Lost and Found

Sometimes, I feel distant to myself. I am taken in by events happening to disconnected people. False happiness directed to disconnected events happening to someone, someplace elsewhere. Suddenly, I am all for coming out of the spell cast by that false smile. Suddenly, I know I have moved far ahead, or have being left far behind. Suddenly it's all about me, and not what other people have to do with another set of other people. Suddenly, I realize I am lost in a communication breakdown. I am lost in messages and sms that dont reach, I am lost in emails that bounce, in calls that are not returned. In missed calls. In wrong email ids. Suddenly, I know I am typing the wrong words, offering the wrong shoulder, crying for the wrong person - am in the wrong time and wrong place altogether. Something tells me I am waiting for the thing that has long gone by, past me, past in time. Everything points me to the same.

In the past 3 years, when I really did bother about a few things and persons around me, I seldom found anything or anyone taking a few steps back to come back to me. I pulled myself along. I dont remember giving a second thought to similar beings before that ever. I think I am moving backwards. People cut down on more people with time and age. After a few years, I know what will matter dear to me would be my credit card number and my company privay policy. Atleast under the normal scheme of things. And then I would be wasting a few hundred bucks talking about my best friend's latest failed affair. Or planning out the next holiday. And I know neither of them will ever mean anything to me.

My life is a an hour long power point presentation, which I have prepared for a bloody many hours, but have been asked to sketch out the murky details in five minutes, from a 6-slides-a-page handout. I am clueless what to stress on. These are details, but you don't have time for that, sir. I think all you wanted to know was a gist of everything I did, that's what we all want in this tearing hurry to move away from each other, the gist of things. Sometimes, we try doing that on people also, and we fail. To understand the gist of someone.

Oh, you just lost me. All I need is a blank screen in front of me, making no efforts to hide its indifference towards me.

The Hungry Mind

A hundred pages into Hungry Tide, I have made up my mind - visit Sunderbans. When?, is a good question.

There is something about books, that makes me feel inferior. Especially, books I haven't read. When I go to Crossword, I am bombarded with fits of self-indignation, because there are so many books, so many best-sellers just waiting to be picked up and flipped. So many of them holding words of poetry and passion, re-takes and retributions, giving forms and words to things hitherto unsaid in my mind.

It's 4 am and I am allowed a bit of nostalgia. 

I remember early school days when I used be in a books circuit. We had a complex network, with even more complex rules of give and take for all the Enid Blytons and Agatha Christies we could lay our hands on. I did manage to read quite a handful of them. I fell in love with Timmy, and I would actually envy the elaborate gastronomical arrangements accompanying every outing. Some of Agatha Christie's are timeless. Didn't like much of her detective series though, liked the stand-alone novels more. There were the occasional classics, some of which I read on my English teacher's recommendation. My first "fat" novel was The Scarlet Pimpernel. Not easily forgotten, I still remember I was completely taken in by the romanticism. After this, fat books were no longer the dreaded territory. Kim, Great Expectations, Heidi, are still fresh in my mind. Though often rebuked for it, I did read hordes of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews and even some of their combo missions. Harry Potter Series and Lord of the Rings followed soon.

Then I stopped. The so-called entrance examination preparation chucked out all these frivolities.

I am happy to be getting back to what I best suck at - my social skills :D. Books are the best excuses to seclusion, and then you can even pass the rare sagacious comment a la Fountainhead or An Equal Music.

This is unending. Right now, I am holding steady to at least a couple of novels and 4-5 books of non-fiction. Happy. :)

Reality.

Reality is going ahead with life, knowing no plans are for real. Plans change. One day you are in love, and the next day you are in love with someone else. Reality is single. Absolute.

Reality is rain in Bombay following a sunny afternoon. Reality is the excuse for broken hearts. Reality is the dead end of arguments. Reality is the pitstop for all forlorn ambitions.

Reality is the cowdung sticking to your expensive shoes. Reality is the cow dung on the road. Reality is alcohol. Oh wait, reality is NOT alcohol. :-)

Reality is for real.