the easy option... not that easy

Saw Rang de Basanti last weekend, and came out a little disturbed. Didn't anyone else find anything wrong with the idea of a bunch of guys so scared of the real world they had cocooned themselves in a fantasy, a North Campus Neverland?

Idealism versus realism. Do you choose to follow what you believe is Right, even though you know it could end up destroying you...

or,

and this is scary

do you take the second option - of getting out of your fantasy world, getting into Life the way it is and fighting your way through.

Guess which is tougher.

Somewhere the stories have twisted inside out. Death and self sacrifice actually comes across as the simpler option, though this is probably nothing remotely near what Rakesh Mehra originally thought.

Look around us.

If we knew this is what we were going to be getting into, would we have gone ahead?

cute stuffed toys of nightmares

along the side of the road, this guy was selling stuffed toy dogs... usual, head-on-spring, beads-for-eyes... and suddenly I was confronted with a row of dozens of hideously grinning canine heads bobbing around, staring at me with blank white glittery eyes.
It was like meeting a clown at 3 a.m. in a deserted street in the middle of the business district.

what'll happen to any child who is given one of these monstrosities? he'll be screaming at the sight of a pup for years.

talking to myself, future tense

One unashamedly gross site is deathclock. I love it. the bit with the seconds counting down has me laughing for long periods at a stretch every time I see it (which might explain my last performance appraisal) but today I was going the final mile. These guys tell you when you're going to be dead; I was telling myself that I was dead.
I'm supposed to leave the world a better place on Jan 7th, 2020... And that's when I'm also going to receive a mail from myself today, telling me I'm dead. Wonder how I'll react.
It's not good being dead, but being told that in a spirit of extreme mirth by a healthy 26-year-old who's completely out of reach must be extremely irritating.

I shall share my timepass. I'm going to mail everyone I know to receive mails the day they die.

God Bless Google. With Gmail, they triggered an inbox war... and made an email address the true permanent address.

don't say a word

There was a guy standing in front of me in the train some days back, usual close quarters, looked completely normal, standing quietly, and with this STENCH of cheap country liquor around him. like he'd bathed in it or something.
This is not one of those things you talk about... your social conditioning makes you look up and to the left, breathe shallowly, and say nothing.
and then it's too late because the crowd's in and you're going to be face to face for the next 45 minutes and now you can't step back, or move away, or turn, or even throw up on the bastard.

So you stand in resolute denial while something builds, and builds, and builds with every breath until you know that when the next intake stings your sinuses, you're going to just push him out without a word.

Is this how domestic murders happen?

the pause before the ring

complete radio silence clientside.
cliched, but calm before the storm is exactly how it is.

In the really good, peaceful, intimate, or just plain relaxed moments, I can feel my phone watching me, and it's sniggering.

i am joe's heart attack.

Will I ring in the next ten seconds? or will I stay silent and let you relax and enjoy life... for now?

night of the evil dead had nothing on ringtone of the calling boss.

they are among us

went running at 5 a.m on Juhu.
completely dark sky, but there's a line of triple halogen poles all down the beach, like a kind of pedestrian marine drive. and it was packed.
all really old people, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in brilliant orange light coming from landwards so it looked like a world of half-people, walkng terminator lines between orange and black ambling around... some slowly, wrapped up for the arctic (with monkey caps) and some briskly in shorts... all old.

kinda creepy. alien.

and sleepy dobermanns, labradors, spitzii, a pissed-looking great dane and lots and lots of small unidentifiable mobile furballs, all completely silent.

happy new year

slept peacefully through new years', and feel all the better for it.

*blink*

saw a human forearm lying outside the station this morning, near the tracks. it's one of those twitches in normality... everything else is as usual, sun shining, crowded compartment, announcements, trains... and this.
just.
there.
is this how surreality begins? or is there all the time and we just tune it out because it doesn't *fit*?