Drunk

Here’s to hoping my parents would never find out, never cared about any others who would be interested to find out.

Exactly in the middle of two full bottles of mansion house, I decide to write about how it feels when completely drunk. Before that, I must confess that I am not totally out, so this may not be a truly accurate portrait.

 You suddenly are not afraid of consequences, you want to change wrongs and replace them with rights. You stop thinking about losing your job and think about what ifs. You don’t care what your bosses would say about the faults only they can find. You feel that you are better than them. You don’t care about the years of ambition or the lifetime of frustrations. Your mind spins, or stops spinning, and you feel the calm you haven’t felt the whole week of doing productive work. A bit of comfort, as the wait is over, the wait for the week to be over with and the break to begin. You forget about what you never remembered, but never got to push out of the borders of your mind either – the irrelevant. The Saturday and Sunday of life with your best friends and a raw peg.

The song playing on speakers ‘And nothing else matters’

We grew up

Used to watch Sachin with wide open mouths. Learned perfection hence

Never being interested in his records, just the Goosebumps-giving straight drives with MRF

From the promises-to-self of never marrying

Of never drinking, never drinking and driving

Never doing the wrong

From the summers of boredom to being busy for the waiting ones

Came a long way

 Learned English with the spoken English classes offered by Yahoo messengers and Orkuts

Who would’ve thought, that it would earn the food that donkey years of education never could

That waiting for the kissing scenes in Hollywood movies

Anything more than that would make the day up

Studies meant exams, exams meant marks, and marks meant expectations

Studies never meant learning. Not even after knowing that marks meant nothing

Terraces were the play grounds which never existed

Terraces were converted to secret party places later

And Bars, And night out adda’s

Bunked it all

Schools, colleges, tuitions, offices

Some times, technically, home

Those afternoons of blaming our dads for not being rich

And blaming the rich for not giving it all away

Not having the bucks to party

To having no places which could hold the parties long enough

From the outlander view from inside a boys school

To getting bored and sick of nuisance of girls (oops - most of the girls)

Moved on, from hand video games, to TV video games, to PC games

Now to no-more games

From the Dexter’s labs and ftv

To Nolan’s Memento and more

In the process, came across people, acquaintances, few friends, very few good friends

Losing a couple of them by chance, some friends by choice

From being pure atheists

To being just an agnostic

And not caring enough to even remember that term

From Learning about hypocrisy by observation

From gaining expertise in it by practice

To hating it all by heart

To deciding never to be a pert of that mix

To realizing that it’s a resolution hard to hold

Starting with belief of a destiny, going around the concept of luck

Coming to believe in the randomness

We grew up.

What Time Can do.

Time can make you forgive yourself for the mistakes you made. It can make you break the promise, to yourself, of making good the mistakes. It can make you sleep as if nothing happened. It overthrows conscience.

It can make the joyful moments at the parks with mom, dad and brother, just a cute memory for minds. It can make the adorable parents suspicious of their own children. It can make the same kids who played in the dad’s arms pure liars and crooks. It can make the same kids clever enough to crack jokes on their friend’s dads. It can turn the single room and kitchen home- with one family, into a double bedroom hall and kitchen apartment with busy individuals.

It can turn the best friends into ‘just another casual friend.’ It can make people meet new ones and forget old ones. It can change the priorities from blind faith and truthfulness, to need, later to choices and chances.

It can make you meet special people. Who can make magic happen. Who can make the factors of time and space irrelevant, insignificant.

It can make success seem too small.

Time can kill the creativity of the empty mind. It can make the colorful ambitions too silly now.

It makes you believe that everything is a just part of life. It proves that everything is part of the big plan. And later that there was no plan. All the small things were life.

One Day, Worth A Life

What if you have just one day to live?

One day and that’s it. Is it enough?? Enough or not? And for what?!

What do you do with the last Twenty four hours of the end..?

What do you do if you know that all that counts is this? This is it..

With whom will you spend it with..?

Family, Friends.. With whom..? Can you choose..?

And what if no one is left for you?

What if all that is left of you is you? Just you..

What if thoughts are all you have to spend for the longest Twenty four hours of your life?

Or shortest..? What do you think?

What if all the thoughts that come across are not good enough to be thought about?

Have you done deeds worthy of a life? Yet??

What if all the relations you had are not worth mentioning in the shortlist?

What if there is no short list? What if it is too short?

Can you bear the pain that all you have done is survive?

You just managed to survive.. Thats it? You did not live, did you?!

Is your life worth a drop of tears? At least your tears?

Do you have the time to weep now? Or is it too short?

What if you haven’t done enough to make yourself laugh now?

Or at least to smile? Is your life worth a smile? Of yours?

Did you work to achieve what others did not? Did you discharge your duty?

Is that how you count your life? What if ‘others’ are irrelevant now?

Survived by working. Working your life out..

And lived by? What? Did you have time to live then? When you had more time?

Maybe your friends were right that you did not keep touch..

Maybe your family was right that you were late from work and did not eat on time..

Maybe they meant a lot more than keeping touch and eating..

Maybe they meant living..? Did they?

What if the last thoughts you have are those of dismay and disgust?

Do you want to ask for one more chance?

One more chance to live it differently.. Without mistakes..?

Or maybe with mistakes.. Ones that are meant to be made? Maybe you know them now..

What if all you wanted until now is not what counts? Lost the count?

Were you too late to realize what you want? Late by a lifetime?

Were you too perfect for life?? Too good to risk??

Maybe too good to dare and ask.. huh?? Asking a bit too late now..

Maybe you should have done this a bit earlier?

This questioning and depreciating.. This killing..

Did you realize yet that you still have a bit of life to make up the count.. One day..

One day, worth a life.. Or is it?

Waiting for the bell..

I never listened in class. Neither in the college nor in the professional coaching centers. Neither in school nor in bugging-up intermediate college. I was and am a back bencher. I always went to college for friends if not for attendance. My point is if there is something you can’t learn yourself, the whole world can’t help you to learn it. I carry a bag because I don’t have any place to keep my novel or the earphones. Also, a bag makes a good pillow.

I am, though, not justified in saying that all the classes and courses people attend for ORAL coaching is just thrash. It is important. But we must understand that the only purpose of attending those classes should be to learn how to think about an issue rather than how to solve that issue. Because solving always follows thinking. If you know how to think then problem is just a variable. You can solve it irrespective of its complexity or uniqueness.

If you don’t attend a class to learn this, but to learn the ‘subject’, then the person standing there is no better than a book. In fact, a book is better off because you can read a book as long – and as many times – as you want, it’s cheaper, and your ears are safe.

Planned Accident

May 17^th, 2009. There was an accident on the highway. Two of my school friends were dead on the spot – Praneeth and Shiva. They were on my bike.

We started off at 10 in the morning from Secunderabad. It was a school get-together. I was not planning to go but once I met the friends, I had to go. As if that’s not enough, I went to Praneeth’s house and picked him up. He was never in the plan but was ready in 5 minutes. Shiva was never in the list too. Somehow even he turned up. And there were some 15 other people. We went to a resort near Ghatkesar. We played in the pool. We had some fun. We ate our lunch. And started back at 3 PM or so..

Praneeth had my keys. So he took out my bike. I did not think of asking him the bike back. I don’t know why but I should have. I was going to sit on the rear seat. But it was not to be so. Some other friend asked me to ride his bike because he wanted to ride some other new bike of another friend. So I went on to that guys bike. As I was on another bike, Shiva went and sat behind Praneeth – That was my place. All this happened in a minute or split of it.

So I was the one who was the reason for Praneeth to come and I virtually grabbed Shivas life. Technically speaking, my life is simply the opportunity cost of his. I was lucky in some ways. Not so lucky in other terms. I don’t believe in fate, consequently, I don’t have any words to describe it.

We started off from there and the accident took place in the next 10 minutes. It’s hard to describe how we felt when we saw that our friends who were playing with us half an hour back were not alive now!

But i can swear any day on this. They were two really good fellows. Were not perfect. No one is. But were a lot better than some people who are alive. Would have been nice to have them around.

Reality Check

Everyone has a dream in school, don’t they?? To be a pilot is quite famous :P and some others dream to make India corruption less!!

Everyone wants to be someone who inspires some other person. All of us wanted to become that high profile person in Hollywood movies having the power to make important decisions regarding matters having a high stake. We look in the mirrors and look so deep that it would break thinking “I wanna be a play maker someday. Someone at the top of the list”.

I too went through such phases. That was somewhere down in the school. Then in my 11^th and 12^th I learned that it was not easy to become a celebrity overnight. I decided that I still had some time to enjoy before I start out with serious hard work..

Now, being a graduation student I think I have matured somewhat. Being a successful person internationally or even nationally for that matter is more like impossible unless you start out very hard right from your school days whatever maybe the field you prefer unless you are extra talented. To be a playmaker is not a joke now.. being a leader is no more a fantasy to me(not that I am one now..).

But look at it this way – are you sure you wanna be a leader? Are you ready to sacrifice the little joys of your childhood to spend late hours in the coaching centers which give lessons to get a seat in prestigious institutions which in turn give coaching for some IITs? Are you ready to sacrifice the days when you were chit chatting with your best friends on your building terrace? Can you imagine the shape of your life without those memories? Can you sacrifice those times when you fought over the small bills of a bakery? Or the days when you spent the whole day in a playground playing less and fighting more? Or the joyous games with cousins during small get-togethers? Do you really wanna be a hero when you know that you are gonna be at the top but you are gonna be alone? With no one to really be happy that you are actually a hero? Can you miss out on those little birthday parties, birthday bums and heavy burgers? Is life worth it without those moments of little life when you shared your heart with your best buddies? Well, are you ready to ignore all the special friends you made over the years? The crush in your college for whom you actually go to college? Can you give up the long sessions of fights or arguments you had with your brother for a better salary than him?? (:|

Well, I am sorry - I can’t!!

So do the people who are out to be heroes really know what they are upto? Do they understand what they are missing? Do they ever understand that the environment they are in is not an obstacle to the dreams of their life but it actually is the essence of their unimportant life? Or do they realize that a few more bucks or a bit of applauds is not worth what they are missing – the actual life?

Well that’s how I look at life now. I am gonna be what I am meant to be. I am not gonna compromise my career because of small restrictions. I am still going to make it quite big. But equally so I am not ready to miss out the little joys which only my family and friends can give me - those joys which no success or salary package can afford. After all what is life when you don’t have a few people around you to joke at the fact that you actually succeeded or curse you at the fact that you were too lazy to succeed!!