Sindbad the Sailor: Part 1

It has been one year since Sindbad had set sail. One year since he stepped out of his known world and jumped into the sea of mystery. The special thing about this journey was that there were no other sailors with him. He was alone.

He wasn’t really feeling lonely, or scared. In fact, he was looking forward to it. Because, sometimes having too many people around constrains you & drags you back, like the reign on the collar of a playful puppy. But this time there was nobody to hold him back. He could do whatever whenever he wanted.

Sindbad had to build his ship bit by bit for this journey over a long time. It was a great test of his patience & perseverance. He fought it out with competitors everyday to gather the resources, hammering the nails on the planks of wood in sun, storm & rain. The grease on the ship was made up of his sweat & blood. Not that he knew what awaits him, but he made preparations anyway. His principle was very simple: travel light. The ship wasn’t built of iron, but out of large chunks of wood. Even if the ship would crack & break, it would not sink. Wood doesn’t sink.

The wind was strong, the sails were blown fully and he left the shore with a long toot. He was happy & raring to go, tired of living on the edge of the old city gasping for breath where every day seemed more like the last day. He had a very big smile when the anchor was lifted and the ship went off like an arrow, without ever looking back.

Unlike most other times, where Sindbad looks forward to the journey instead of the destination, this time he couldn’t wait to see the land. He could hardly sleep with his pulses racing, looking out far every other minute, blinking as less as possible, just to catch the first glimpse of the land. While on the ship, he met more and more other ships floating around as the destination drew closer. But he hardly stopped to chat, as he was too busy looking forward.

Finally, he saw the land. It was like a fairytale. Like he had travelled back in time a thousand years. In the land of kings & queens, giants & goblets, angels & ghouls, unicorns & dragons. The air was magical, the people bowed on every word, and the sun was smiling all day & till late at night.

Sindbad set his first foot on the new world.

An encounter with Maya

Today I met her.

She was sitting in a corner of the library, pouring over her open Macbook with several books strewn all around.

I took my seat opposite to her with my usual bunch of books and could not resist noticing the name of a bright green book that was lying around on the table: "Dreams". I was almost sure that it must be the famous book by Freud. I struck up a conversation.

"Maya, what are you reading? Freud? May I take a look into this book  if you dont mind?"
It took me almost 20 minutes to compose & speak the above words. She replied with a gentle & sweet smile.

"No. I'm trying to learn Spanish. This is just a book written in Spanish."
"Maya, why are you always so difficult to predict?"
"Maybe because you think that you can predict everything. There must be somebody to challenge you, right? Dont you like to be challenged? I'm sure that you do."

She knows me very well. I think she knows everything about me. I mean, if you're complete strangers, there is still a non-zero probability that you'll see each other sometime somewhere. But only if somebody knows your every movement, your every pulse & impulse, only then she would be able to elude you. For so long.

I asked again, "The warning alarm of the library has gone off. May I buy you a drink, if you dont mind?"
Again she maintains, "Unfortunately not."

"Maya, why do you think we never meet? Is it that I'm too unacceptable?"
"I dont think so. Maybe because I'm too close to you to see. You see me  in every couple holding hands & sharing a smile. In every random cute girl who passes by. In every careless whisper that catches your ear. In every gentle touch. In every tinkling laughter. You cannot see me everywhere and then again want to find me in a single person. Make up your mind first!"
"Why? What is the problem in that?"
"Problem? Your entire perception makes you blind. Blind with expectations. Blind with desire. Blind with pointless agony. If you see me everywhere, then even if I come to you as a person, you'll reject me."
"That is completely not true. Every time in my life, whenever I found even a fragment of you in any single person, I loved you wholeheartedly."
"Yeah. And there lies the problem. You just love the fragment. Not the entirety. You analyse. You criticise. You tear apart all the goodness & badness and try to deconstruct & reconstruct it in your own way. You are always driven by your mind. Do you even have a heart? I have profound doubt regarding that!"

My lips trembled. Do I have a heart? I would like to say that heart is all that I have, everything else is wrapped by it. But I could not say it. She speaks so confidently that it confuses me every time.

She goes on, "Every single time you find the fragment, you think that you can do better. You're never happy with what you've got. You need it all, all at once, in a single piece. But life is a maze. I always come in fragments. If I came in a single piece, we would be instantly annihilated. Some might say in explosion of energy, positive energy if you like to say. But I say, annihilation is always destruction, deconstruction, irreversible. Either you get lost in your mind or in your heart."

She is right, I think. If she would come  to me I would forget everything, all fear, all other connections, all earthly cares. She would be my Lolita. Mine, and only mine. And finally, this will destroy me. Perhaps she eludes me only to save me from annihilation.

"Maya, do you think this will go on like this forever?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, that will I keep chasing your shadow like this for all my days & never find you?"
"Yes. If you keep chasing my shadow I shall float away forever. But if you ever dare to look me face to face, eye to eye, confront me... then maybe your luck would change. But would you? I think you're too much in love with the faceless, nameless, non-existing shadow. It will be hard for you to move into the sun from it and face the heat. Are you ready?"

I kept silence. What could I say? I gathered composure and muttered for one last time:
"Shall we meet again?"
"Like this, I hope not."
"But what if I never meet you under the sun? Promise me then at least you'll not take away the shadow from me."
"The sun always goes down.", she said with a smile.

And she walked away into the darkness of the night.

Parables of a Survivor in Chennai : Redemption

As I sit in the train on my way to Bristol from Edinburgh, it is only 5.30pm now but the sun has gone down almost 2 hours back. Generally I like to gaze outside from my favourite windows seat and try to absorb as much as possible of the fleeting by sceneries.  But right now hardly anything is visible apart from my own reflection from the glass. So I thought to pick up the piece that was due for more than 2 years. I tried hundreds of times but fell short of words every time. Let us see how it goes this time.

Time has flown by since I left Chennai. But the memories are as fresh like yesterday. This piece is dedicated to all my friends in Chennai and especially to my room-mates without whom it would be never as enjoyable as it has been.

When we stepped in Chennai for the first time from Mysore on 7^th September 2009, we were all apprehensive of the place. I still remember the grim faces and painful squeals of people when the posting locations were declared in Mysore at Infosys GEC2. But in the 2 years that we spent there, we learnt to love the place & the life there… mostly, the Freedom.

Most of us grew up thinking about getting decent grades in the education system, secure a job with high possibilities and a respectable income. As we move on one step after another, the last step seems less and less relevant as we strain to reach the next milestone. But sometimes it occurs to me, all of these are important, but may not lead to a so-called Happy Life. Happy Life is a very complicated function of health, money, relationships, career and attitude. But mostly attitude.

Attitude triggers & controls everything else. This is one of the foremost realizations that I had so far. When we were in Chennai, all of us were very alert and felt alive. It was not just about going to office and performing good everyday, but you had to think about the other aspects of your daily life that we had never thought of before. From the daily chores, arranging food, turning off the water pump in time, washing clothes, cleaning the house, it taught us everything step by step. We made mistakes everyday and learnt to overcome them. It was as thrilling as learning to walk for the first time! We learnt to appreciate the subtle efforts needed in everything around us that used to go unnoticed when we were at home, leading a selfish life and thinking about only us all the time. The experience in Chennai taught us to adapt & to evolve. We finally got a taste of life, slapped by it, spanked by it and also kissed by it. As I returned from Chennai to Kolkata after about 31 months after I left home, I felt myself to be a stronger, better & more independent individual.

My room-mates were a very important part of my life there. All our lives revolved around each other everyday. We were support systems for each other and stood up for ourselves against all adversities like a single family. The happiness expanded manifold on distribution and tough times got cushioned. Without them, I admit, it would have been very difficult to live there all alone. In fact, I truly believe that all these years were actually a part of my extended college experience. We were trained almost from scratch, started working under the guidance of able team lead and finally learnt to deliver independently.

In Chennai, my typical day would start from 7.30am when I would get up, reach office within 8.45 and work till 12pm and take a long lunch break when all of the roomies will meet together for a daily dose of gossips and food; then resume work till 5.30pm, go to salsa class (my first formal dance lessons!), go to gym (sometimes), jump in the swimming pool and do some quick laps, play snooker for couple of hours, have dinner at the food court and return home by the last bus! Whoa! I did everything that Infosys offered. I had a tendency to jump in the waters of every beach that I went to. From getting the stick of the police at Marina Beach, to Thiruvanmiyur, Besant Nagar, Kovalam, Elliots, Mahabalipuram, Pondicherry, I swam in every beach no matter what season it was, how the weather was or what I was wearing at that time! My most favourite memory in Chennai was of the day when we had lunch at our friends’ place at SP Koil, where we decided to spend the evening to Mahabalipuram (45mins far by bus), and reaching there we decided to spend the night at Pondicherry (2 hours from there). We reached Pondicherry at 2 in the morning and just roamed about in the dark till morning due to unavailability of vacancies in hotels! In the end we felt tired, but happy! With our friends, there was hardly a day without any happenings. As I type this now, I feel a major part of me totally numb just because of their absence here.

Fixing a destination gives you a direction but also takes away the flexibility to stop and relish the present. When we keep on dreaming about the future, the present slips away without notice. When I moved away from Chennai, I started to miss the people who I hardly talked with! The people who I played snooker with everyday, we exchanged hardly anything more than a quick appreciation or a tap on the table, but that is what remains etched in my memory. The pretty girl who used to come to have breakfast at the same time I went and used to sit at the same seat everyday. The rowdy group of boys who used to splash around in the swimming pool for hours, without even completing a single lap. The stout little man who used to lift 80 kilograms in the gym, without even weighing the same himself! All these insignificant memories keep swirling into my subconscious time to time.

People from other parts of India generally have a not-so-correct perception about the life and people in Chennai. Yes, people do not speak much Hindi. But tell me, which English person would speak French with you? People in Tamil Nadu are very protective about their own culture. I do not see any harm in that. Even if you drop by to Madurai or Coimbatore, you would get a flavour of the life and language that is hundreds of years old. Mixing of culture makes the people open but spoils the distinct flavour. In Kolkata, we accept all people as our own. We try to adopt habits that come floating by from any direction. But if you go around Kolkata, how many things in daily life can you find out that is very uniquely Bengali? We are the most adaptive, like a cockroach. We will live long and spread everywhere in the world. But we are gradually losing the ability to retain the uniquely Bengali culture within ourselves.

Tamil Nadu’s strategy is admittedly a bit extremist. They intentionally create a distance between themselves and the non-Tamil people. But that is what made them one of the richest cultural places. From the taste of dosai & sambar, the Tamil language, the gajra on the ladies’ hair, the smell of strong alcohol in every other guy’s breath, the periodic whistle of the train passing by, the hot insufferable summer, the dark countryside of Paranur lit by silvery moonlight, the soothing sound of waves crashing on the Besant Nagar beach, swimming in the rain… all were a part of my day-to-day life and are a savoured memory now.

I have learnt to love Chennai as a whole, as a part of me. As I sign-off the Parable today, all I have is a big smile on my face. Thank you everybody for making the journey so beautiful. 

Born on Thursday

People who are born on Thursday usually have to lead a very independent life and have to work hard for their success. They are usually very stubborn people and cannot stand critics from others and have very few true friends in their life. They are also prone to getting heaty i.e most people born on this day tend to be afraid of the heat, they need to be in cool shade or in an aircon environment most of the time. They do not like to wait for things to get done, they rather do it themselves and get over with it. They are also straight forward in their speech and may sometimes offend people.

They will be good at Arts, Handywork, Cooks, Drivers and can't stay put in one place for too long as they are always on the move be it at work or home, they have to be kept busy otherwise they will be bored . 

Their bad months are in March, July, August and September during these months they need to be careful with their finances and decisions, better still not to get involved in job changes or investments during these months.

The Thursday women are very man-like meaning their mentality and the way they do things are more manly compared to women born on other days. However Thursday born people usually keep their word, they will treat you good if they are treated the same way however if you mistreat them even once, they will remember it . Some may think of a way to deal with you.....

Source: Taken from a random internet site. Sharing this just for fun...

The Nihilist

Human personalities are built on beliefs & experiences. When a baby is growing up, he hardly has any experiences. So he relies on the beliefs instilled into him by the people around. But as he gradually experiences life over the years, some of these beliefs get modified, distorted or even utterly removed. He questions them,  criticizes them, bends them to their limits, until he can see the juice inside.

There is a saying, that a beggar cannot be a hermit par se, as he had nothing to leave behind. It requires the strength of leaving behind kingdoms of power, wealth and fame to attain the state of The Buddha. Similarly, it takes a huge strength of mind to leave behind all of these acquired thoughts to be like  a baby, born without any conscience, any belief, any morality. Like a mother, he must bear the tearing agony of giving Birth - of Himself and cut the umbilical chord of his previous self created out of others' thoughts. He must start with Nothingness, then be Full and to learn to let go all of it to embrace Nothingness again : to become The Man of Experience, The Nihilist.

When in fear, when in despair, when in joy, a man requires to cling onto something, a security that assures them a hope of redemption. A person, a god or even a belief. The Nihilists remain utterly alone, in the soul-sucking Black Hole of misery. Drowning in the spiral of his thoughts, the only thing that he can hope for is channelizing it. Creativity is the only thing, that can put a carpet on all the blood of his soul. The excruciating pain comes out of his creations, where the joy of giving birth immerses all his senses and gives a shape to his abstract thoughts. A sculpture where he puts all the truths- uninhibited, uncensored. It is the shape of his soul at that point of space-time.

The Nihilist is utterly confused. His mind fleets over thoughts, conceptions and theories. As no two experience is exactly the same, his theories evolve in every moment of his existence. But he is a human, he has his emotions, and at the same time he denies them, he denies all of them. The confused soul lives a life of two people, burning himself and everybody around. He burns in the fire of his experiences & thoughts. In his world of void, there is to water to pour over his burns, no words that can soothe him, because what he needs is - to experience it through his senses.

But, it is this Hellish Fire that defines him. It is this fire that burns him only to keep control. The mind would implode, as there is nothing within to support the gravity of his Being. Floating on the fine line between void & completeness, the Nihilist draws nectar from both these worlds and keeps the fire raging.

This is the story of a Nihilist.