Misery loves company

The walls are closing in. Your sun is going down, turning your horizon from a fiery red into a bleak grey. The crushing sense of defeat weighs down on you, asphyxiating you, closing off your avenues. The future doesn't look so good anymore.

You were never good for anything, you realize. It was all lies, what they’d said. All of them. Big ol’ liars.

You've ruined everything. It was your fault. Every single time. Nothing else seems to matter anymore.

Failure is second nature to you. But you've just realized it.

Your world is crashing down around your ears. And all you can do is look on with a wry smile.

What Can't Be Said

The hunt is always more enjoyable.
Like a dog chasing a car; if it stopped, the dumb creature would just stand there, clueless.
All direction lost.

You're my shiny new object of attention, my latest model of car.
But it's been too long and you haven't stopped.
Why won't you stop?!

The moment you start wanting me back is the very moment I stop wanting you at all.
But for now you pull the wool over my eyes so effortlessly, I can't help but be drawn in.

Two weeks tops: that's all it takes
for them to give in, for me to get bored.
But I'm not bored yet.
And you won't get out of my mind.

It's worrying, this persistence.

We have no future; I've made certain that this is a pointless, futile exercise.
And we have no past either.
We never transgressed boundaries, never pushed envelopes.
But the lack of a present is what claws at me like a nagging insect,
itching just underneath my skin.

The tension is tangible.
The electricity is in the air, the air which grows thick with unsaid words.
Unaired desire.

So we'll always make jokes.
Pretend there's nothing more.
While you want lust and I want...more.

No, I don't want you.
I just want you to want me.
And I want that so badly it's shattering my peace of mind,
pure agony to hear again and again:
"It's okay, babe. I'm still single. For the most part. Let's fuck."
It breaks me, while I let you use me:
I'll take anything in the hopes of getting more.
And while I effortlessly feign indifference to you,
because that's what I've been taught to do.

Anger and grief are no strangers to me.
But these are new degrees of intensity.

They try to hide behind the smudged kohl and the fake smile,
as I've trained them to do.
But this time they threaten to burst out,
I'm barely holding my face together.
Myself together.

And I'll dress pretty everyday,
because hope springs eternal.
But no matter how many clothes I buy,
you'll always picture me naked.

Nothing less, nothing more.

The chase is a drug.
But I'm too high to enjoy the trip.

Leh 2012

So I went to Leh. Last minute plans work out so much better than actual, planned ones, don't you think?

I could use a dozen words to describe it but I'm sure someone else somewhere else has used those already. Yes, it was magical. Yes, it was picturesque. All in all, an awesome trip. But one of the reasons I love travel is because of the people one gets to meet. So today I'm going to write about one of the people I met in Leh.

Mr. P would be about 50 or 60 and has a shock of black-white hair. He's short and thin and rather benevolent looking. He has the kindest eyes I have ever seen (obscured by glasses) which crinkle up in the most endearing way when he smiles. He is a sort of resort owner cum travel agent in Leh. He's quite the self-made man. His resort was built on his ancestral land, in the traditional Ladakhi architectural style. After dinner he was nice enough to shows us around a bit and the place had lots of open room to sit in and open corridors to walk around in, leading via stairs to the rooms, and the whole resort was set in front of a village. He had accomplished all this only in the past 6 years, before which he was in Delhi working for a pharmaceutical company. His wife still stays in Delhi with his young daughter and his son studies in Singapore.

But the most interesting thing about Mr. P was what he had to say because I had never really considered that kind of viewpoint before. He said that if things continue the way they are, Ladakh will disappear in 50-60 years. This surprised me initially but it was obviously a well thought out assertion. He said that there are barely 30-40,000 people who live here all year round, the rest are migratory who go back during the harsh, cold winters when the region remains secluded by snow for a good 6 months. These are mainly Bihari laborers, shopkeepers who are Nepalese or Kashmiri etc. He says the Kashmiri will take over this region in the next 50 years, migrating here incessantly as Kashmir itself becomes more and more fraught with danger and hence uninhabitable for the common man. This will mean trouble. It'll bring insurgents and terrorists and so forth and the whole valley will essentially just go to shit taking its beauty and tranquility with it. The world can forget about holidaying in Ladakh then. And a day will come when the valley would no longer be able to sustain that kind of thing within it and will collapse completely. 

Unfortunately,  our choot of a government (and not just the current one, he meant this in more of a generic sense) is overtly concentrated on Kashmir, which can sustain itself anyway, because deliberating on it gives them an opportunity for politicking (wrt Pakistan and so forth, a country that is a ‘gone case’ anyway), something which Ladakh does not because it does not involve any dire elements. It is a serene, tranquil place completely overlooked by the government. Politicians only see their short term gain and are blind to the fact that the valley needs to be protected. By the time enough people realize this, it will be too late. This is why tourism needs to grow in Ladakh, so more and more people can understand this reality and discuss it and bring it out in the open and make something happen. For instance, once he had had a wealthy and influential Gujarati family staying at his resort. They had asked him what they could do for him in return for his gracious hospitality and he had said he would be grateful if they could tell someone in power to make Ladakh a UT or a separate State.

He doesn't understand why Ladakh is a part of JnK in the first place. He says the language, the people, the culture, the customs and everything, it's all totally different. He thinks making it a UT is the best and possibly the only way to protect it so that it's own issues are not overshadowed by Kashmir’s.

To me, Ladakh had always been just a pretty place with nice mountains and good weather. But to think of it this way blew my mind. I have immense respect for this man, not least because he lives separately from his wife and kids and still loves them immensely. 

P.S. Crazy dream #57: Fucking in the mountains.

Change

About a couple of months back, a close friend told me I had changed a lot. He told me I used to be very different when I had just entered law school, which was a little over 2 years ago. It got me thinking.
Basically, I think the gist of what he was trying to get at was that I used to be much more uninhibited, more unstructured, more fearless. Care less. Do whatever the fuck I wanted. And now it's all about memo submissions, good grades and good placements. Law school's most vulnerable victims, unfortunately, turn out to be those who develop an inherent fear of project deadlines (and the like, you know what I mean) and are constantly looking for things to do, to put it in a very simplistic manner, to increase their value in terms of potential recruitment. Sad, but true. Life becomes a dreary path towards one sole aim, the attainment of what our (let's face it) still-regressive Indian society calls a 'stable job and a settled life'.
Yes, maybe I'm exaggerating. But I have a feeling he's right about me. I was watching a typical teenage music video the other day and it struck me that I think I've forgotten how to have fun entirely.
On the other hand, there's always the nagging fear that if I let myself loose too much I'll never get a decent lifestyle after college. I suppose this kind of mentality is exactly what he was hinting at. And the worst part is, I don't think most law school kids would have the balls to admit it, but this is exactly what law school makes of you. Balancing a life and good academics isn't easy.
I must add having fun to my to-do list.

In other news, it is Benedict Cumberbatch's birthday today. He is so lovely he makes me weak in the knees.

I also went to Nainital on holiday for about 3-4 days. Really nice place. We went to the nearby lakes and stuff too. There was this one particular one which I liked way more than the others. It was huge and nice and clean, mostly because barely any people lived nearby. I think if I could have just one perfect day in my life, it would be to go and find a place to sit on the banks of something like that and spend the whole day there with a good book and some music, all alone. That, for me, would be the definition of absolute contentment. If I could have that, it doesn't matter whether I'm in Nainital or Switzerland.
I also developed the habit of sitting on a little rocky ledge right outside my hotel (which was at a height from the main city) for a short while with my iPod every night after dinner. The weather was absolutely brilliant and the ledge offered a nice view of the Nainital lake. I love the way water turns black in the night. I remember walking along Havelock beach at night when I had gone to Goa. It was pitch dark. You could see the black water only for a short distance in front of you, and then, nothingness.
I have also realized that the perfect music for places like these is the In Bruges soundtrack.
All in all, a brilliant trip.

I haven't done any other traveling this summer so I badly needed this. Travel is something I don't think I could live without. I think I will always love it more than I could possibly ever love any human being, with the exception of my parents.
I am currently reading The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams. People like him give me an immense inferiority complex. I always feel so small and unaccomplished-in-life in front of his comic genius. A long time ago, I had read someone's interview where they were asked that if they could choose one era or time other than the present to be reborn in, which would they choose. I remember thinking then that if I ever grow up to be rich and famous (*snort*...fat chance), and someone interviewing me asked me the same question, I would have answered the time of P.G. Wodehouse without even thinking about it. For one thing, he existed. For the other, it really seems like a brilliant time period to be living in. And people like Adams and Wodehouse, well, reading them is simply...orgasmic.

I'm also almost done with Season 2 of Game of Thrones. It is an E-P-I-C series. And I have officially fallen in love with Tyrion Lannister.

2 of my friends are mucking about in Europe and I'm INSANELY jealous. I know I've seen most of the continent before and it's only their first time, but it almost physically hurts, the thought of them being there and me being stuck here. I would give an arm and a leg to travel to Europe with friends. Hopefully someday I won't have to.
I'm going to stop ranting now. I haven't written so much without editing since...ever, possibly. Now I will dive back into the world of Douglas Adams to assuage my pain. And it will be awesome.

Aaaaand...I'm back.

I just took a look at the date on my last post. The one which actually makes sense and isn't simply random webcomics or lyrics I liked. It was March 28. That makes it about two and a half months since I last wrote.

The past two and a half months have been rather kind to me. Life's good, on the whole. And I'm not complaining. A lot has happened.
April and May were spent working on something rather dreadful, and I'd pretty much lost all hope, not least because I myself sort of lost the motivation to work on it towards the end. But the results were better than anything I could ever have hoped for considering the kind of work I put in. The details are boring and inconsequential. Now I'm faced with the prospect of choosing between two options, both of which seem to be rather good. You see, when one gets a reasonably high rank, one has a multiplicity of choices available. It's the rich man's problem :D

I also had a rather fun birthday and got a haircut which people tell me, has completely changed the way I look. For the better, they say. I decided it was high time I should pamper myself. And the people at the salon did a pretty good job. I actually look, if I may so myself, rather hot. All thanks to a friend, who knew exactly where to take me and what to do. I basically put myself in her hands. She took me to this brilliant place I haven't been to before, near college. This has helped me overcome my previous fear of such places. You can read all about that here.

Exams were, as expected, absolutely horrible. I am very seriously facing the prospect of failing in at least a couple of subjects this time round. I'm just trying to enjoy my life before the results come out and I die.
Also, I've started my internship at this law firm, which I'm actually kind of liking. It's the first time I'm interning at a firm, and I've got to say, it's not bad. It's not one of those big firms, so everything is a little more chilled out here. Plus most people are on leave and the courts are closed, so workflow is less. (Which is why posting frequency on my blog has now gone up, as you may (or more likely, may not) have noticed.) There's lots of other interns, all of whom seem to be rather nice and fun to talk to. It's taxation, which is kind of boring, but for me, being inherently a researcher at heart, nothing beats the joy of finding that one case to clinch the argument your associate is trying to make.
I've also started taking French classes every weekend. Those are fun sometimes, like the other day we were supposed to write a dialogue (in French) in groups of two, where both the people had been dumped by their significant others, but one was happy about it while the other was sad. Rather entertaining.

I am currently sitting in office with not much to do, passing the time reading random things on the net, listening to good music, occasionally talking to people. I'm in a room with 2 ACs, with a constant stream of cold coffee and chocolate chip biscuits. And I'm being paid for this.
Life couldn't really get much better.

P.S. You can now follow this blog by email! How exciting! And no, I am not ashamed in the least to admit that this is a desperate plea for more readers. So go fill in your email address on the little widget thingy (is that what they call it?) on the right. No seriously, do it. I'm watching you.

Liar

I know that things are broken,

and though there's too many words left unsaid.

You say you have spoken.

Like the coward I am, I hang my head.

You lie careless, your head on my chest.

Don't even look at me looking my best.

All these things I can't describe.

You would rather I didn't try.

But please, don't cry, you liar.

Oh please, don't cry, you liar.

You lean in for your last kiss,

who in this world could ask me to resist?

Your hands cold as they find my neck.

Oh, this love that I've found, I detest.

A Softer World

I know that I don't deserve you,
but that's okay.
Life's not fair

but do I love you. Do you want me to loosen the cuffs?