: Why don't you use the big rectangular bag you have to carry the laptop home anymore? The laptop really stayed safe in it. Is this bag as good?

Me: I love that bag for a slew of reasons. But there comes a time in a guy's life, when he needs to stop using bags that are exactly the shape of his face and head.

Boss: Yea, I guess. Don't worry. This new bag isn't too bad.

Save our conscience!

I was in a supermarket the other day. I bought some stuff and on my way to the checkout counter, I noticed they were selling eco-friendly bags. Made of jute or whatever. I felt they were priced way more than they should have been. But right then, as if hunting down my previous thought, came a conscience-driven reprimand. "Price? Is that what you are considering? When it comes to saving the environment? A few meager units of currency? Shame!" So I had to purchase those bags. And I must say, I felt really proud of myself. After all, I had spent money buying something I didn't need, just so I could save the world. If that doesn't make you proud, what does?

I came out, did some other stuff, and then went home. I was damn happy! People who were in the streets that day will vouch for me. They will testify that they saw a guy move around, beaming like a moron. Why a moron? Because moronic is what it was, I realized later. Its astonishing, the distance we will go, just so we can look into our eyes in the mirror. I spent a little extra money. Other people do something else. But, in the end, its all about that. Feeling good about ourselves.

What the hell are we thinking when we make/sell/buy stuff to save the world? Do we not know what the real, REAL problem is? Its that there are too many of us. Thats whats destroying the world. This planet wasn't built to have one species (humans too) breed to a seven billion number and dominate proceedings this way. If we really wanted to save the world, they'd sell "Put yourself to sleep instantly" injections at supermarkets. Not jute bags. What the hell is 'eco-friendly' anyway? You consume 100 and give back 1? Is that how we plan to "save the earth"? More like, "lets try and keep this place liveable till we are alive. There's no hope beyond that anyway!". The annoying part is that we (including me) actually know there is no hope. And yet, we continue to lie to ourselves. Doing what we can hoping it will be enough. Hoping...and denying.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. We have taken it so far, that now its become a part of our composition. Its like we have a conscience...and then we have a metacognitive (word?) section of the brain that has genetically evolved to suppress the conscience. We have no control over that anymore. We don't want to acknowledge that deep down we all know its almost certainly a long lost cause.

The fact that humans live only for 80 odd years has some role to play there. Right now, all of us know that we only need to be bothered about sleeping well for the next 60 years. And jute bags do that for us. So jute bags it is. We don't really (I mean really) care for what happens after we are gone. Imagine if we lived for 400-500 years. You think we would resort to lame ass jute bags to bail us out then? Haah! We would have to acknowledge that the bags and such aren't even a speck of cleanser in the ocean that is our trash ridden planet. There is ABSOLUTELY no point in pretending like we 'have a solution, but the onus is on the people'. "A huge ocean is made up of tiny drops" and all that is too pathetic and we should just get off it already. We have no answer. Well, we do have THE answer, but no one is ballsy enough to say it.

I want some scientist types to explain to me how a gazillion eco-friendly consumables are going to save this planet, if we keep fornicating and reproducing like rats, consuming disproportionate amounts of resources on the other side. I know there is no solution in sight. But for once, I would like someone to just stand up and say, "You know what? This eco-friendly pretense is all good. But lets not kid ourselves. Until we start eliminating people or introduce a impotency inducing virus, we are headed for that wall. Maybe not us, but the ones after us. And for all the eco-friendly products that we buy, we are prolonging the end by a few minutes, at best."

I will continue to buy jute bags, 'do my bit' (whatever), and I will continue to hope. Hope, that maybe nature has a larger plan to reset things here. That maybe, we'll devise an organic fertilizer that makes tall trees grow in minutes. That maybe, one day we will invent cars that are made of wood and run on water. That maybe, air conditioners will one day give out fresh nutrient-rich air as exhaust. I will hope that I am so stupid and wrong that I don't understand how this 'save the earth' plan is actually going to work. I will hope, because I have tremendous faith in nature. It still holds the power to start a major shakedown anytime and restore sanity within hours. I believe I am smart enough to not undermine that force. But all this is the active and dominant part of my brain performing its job.

My conscience will always read 'Stall' whenever it sees 'Save'.

My dad, whom I have been seeing almost every day of my life, and who has always, always, had a beard, went clean shaven yesterday. I don't know why he had to shave off his beard, all of a sudden. I think there is more to it than 'I just felt like it'.

He is looking at least 10 years younger and attractive, and he was definitely feeling good about it. But having known him for so long, I felt really sad and betrayed looking at him. Betrayed. That is the word I had been looking for, all of last night. I couldn't believe I had never seen his chin, up until now. As a 27 year old, when you suddenly feel like you don't know your dad at all, just because he has shaved off his beard, it raises questions about own sanity and 'normalcy'. Its a really difficult and weird feeling to be dealing with. More nauseating and complex than what most people in this world will understand.

I guess a lot of people feel a more juvenile version of what I am feeling, when they 'go through' this experience as kids. Because I hadn't been through it, and because its not the same going through it as an adult, I wasn't equipped to digest it. I dunno...

I want him to grow his beard back.

A rainy trek with a shaggy dog

Its one of the few things that I can write about, without any disclaimer. It is just pure, unadulterated happiness. Its something I have wanted to do for a while now, and I have finally been able to do it. And it was almost as good as I had imagined.

A trek with a lovely dog. In the monsoon. When the sky is crying enough so you can afford a smile. It was one of those days when you feel everything around you is as it should be. Lush green mountains, huge roaring waterfalls all around. Green carpets of fresh grass submerged in water for as far as you can see. And a heavy downpour to make it perfect.

I think it is a sort of rite of passage that everyone should go through, once in their life. You learn so much about yourself and about dogs and about relationships in general. Whether it is the way the dog gets ecstatic after being let off the leash in a green, water sopped field; or the way it runs around jumping, swimming and rolling around in the knee deep water, or the way it ignores you and simply wants to soak in all the nature it can. You learn that pure affection is a vibe that never fails to come through. You learn that what really makes you happy is watching the innocent creature explore and push its realms. That one happy moment can make up for a whole weekful of sad ones.

Most people won't believe me when I tell them of an incidence that happened today. It was the most beautiful experience. She had run ahead of me, ignoring me, jumping and scampering across gushing brooks and over bushes. She kept rushing back behind, just to make sure I was on track and hadn't gotten lost. On one occasion, as I was trying to climb up a slippery slope with an unrecovered torn calf, she ran back and looked at me with innocently raised eyebrows. She sensed I was in pain. Then she did the most amazing thing. As I hung there in limbo, neither here nor there, she came and licked my face sweetly. In the rain, out of nowhere. Then, she offered me her collar...to help me climb up the slope! She actually looked over me and beckoned me with her paw, to grab her collar so I would have something to hold on to. How overwhelmed I was with that gesture is beyond words. So much for all the ignoring I thought I was getting...

It was obvious that she was having the most enjoyable afternoon ever. She felt like she could conquer the entire landscape. The way she ran around madly, trying to liberate herself to the extent possible was awfully sweet. She wanted to convince me that she was indeed establishing herself on all those overbearing trees and powerful streams and impregnable rock faces. But when the moment of truth arrived and we turned the corner to stare up at a roaring, intimidating waterfall, the girl could do nothing but stand next to me and look at it timidly. Head titled, eyes full of fear. All her energy drained itself out and the best she could do was to run away from it and hide behind an excuse of a bush. When she saw me wade through the thickets towards the waterfall, purposefully, she meekly joined me and kept herself at my feet. As if expecting me to respond to her trust, by protecting her from this disaster. She would have much rather returned to one of her ponds and swam around blissfully with me. But because I wanted to enter the waterfall, she decided to tag along, fighting her own fears! Or perhaps she wanted to come just so she could look out for me!

The world will still have its problems, and an afternoon, no matter how beautiful, won't make everything alright. But in that moment, as I sat at the edge, with her cuddled up against my chest, scared, depending on me to shield her from the monstrous waterfall, I knew I could put off worrying about everything, for another few hours.