I am SO high right now.

WWHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Okay, I needed to get that out of my system. I’ve been bouncing off the walls all evening. Why, you ask? Well, today I spent a small part of the evening speaking to my best friend from school.

This is important. Those of you who know me, know how terrible I am at keeping in touch; I’m talking mind-numbingly, earth-shatteringly bad. So, after school, as with most of my friends (except those that lived around me), I fell out of touch when we got to college. We spoke a few times a year (I remember a year when we literally only spoke to each other on our birthdays), discussing girlfriends and the like, making vague plans to meet, which obviously never happened.

He’s been in the States for a while, and recently, I’d been trying to in touch with him, to tell him something I’d much rather say in person. Anyway, that wasn’t meant to be, and I told him over a ping that I hoped he’d see soon and respond to.

And respond he did. By calling me. Clear across the globe. We skyped for a bit, but his connection was wonky. So he called me, from his cellphone, in the United States of America. And that shit costs money. So I said I’d only talk to him for a couple of minutes. And then we talked for half an hour (no, seriously. 29 minutes and 22 seconds. That shit costs money).

And it felt farking brilliant. Through the call and since, I’ve been hopping around the house with this mad grin on my face (it’s still here, 6 hours later). Since then, I’ve been drowning in this ridiculously superawesomebrilliantastic ocean of nostalgia. I’m stuck in, and never want to get out of, a never ending stream of elocution competitions (we were both good, he more so than I) and self-made comics (I seem to remember him doing all the work, yet somehow it was our comic) and English periods and ohgod.

And, as my conversations with him in recent times have made clear, I know he will read this. So anna, here’s a few things just for you:

- I hope I talk to you at least a couple of times a week.
- I’m dead serious about helping with the ideas you said you needed.
- The Li’l Lady has informed me that enough is enough and she simply HAS to meet you now that she’s heard so much about you (I cannot believe that because of my idiocy, you’ve never actually met her, in ALL these years).
- I feel like you should know about her, too, so I’m going to bore you to death talking about her.
- You talked about moving back here after your course is done. If that happens, I’m going to hope fervently that you stay here, in Bombay, and I’d want to have you over all the time, because…
- Like an idiot, I’ve only just realised how much I miss having you around.

It’s now three am, and I’m still wide awake, too excited to sleep, and still with a stupid smile plastered on my face. So all you people sleep, I’m going to be going WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! in my head a little while longer.

Anything You Want

You can have anything you want. That's what everyone says. Anything you want. How often do they mean it, though?

More than anything in my life, I have clung on to my ideals. No, that's inaccurate. I should say I've clung on to my idealism. I've always thought of it as holding on to my innocence, retaining that eight year old child in my head.

I have been called a lot of things for it. Naïve. Childish. Stupid. You just don't know how the world works, they said. No, I know how the world works. I know all too well how it takes any semblance of innocence and systematically wrings it out of you. And it does this obviously at first. It bombards you with this knowledge. With most people, that is enough. They crumble, all too easily.

But if you can weather it, that's when life gets smart. It gets subtle. From corners you'd never expect, it sneaks up on you with a chisel and hammer and politely chips away at you. At those little weak junctions, those keystones.

But I don't want to submit. This one's too close to home. Too much a part of me. You can't take this.

So, to life, and to 'them', I say this: You can have anything you like. Anything. Except this.

Inside a writer’s bedroom, late at night

A book on the side table. Novel. Towel drying in the corner. Clothes piled carelessly…

This stinks.

Dust swirls in untraceable patterns on the floor, pushed around by the breeze the fan cuts through the cold air. It has settled on every surface, almost becoming a living breathing entity with a life of its own.

Wow. That was possibly even worse.

The thing that stinks the most about being a writer isn’t the lack of money, or the apparent subconscious necessity to live in appropriate squalor, or the fact that at parties, you’re the one standing off to a side, sipping a beer by yourself, profiling, drawing character maps, gaining inspifuckingration, when you could instead be using your ceaseless wit to impress one of the more geeky looking girls the jocks aren’t going for (ones that you might actually have a chance with), or the fact that the only reason you’re not is a crippling case of l’esprit d’escalier, or even the realisation that ‘English teacher’ is probably your best bet professionally.

It’s not the fact that you’re going to spend entire nights awake, staring at a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor, waiting for inspiration to creep up on you and slit your throat like an assassin in the dark, or even the fact that half of everything you read will fill you with the insufferable hope that you can do so much better (I mean, come on! A monkey probably could), and the other half will leave you wondering why you didn’t pay more attention in science class and become a doctor or a fucking scumbag lawyer like everyone else in school, all of whom are going to give you that pathetic smile, that sympathetic simper at the reunion, telling you politely that they thought you’d become a senator or something important while secretly laughing at you in their heads and applauding their own life choices.

It’s not even the raging spirals, when you slip over the edge into alcoholism, hoping you’ll write something sad enough to make Nietzsche cry, or when you start popping pills, snorting powder, shooting up, hoping for a trip that shows you something amazing, some universal truth so powerful, nations of people will look up to you for wisdom and guidance, or that low sinking feeling in your gut every time you’re at a rock concert and you see with blinding clarity that these sixteen year-olds are probably better writers now than you will ever be.

And it’s not the cynics, the haters, the spouses who hope telling you gently that it’s not that good will someday snap you out of this stupor and make you get a real job, one that actually puts money on the table. It’s not the publishers, telling you that it’s just not the kind of story that they’re looking for right now, or that some of the themes are too bold and if you could please tone them down a little, maybe they could do something, or that it’s a great story, it really is, but they just can’t seem to find a way to market it that’ll ensure sales that will cover the cost of actually printing it, or even editors who think they know your ideas, your stories, your characters better than you and tell you what to do, what to write, to the point where you have to look really, really hard to recognize even the slightest part of the text as yours.

No. It’s none of that. The thing that stinks the most about being a writer is that someday, you will write something truly magical, truly special, take one look at it, and tell yourself it’s crap.

Trying on faith for size

Imagine leaping off a cliff, into freezing water five hundred feet below. The water is choppy and the waves break against the cliff wall.

Imagine preparing to jump. Calculating how far you should push yourself off to avoid smashing your skull on rocks beneath the surface.

Imagine tensing your muscles. Your gut screaming at you that you're a fucking retard for doing this. Bending your knees and pushing off.

Imagine the moment, stretching into eternity, when your feet first leave the ground. Simultaneously glorious uncertainty and resignation.

Imagine the water. Getting closer and closer. You can almost feel how cold it is already. Rushing towards you like a hungry lover.

Imagine the moment just before you hit the surface. Where you shut your eyes and hold your breath, bracing for impact.

Imagine that time stops around you. And you're frozen there, right above the surface. Unable to move. Welcome to my life.

Every time someone tells me they're proud of me...

...in my head, I hear, "Wow, I totally thought of you as a loser who wouldn't ever be able to that."

Good to know you think so highly of me, thanks!

Black ink. Black thoughts. Black words. Black tongue. Black, dark, thick, oozing, bubbling, simmering, melting. Tar. Molasses. Sludge.

I am wading.

Hubris

I was at a colleague’s computer a couple of days back, discussing a website. I needed to reload the page to indicate my point to him, so I looked for the refresh button. To my horror, the browser was IE, so I was struggling a little (hey, I haven’t used IE in four years). So much so, that I actually said out loud, “Where’s the damn refresh button on this thing?”

With the gallant smile of an old lion teaching a young runt how things are done, he brushed my hand off the mouse and clicked refresh. To answer for myself, I tried to say, “I’m not used to IE, it’s a terrible browser.” I never got past the first four words. He cut me off, saying,”Yes, I know. Windows 7. It’s new. That’s okay.”

I bite my fingernails.

Down to the quick. This is an important piece of information, because it is the only reason my palms are not bleeding right now. I’ve been clenching my fists way too hard for way too long, trying desperately to hold on to the things I want.

But I’m letting go now. I think it’s time I admit my loss of control to myself. I can’t believe I’m picking a lesson out of a Sandra Bullock movie, but I’m going to control what I can and let everything else be. Let things go and see if they still remain. If they do, well and good. If not, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.

Yes, this probably means the neurosis will grow even more. I’ll probably chew on my nails more fervently than before. But this is necessary. Self-preservation. Maintenance of sanity.

One thing’s for sure though. No matter what happens, I’ll see you on the other side of it. Irrespective of where that may be.

My humble contribution to a meme.

The worst feeling in the world

It's only been about a couple of minutes, but it feels like hours. Your lungs are screaming, but your brain isn't listening. It's gone dull. Forgotten what it's supposed to do. It's registering nothing but the dull throb of dirty, black blood trudging through it like sludge. There are dark spots in the corners of your vision. You're panicking, but you don't know why and you don't know what to do about it.

Then suddenly, it's over. Out of the blue, you remember how to breathe. It's a beautiful sensation. It's like the stroke of dawn, when the sun's first ray breaks over the horizon, slowly painting everything it touches. It seeps colour into a monochrome world. Everything changes, shadows disappear. The memory of great, big gulps of air returns to your lungs. And you follow that memory, mimicking it.

Except you're underwater and it's dark.

That feeling you just felt? It's nothing. Nothing.
Compared to the worst feeling in the world.

This one’s been in my head for almost a month now. I’d roughly converted it into a 1000-odd word story that needed a lot of polishing, but then realised that I was complicating something that, at its heart, was a very simple idea. Hence, here it is, in original form.

Unplug

Welcome back, folks. I’m here again, except I don’t quite think the guy who came back is the same one who left a week or so ago.

I’ve had a rare chance over the past few days to simply unplug. To walk away from my life, almost in its entirety, and look at it from a distance. It’s a beautiful gift, I tell you, an opportunity like this. Do it every once in a while. Forget the little things that make up your day, forget the mundane worries that fill every spare moment between dusk and dawn. Look at your life, not as a set of tasks that need completing, but as the beautiful, huge image on the jigsaw puzzle it forms.

I almost lost myself this past week. To myself. To anonymity. To solitude. To sadness. Away from almost everything and everywhere that I have to deal with on a daily basis, I was dangerously free. Untethered. Unanchored.

And a four-year-old brought me back. She and her six-year-old sister made me see what I wanted. Everything is so simple now. So clear.

 

All of you, do this. Just for a while, unplug from your life. Walk away from it. That way, when you turn around, you’ll see the reason to walk back to it shining brightly at you, clearer than ever before.

Smile at me again, why don't you?
I'm not cut deep enough, yet.

Unmasking

They found him dead in his bed. Natural causes, as far as the doctors could tell. No one knew he wasn’t well.

They grieved for him silently for the most part, once the initial shock wore off. Each in their own way. Slowly, as the news spread, people trickled in. At first, it was just family and close friends, then in large groups, acquaintances, old flames, college classmates. So many people remembered him; a kind word, a helping hand.

The memorial was beautiful. Some were weeping, but only silently. Everyone remembered and tried to respect his well-known wish: Smile at my funeral. Dozens of them spoke, telling of how he touched their lives, selflessly. Made them realise what it was they wanted to do with their lives. How his smile had moved them all so deeply. How he’d always been laughing, always trying to make everyone smile.
Towards the end of the ceremony, just as people were about to leave, his lawyers walked in. Said they needed everyone, just about everyone to stay. Apparently, he’d left a message for them all. A video tape, with the explicit instructions that it be shown to everyone who came.

A large television set was arranged for, and the tape pushed into the VCR. An expectant crowd leaned forwards; some anticipating a reading of his will, wondering what he’d left them; others simply curious to know what he could have known he wanted to say to them even before his death.

Static. Then a hand moving away from the screen as the camera was turned on. And there he was, sitting on a simple chair, smiling calmly like he always had. To many, it seemed at the time as if the dreaded event had never happened, as if he were just somewhere else, talking to them all via video conference or something. And then he started talking.

If you’re seeing this, I’m dead. Heh. I’ve always wanted to say that. I hope you idiots aren’t all dressed in black, weeping around an open coffin draped in flowers. I sure as shit hope to God not.

Now, some of you are expecting me to start reading out which of my ample worldly possessions go to whom, and I’ve got a good feeling I know who you all are, too. Well, tough shit. My lawyers will do that in private, later. But I respect the fact that you’re here, eagerly listening, sitting at the edges of your seats, barely able to conceal your greed behind what is now your rapidly fading glee.

No, that’s not what this tape is for. This tape is so that those of you that have the wrong impression of me get the story straight. I know some of you would have eulogised me, said lovely things about me. Mary, I bet you told everyone the story of how we met. And Paul, how we built that treehouse one summer and I taught you how to hammer a nail in straight. I bet you all said how you really enjoyed all my annoying habits and that as you now realise, much too late, that’s the reason you loved me.

Well, this message is for all of you so that the record’s set straight. I hate myself. I always have. I couldn’t stand my guts and I don’t know how you idiots did. Mary, I cheated on you. Thrice. Once with your sister. I’ve done things that would make you people look back at me and ask yourselves if you ever knew me at all.

And the answer is no. You didn’t. No one did. And that’s why you liked me. And that’s why I hated myself. Because I knew me. And that’s why I’m in that coffin. You cannot imagine the relief I’m feeling as I tell you this. Good bye, and good riddance.

Static.

And silence.

Storymaker

He was the first – perhaps the only one – of his kind. Your own personalised storyteller. I know what you’re thinking; anyone can read you a story. Few can even make one up as they go along.

But he was different. He’d spend time with you. Days, weeks, months. Whatever it took to get to know you. To become your best friend. Until then, he’d be a fount of information, effortlessly holding his own in any conversation. Drawing out your likes, your dislikes, your preferences. And then one day, when he was ready, the stories would begin.

Fantastic stories. Stories you could never have imagined, stories you’d never hear, others you’d encounter later in life. Stories about life and love and dragons and oceans, serpents and fairies. Everything your heart desired, everything you needed to hear. New stories, made-up stories, stories as old as the world. Every day, he’d take you through stories, mixing them up so they’d be just right for you. Leaving out the bits you’d hate, adding in things you’d love. Things that drove you wild and set your mind on fire. Some days, he’d tell you only half a story, leaving you aching, begging to know how it ended. And then just when you’re losing your mind, wondering what happens next, he’d finish it for you.

And sometimes, just sometimes, when he felt it really necessary, when he was sure it was something you couldn’t deal with, he’d change the endings to suit you.

 I’ve had this post in my head for the longest time. This one’s for you, anna. Someday, I hope you will know how much I looked up to you then, and how much I think of you now.

I'm in the seventh circle if you need me

"We want you to be independent.

Just tell us where you're going, how you'll travel, who you're meeting and what you're going to be doing.

We'll call an hour later and ask where you are, what you're doing then, what you did, what you ate, if you had any alcohol, when you're coming, how you'll come and how long it'll take for you to travel.

Okay? Good boy."

Flight

She looked around herself. At the clouds. The ground so far below. She stretched out an arm. Flexed her fingers and felt the wisps of cloud trailing between them. 'Cold,' she thought. 'And tingly...' She shivered a little. She hadn't realised how cold this would be. Reaching out, she traced the edge of another cloud. Then swooping, pirouetting, drawing lazy circles through the air, she flew. The sensation was unbelievable. The freedom. The beautiful feeling of detachment. She pulled to a stop and swirled on the spot, arms stretched out on either side. A feeling of warmth began to spread through her as she climbed, soaring, above the clouds. If she were someone else, she'd have whooped in delight.

For another moment, she stared longingly out the window. Then head bent, she continued to sketch.

(Found this lying in my drafts since October 2008. It was practically finished.)

Connoiseur

Dude, you HAVE to taste the cold coffee today. It’s awesome.

I take a long look at the glass mug with a straw sticking out of it.

Not. A. Chance. The colour is too light for the coffee to be strong. If it’s not strong, chances are it’s not good.

No, no! It’s bitter! Really good. Try it.

I take the mug and sip lightly. Savour the combination of flavours.

You idiot. The bitter taste in your ‘cold coffee’ is the juice that was last served in that mug.

I walk away as he sips the coffee again, disbelievingly.

And behind my back, I hear a groan as he realizes I’m right.

Goodbye

Friday was our last day at the Worli office. Where the average workday consisted of three parts talk, two parts gossip, one part serious work, one part PriyankaBalls (no, don’t ask me to explain) and about five parts elaborate pranks. A place of tropical canteens (see pic).

The wonderful place where an unrecognized, practically faceless team got a room to themselves. A room where we let the rest of the office be damned, and did what we liked. A room that we will sorely miss, seated in a row of cubicles.

On our last day, we sat in that room for over an hour, just talking. Not about work, not about anything in particular. And when it came time to leave, we dawdled. None of us realised how strongly we felt about that room till that minute.

I was looking at my phone as we walked out of the building for the last time. As I reached the gate, I got a wi-fi notification that broke my heart.

Disconnected.

Workout

They planned to work out together. ''If you don't want me to be fat, I'm not going to let you grow a paunch,'' she said to him.

''Kickboxing! Or sparring!'' he said excitedly. ''You can try taking me down.'' She disagreed. Said she didn't want him kicking the tar out her physically as well. Apparently, he did that enough verbally. It took three weeks of convincing. Very persuasive convincing, at that. Finally, as a compromise, she agreed to try it out once.

The kickboxing lasted exactly three minutes. They sparred every morning.