Happy

Valentine's day.
Ummm...Rather belated.

That's OK. That's how FUBAR all this is.

Just hope that you and your love are being loved...

Jo tum ho to, hava mein bhi, mohabbaton ka rang hai...

Happy?

Belated Birthday to you. Wherever and However you are.
Hope you have a good better year ahead.

A Mistake

I think I've made a mistake. It isn't a big one.
It won't hurt anybody, or won't cause anybody grief.

In fact, I can't really tell if it's actually a mistake. In hindsight, this might be an awesome decision.
It's not gonna hurt me much either. No, I can't be entirely certain that there won't be indirect repercussions. But still, it won't affect me directly.

But ; Why does my gut refuse to lie still?
"Did you ever get the feeling that you.........."

Growing up

When I was a kid, things were simpler.

I don't mean to trivialize my childhood. I don't intend to make that statement without weight/thought either.

At this point, good to establish that "kid" range = until I started working.
For others, the "kid" phase might end sooner or later. For me, that's that for a very unique set of reasons.

2nd PUC, Engineering wasn't trivial. Friendship issues and fights weren't an issue to be brushed aside. Stolen cycles were definitely a scare.

But the nature of these issues was simple, one dimensional; a single problem, to be solved with a single set of more or less clear solutions. But then, as is the goddamn rule, I had to grow up.

I often wonder, what it means, this process/act of growing up. There are obvious physiological changes. Yes, check. Then there's the cauliflower. That's a lot more ponderous, yet fascinating, cos they kinda sneak up on you.

Often, one can hear the phrase "maturity", "experience" etc being bandied about in the same context of "grown up" ppl. With age, the way you think about things change..the way you process and react and respond to things change..I don't know why/how this happens..You don't react/lash out at things, your approach has a lot more patience, calmness to it..you anticipate, imagine, assume, calculate and then say/do things..And you've to see, also, that with age, you get time...and with time, there's scope for shit to happen..and when shit happens, you, irrespective of whether you want to, like it, or not, learn. Yes, human beings learn and adapt. So bang! There're some cauliflower patterns changing already..

If you take simple, everyday instances and think about how a much younger you would've acted/reacted to one of those, you'll see a marked difference (probably). Yet, that's just the epithelial. Underneath, there's still hot, young, gushing, rushing, eager, stupid blood. Shows up once in a while. Whether u are 16, 26, 36, 46, 56 or 66, it will rear its head (Note: urge to use cliched 'ugly head' suppressed.) And that's who you are; who you truly are. Naked. Raw. Unprocessed. Pristine.

Sometimes I think I haven't grown up. I think my outermost layer is a stressed out, thinning interface, rather buggy, just holding the fort. Because, at times, there are issues/topics/problems in life to which I have no answer. This amazing process of growing up, which was supposed to change me, give me tools, equip me for life, has failed at some point, somewhere. I can try and think it, reason it, thrash it out like the supposed "adult" I am; or I can keep a pencil, a notebook and try to "work it out";

Murali 0 Life 1.

All in all it will be, just another brick in the.....

A song on my lips, a thought on my mind

So we've all heard of the "Oh when I listen to this song, I'm reminded of this place I was driving through, this person cos I had a crush on him/her and I used to listen to it a lot when I thought about him/her and I went through a lot of tissues back then cos I had to cry a lot and this is so mushy I should be shot or eaten up like that Bournville ad".

Right? No? Hmm. Weird.

Anyway, given the fact that music affects me (like actually affects at a neurotic (neuronic?) level n shit) and certain pieces of music tend to affect me slightly more than the othersulu, I tend to attach a lot of importance to what kinda music I listen to and each of the pieces that I do. However, I'm kinda lazy/scared to go looking out for new music cos I feel I might get let down by searching for crap and also heng hudkbeku anta gottilla..Top of the charts 2011? Best rock music of 2012? Critically acclaimed progressive rock? Best upcoming fusion artists?

Sometimes I tend to get links to bands like Therapeutic Lizards (TM), Megalomaniacal Vulvas, Depressed Voodoo Maidens.

Most of the time. And I'm a picky ass, so I tend to be havings a bad juju in this and slightly disappointed I end up.

So to avoid, I rely on recommendations. I give encourage* to ppl to send me links, give me pointers, recommend stuff that they've liked. And mostly ppl around me have something in common with me wrt musical tastes, so there's a high chance that they'll send across something I like, 1, maybe 2 out of 3 times at least. If not I shoot them in the head like Tommy Lee Jones does in MIB.

Anyway, the main point of this post is that I have a slightly different hash tag when I'm listening to a song. I also remember, almost automatically, who introduced me to a particular song, and give a vote of thanks now n then. It's for songs that have had an impact on me, and the person leaves an imprint; a whiff of a good memory. Of course, some songs also have a nicely painful association which won't be delved into here (for cliche avoidance and aforementioned heartache reasons).

A sample list, and a smidgen of gratitude to the folks who made me n the song one :)

White Room (Cream) - Partha
One More Time (Lynyrd Skynyrd) - Sac
Tangerine (Led Zep) - Pragnya
Clearly Quite Absurd (Deep Purple) - Venky
Fragile (Sting+Stevie) - Sheetal
Long Train Running (Doobie Brothers), Nothing Rhymed (Gilbert Sullivan), Wild World (Cat Stevens),                    Mary had a little lamb(Stevie Ray Vaughan) - Bruce Lee Mani (Amen!)
Free as a Bird - Deepthi
Rocky theme - Madhu

... (three dots means list goes on but right now I've to get to work and can't right anymore OK?)

Hopefully the people reading this will listen to something from the list and link me with it? :)

* : The grammar error in "give encourage" is so funny it's addictive; I've started using it in serious contexts too. 

Short and Sweet 2013

That's a theatre festival. A competition at that too! And I was lucky to be part of this..

No this isn't like a humble sounding cliche that I'm employing here. My honour, the moment of my life, really proud and lucky no no adalla. This colleague of mine was sposd to take part in it along with somebody else, and that person dropped out. So he asked me! Cos I'd taken part in a coupla other plays before that and he liked my sense of humor and timing etc

Alex Broun is the guy who started Short + Sweet in Blr. The concept is of a bunch of plays, each of duration 10 minutes. The audience gets to vote what they thought was the best. There are judges too, and they pick as well. And eventually there's a final. Spread across 2 weekends, the winners from the first weekend and the second weekend battle it out for glory and money! :)

Ah, Personal Satisfaction..Where'd YOU been?? marte hogittu nin bagge..idellaadr madhya, maatinalli kaaNskoLo neenu, ninna nijavada mahatva enu annodu ondu yaksha prashne...na? Gottilla, prati obbrgu ondondu I guess..If you say Personal Satisfaction ranks low then you're judging the other person yeah? It's almost no use to ask somebody else...a short pause later they'll of course say "For the love of theatre" or "The kick of it all" or "Just to put up a good show" etc etc This is the (pro)verbial front for each of their inner ambitions/goals, ene irli adu.

Coming back to Broun. Mayuresh (said colleague) and I put up this play called Sardine. It's about 2 friend sipping beer in a bar, one narrating a weird date that he had (where the girl sang a poem about the dicks of 2 other guys she had dated previously, ON THE DATE) ; the other thinking one of the guys in the poem is his good friend, who's narrating his own bad fate, and in a bid to console his friend, ends up revealing too much info. Hah!

Hah! Bekitta? Ning yavon heLiddu isht complicated play madakke? Jana duddu kottu bartaare..Nagakke, Serious agakke, oLLe acting nodakke, oLLe scripts being enacted well nodakke..yavonig bekolo intha conundrums ella? Yavon vote madtaane/Le ninge eethara ella eneno kathe torsdre? (Excuse me sir, personal satisfaction gu vote gu...) Oho satisfy aitha? Aitha nijvaglu? Makhakke "I didn't get the play" anta andralla, aitha satisfy? Yen neenu "Naanantu nange tochiddu yeno hogi stage mele koothkondu/ninthkondu hartbittu barteenappa, audience hogi negdbidd saili nangenu" anta na, nindu? Oh personal andre person = neenu anta? Hmm sari adantu aithu bidu..hogli onderd second nilsteeni..maja eno bantu..

Enthentha jana sikkdru! Avr nijvaada mukha adena? Avru yavaglu irodu hangena? Athva social pressure inda hinge vikrutha vagi adtara? Vikrutha andre, ugly athva crass alla..Distorted..Avrde ond loka ide..Avrde ondisht padagaLu, topics of discussion, yochso reeti, aado reeti, matado reeti, batte haakoLo reeti ella. Aathara naanalla..illi enaithu andre, keluvru ishta aadru cos they were so different from me..keluvru kashta ansthu cos they were so different from me :)

ninna atyamoolyavaada 6 votegaLannu itkondu (adralli moor maatra ninda?) uppinkaayi haakond tinnhogu!

Self Suicide

There was One.
The One.

Many people saw different faces, in different places, but that was untrue.
Just one, very aware, masquerade.

Not entirely unnecessary or unwarranted. Life throws up different situations, and a human who has tasted salt and spice, will naturally adapt and react and morph.

Sometimes there is awareness of the current state of mind, the show being put on. Sometimes it is spontaneous and subconscious.

Today was different. Today was turmoil, torture.

Highly aware, unable to run, caught in the ring with himself. How could he?!
Why was fate/universe/God/ doing this to him??
If only he could turn back time; He wasn't really to blame; If he's reached THIS level of callousness, it's hopeless; But it was just a one off incident....

A distraction, a smile, a good time, a nice song, an engaging problem, a conversation, a break.

And then back in hell. Back to Parallelogram one.

The voice inside the head grows louder, and dominates, and poisons.

And then there were two.

Of course everybody hears voices in their head, he said to himself. It was normal. Nobody just admits it. That was normal too.

"Really? Good then..."
"You really shouldn't have done that though...that's definitely not NORMAL..."

Yeah yeah sure..I know that already...

"No I mean, look at what you've done! How can you look at yourself in the mirror? How can you live with yourself...."

No wait, it's really not that bad...Actually..I mean...is it?

"Of course it is...there's no going back, no matter what you tell yourself...There's only one solution, only one ending in sight"

Hah! Sure...I'm definitely not ready to be kidded around, right now...

"Look at what you've done!! you can pacify yourself a 100 ways, but the damage's done..I mean, which sane, normal, person does this kind of a thing to another human being??

You're pathetic; You don't deserve a second chance...You should end it right now"

But, hey wait a minute there...

"NO! Do it...Finish yourself..Stop this misery that you call a life..You don't deserve it..STOP!"

I don't want to!! I think..

"STOP! END! NOTHING YOU CAN DO WILL CHANGE ANYTHING; YOUR LIFE DOESN'T MATTER! YOU ONLY CAUSE HARM TO OTHERS! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE!!

PICK

UP

THAT

GUN!!"

No...........I don't want to....I think I can change....Help!!!



And then there were none.

Picture of you

The brain's a funny little object..Memories, are more often than not, snapshots of the objects/persons/places of which the memories are comprised of..

What's funny about this is, sometimes the brain tends to hang on to older snapshots of people. And we emote based on that. Be it a longing parent, reminiscing about the tot they held in their hand and felt immeasurable joy with, be it a spouse struggling in a dead marriage thinking about the romantic times shared with the other one and being dumbfounded at the separation between them, be it a friend anticipating/expecting things to work a certain way from his "childhood" crony; we all make that mistake once in a while...

Is this deliberate? Is this the brain trying to run away by not "updating" the images to a current, different, worse reality? Sometimes it is...It can get a bit perplexing with somebody totally hating and loving, essentially the same person (naturally, the person in question has changed/evolved, but still the same "meat suit"), but different snapshots of that person, in different points of time..If only you could still see the older version in the current one...

And in some cases, there are no updates available. We've reached EOSL. Hehehe. A nice and apt work term. End of Service Life. No more images to update. No changes available. Work with what you're left with. And this need not only be in the case of death. Total separation could cause this. And then the images started to blur. To corrode. Every recollection, further blurring what's available. Until what's left is a confusing, muddled impression of a hazy instance of a living person who'd once left imprints in your brain.

Yeah, that sounds about right.