The End of the World as We Know it

The futility of it all seems to reiterate itself every season. Emotions, places, thought, people – all seem redundant. And the only reason you need to live, is because you don’t die. And then you realize there is this secret vacuum cleaner (or vacuum creator?) sucking out all the humanity from you. And the ability to feel, the reason to think.

Then one day you wake up, and realize that you don’t care to fight anymore, you don’t care to love anymore (and that you never did.) You don’t care to believe, or understand, or challenge.

Even the ability to look for a world where existence would be justified is lost forever, because of the definite knowledge that there isn’t any. And never will be. It has always been about the senses, and once they are beyond stimulation, the definitions of perception and beauty change. It takes a second in your mind – to go from a living, breathing world, to one that simply has no tangible existence.

Don't Look Back in Anger

Trembling hands run themselves across a quickly aging face – not so much a mirror of age, but like a one way mirror into the state of the spirit. Countless pointless compromises, unasked and unanswered questions, and a feeling of emptiness at what seemed like the beginning of the end – and an end that was to come much like the rest, anyway. Maybe it could have been different. No, surely it would have been different. And then what? Maybe this end would have seemed less purposeless, more deserved.

References to lives gone by is maybe a way of moving on. But then again, words don’t quite understand. They can’t comprehend the meaning we give them, and they’re perpetually sucked into that dreary cycle of rhetoric. But maybe the worst possible scenario is the one that doesn't even leave you with enough words to recollect everything. Not because it’s largely inarticulatable (nR), but maybe because seeing life as a linear narrative does not let you think of it in terms of prose or verse. Or maybe it does. I wouldn’t know…

Gestures don't speak for themselves. Maybe that’s where the mistakes are made. But the imperative to talk also bears us down. Maybe the only choice left is to not look back in anger…

When you're done listening and singing...

After the music fades out and the skies settle, there is a void that makes sure it engulfs all that it can find. Then slowly the void begins to appeal, and turns into a living death…slow and severe at the same time, with an intense tune to it. Your body starts to dance to this tune, and by the time you’re done dancing, there’s nothing but your body left…because all the music was being made of you, feeding of your existence.

Your existence becomes an excuse of itself. The tune continues to play, and becomes a part of you, and you have no other choice but to have it feed off you.

Now there’s darkness, and you realize you begin to see, and then anything that has to do with anything you've known ever crumbles into pieces. And you understand everything, and analyze and comprehend it, you also live it, not knowing how to.

There are pangs of joy and elation, and the moments that you perceive as your own, but nothing remains your own, because you owe so much to the world. But you also owe so much to yourself.

There’s no reprieve, from your demands of the world, or from the world’s demands of you. Then one day you decide it’s all futile, and there’s just one way of doing it.

To not do it at all.

Not my woes but still...

Normally, humans are known to adapt to changing times much more efficiently than to changing people (ok...its another one of my theories, and its valid!) I'm making the effort to empathize with the generation of parents that didn't quite know what hit them until it did (that happens to all of them, I guess, but these were particularly badly hit.)

They were born into nice, naive post-independence middle class families - minimum exposure to the Victorians or their way of life. Or any other, for that matter, besides their own. And then when they had their own kids, suddenly the world seemed to have started speaking a different language. Their kids too.

I understand it when they say they don't. They aren't naive - they just lived in a different world.
They cannot come to terms with having invested all their life's effort and emotions into a bunch of people that would grow up to demand their 'space'. The concept is alien to them. Its like a family full of prodigal sons (and daughters). Only these never return. And they don't even ask for money. They're taking away too much - even the right to crib and complain.

These kids seem to be making all their choices, and only informing when they deem necessary. And what's worse - these choices seem like utter blunders to one generation, while the other seems to be absolutely confident about them. There's no negotiating this.

Its easier to understand it, than to rationalize it. I'm trying to understand where they stand right now. I wish it made some sense to them.

Telling Time

Telling time was what it did best – but it was also an indication of how much darker the patch was getting. But now it was gone, and the philosophy that everything material can be replaced with money, seemed a little skewed. As did my perception of everything else.

I sat there – not knowing what I was to do to find some moments of quality solitude. The noise from the thoroughfare outside, along with the garbled music from the TV and music system in the next room suddenly gave me a glimpse of what an asylum might feel like. And some raised voices and pointless disagreements to complete the orchestra.

Witnessing a profoundly hollow matrimonial obligation all my life has left me with close to no faith in the institution. I’ve been watching them for 28 years now – two completely different people – they couldn’t even be called diametric opposites. They were just two strangers brought together by the social imperative of matrimony. And since that also entails procreation, they did that too, almost, sometimes I feel, without any real thought. Like a divine mandate to take the species forward. Well! Nice excuse.

The cacophony is what receives me when I get home after many hours of intellectually battling the hollowness of a work less corporate job. It’s the cacophony of social convenience and compromises, dependency and dramatics, and a little affection thrown in at times. Many generations and personalities at the threshold of explosion – but not quite there for want of indignation – just not prepared to accept and too scared to confront.

Seen from outside, it makes an ideal case study for social scientists. But the gnashing experience of living through the trauma of a social structure in flux is not exactly the best learning. It’s an unending saga of the trials and trepidations of a middle class family that is always unfairly dependant on some of its members for its survival. It’s unacknowledged, unaccounted subjugation, and mental claustrophobia. And a vacuum of a life – that has no experiences to share, no insights to give, and no perspective to offer.

Singing Away the Blues...??

Normally, its easy to sing away the blues. You sit by yourself, sing some Beatles, and voila! you're already feeling better.

But sometimes, you can't sing 'em away. You just can't. When you feel like you've lost your voice, and the inclination to sing.

We discuss liberty, respect and responsibility aloud. But then someone once told me that the ones that are most vocal about how democratic and liberated they are, are the ones that should never be trusted. What happens behind closed doors and curtained windows is another story, altogether. And no fairytale this...

An eternity of silent abuse, growing pain, subtle discrimination, sustained violence and misunderstanding later, I feel truly tired of fighting. No amount of intellectualizing and analyzing helps. No amount of money, independence, or courage changes anything. Did someone say something about changing times and norms? I suggest the entire rhetoric be revisited. And revised.

Now I know why such few people think about changing the world. They have such a hard time just trying to change their own life.

All the world is a dark comedy

We've 'evolved', haven't we? And we continue to, right? Which means there's absolutely no need for one to feel like all the world's a dark comedy, right? Not quite. There's every reason. It's a bizarre feeling...to be part of this universe...and these times.The way I've been living for the last 3 months, I feel like I go from asylum to asylum (home to office.) I have tried to contain my disdain for people, power, petty politics - and to not credit it with discussion, but here I am succumbing to my weakness for self expression.

I look around me, and see all the silliest things have become most important, and all the most insensitive people have become powerful. There's too much power, and too little ability, sense or maturity to handle it. There's way too much money, and too little humanity to utilize it sensibly.

Not that I stand apart in any way...but I feel anguish, and need to vent it. Limitations and constraints soon become excuses. And the transition happens very gradually.

Maturity, huh?

Sometime ago, life didn't seem like a munshi in disguise...asking for an account of every action, every word and every thought. Frankly, I thought I could get away with a lot of shit, completely unscathed (and I did.) But suddenly there's the imperative to think of everything in terms of consequences (and how I hate that boring shit.) Every action, every thought/half-thought, expression is attributed to a personality trait. Now, seriously, if my personality had to be based on anything/everything I have done/said in the past, I would be a threat to the idea of sanity as medicine knows it (its funny how life-changing revelations come to you when you're least expecting them.)

Anyway! Coming back to life, and its irritating calculative habits - the only thing that society doesn't give any gyaan about, is how to deal with pain (they have buckets full of moral bullshit otherwise.) For pain, they only have the cliche` stuff...the kind that just doesn't make a difference when you're in pain. Then again, maybe that's the good thing about it. Since no one can help you through it, all your lessons are only your own to learn from, and claim maturity for. Maturity is another thing I'd like to discuss. But some other time.

Mediocrity, huh?

Several times, I hear several 'brilliant' people discuss mediocrity, and how there's so much of it around. That brings us back to the fundamental premise of mediocrity, and therefore brilliance.

Brilliance could broadly be defined as the ability to observe, comprehend, analyze, synthesize and apply (and maybe some more words from psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, used randomly.) Brilliance is what brilliance does. And to be of any utility to anyone, leave alone all of mankind, an ability to empathize, understand and feel for everything in the environment is of utmost importance.

But funnily, here's what is noticed about the most brilliant people of our times. A complete lack of empathy, coupled with the a pompous, elitist self image. A complete lack of sense of humour, coupled with an unnecessary arrogance. The belief that they know it all, coupled with the inability to acknowledge the fact that everything around us has something to teach. An endless ability for abstraction and application, but minimum awareness of the world they live in. I could go on and on, but more than anything else, I should give myself a break. Besides, it is the prerogative of the brilliant to ramble away so that no one around understands. Then again, isn't that the point of brilliance?! When you can convince them of it, why confuse them?

It's funny how our definition of brilliance has nothing to do with people anymore.