2208 : The truth beneath the wings

Once you know how you hide your "truths" in the sand, ostrich like, you will also know how to resurrect them, when the danger is gone. The ability to "hide" (kill) and then "resurrect" (born again) is such an essential skill, that once you have mastered it, you can kill and give life at will.

The "truth" could be anything - you could be a closet gay, you could be have a clandestine affair, you could be a vegetarian eating meat, you could be a terrorist plotting a bomb, you could be a thief who stole a diamond, a sunni running away from the ISIS terror...get the drift.

Essentially the truth represents anything the the world does not allow you to wear on your sleeve. Not because you cannot, but because if you do, they will come after you. They will enforce a "culture of silence" on you, and since you have violated it by wearing it on your sleeve, they will make you pay the price.

Coming back to the original point, if you know how to hide the truth in the sand every night, and you also know how to resurrect it, then life becomes an easy game. Every day is a lie, but then its a livable lie. You now know how to game it.

Or in terms of modern corporate usage, you know how to wing it (a term which comes from the warrior planes)....Winging it makes you more stronger, more resilient in this world, which essentially does not allow the "truth(s)" to easily prevail. No one lies about the truth, and yet no one speaks the truth.

Its like how many meat eaters would say, I can eat the rabbit meat, but I cannot see it being killed. Get the drift?

We all hate the inconvenient truth, and we all try and hide it under the sand. The folks who have mastered this are the survivors. They will be the fittest who shall outlast the honest folks. As for the ones who can only life live in black and white, they are doomed to a long sentence in posterity.

2207 : The End Game

They had both loved the word duels. She had confidently once said, she could never lose a battle of wits, so much so, that if she ever lost, she would quit life, not just the game. When stakes run so high, insanity is never too far away.

He did not require the night to notice the edge. It was sharp, and always cut like a knife. The bristles simmered in search of the deep red under the skin.

He remembered the time, that once over a period of 30 days she had tried to convey a single word to him. On the first day, she had asked “What did I mean to you in the past tense?”. He had said the following in some sequence - “Dream”, “Figment”, “Stranger”, “Lost”, “Weird”, “Muse”, “Fuse” and entire gamut. She had gotten frustrated and sighed, “I will never choose to play Charades with you.”. He had wistfully said “Sorry”, and said “any other clue”. She said “what is mean in the past tense?”. He had answered “Meant”. She had nodded in the affirmative and walked away in sheer make believe disgust.

On the second, she asked “what is not normal?”, He said “abnormal”. That was not what she wanted. So as he cycled over “Abnormal”, “Weird”, “Obscene”, “In your face” (and she had screamt in fake exasperation - idiot do you know what ‘one word’ means), “edgy”, “wedgy”, “loud”…and the ilk…..before finally she had gotten him to say “strange”. The journey of reaching “strange” had taken over 8 days.

She was irked that he had taken this long to come to what should have been a first natural choice.

On the fourteenth day, she had texted him, “If you did not want to tell me a No, what would you say?”. He had without a pause said “Yes”. “That was a good quickie. You made up for the past, eh? Did you sleep with John Galt yesterday?” she had quipped with a satisfied smile.

On the fifteenth she had posed, “Together the 3 words, what do they become?”. Meant, Yes and Strange….

He struggled for days, coming up with all answers including “Charade”, “Lies”, “Fake”, “Games”….and all of them were wrong.

She did not relent. She tormented him and had said, “this can go to the edge of your grave, but I won’t tell you”. He had laughed and said, “If you die before me, I shall build a Taj for your mausoleum, and call it the ‘The Temple of Insanity”.

As he was tying his shoe laces some 2 weeks later, as he also sipping his coffee and bingo he said “Game Set and Match”, “I should have known it.”

One shoe down, the other to go, he dropped the cup of coffee on the table, picked up his phone and texted her “Estrangement”.

Before he could get the other shoe on, he got the reply back - “You are slow, but you are brilliant. Take a bow.”

The next time he met her, “So we are estranged now, are we?”, he posed with a teasing smile. “Bloody narcissist, why does everything have to be about you?. You are a no one in my life. Not even a lover, you are just a losing lukha whose company reminds of the plebeian and lumpen in life. You are such a sad loser, that in fact you make me feel much better about myself, and that is the only singular reason I hang out with you”…..she had laughed facetiously as she said that. The next moment, she had reached out and hugged him, making it obvious that the games were still on. He had smilingly reciprocated on the hug.

She had then said, “I am estranged by the night, and hence a stranger by the day.”

“Thats poetic. Inspired is it?” he asked.

Today, for some reason, this entire memory had come back into his foregound. Of all the games they had played, it was the “estrangement” that seemed to be mark the zenith of their times.

He smiled as he remembered his own comment on the ‘Temple of Insanity’. He was alternatively tempted to call it the “Asylum”. And as part of the epitaph he wanted to write, “Here lays a soul, who was by every measure in search of a home. She was a wanderer who had lost the address, but not the memory.”

As he sat and mused about it today, in the middle of the dark night, he realized he had wanted her to remain stark mad. Ironically, he had lost her address too, all he had now was her memory.

Tonight he imagined playing alone, for both the sides. He wanted to just play, winning or losing was inconsequential today. He was missing the game.

“Acid reflux in the stomach, causes churning and burning?”
He imagined her going through “Acidity”, “Heartburn”, “Puke”, “Rancid” before finally settling to “Colic.”

“Green and red. Green on the outside, red on the inside.”
In his dream, she went through “Whisper”, “Stayfree”, “Guava”….he killing her before she reached the word “Melon”.

Combine the both, and what did she get.

Melancholic.

2206 : The weary mind

I feel as if I am dead today. The body is crushed beneath the weight of a million thoughts. Some meditative, some in contemplation of the future, and then some others in sheer contempt of the present. 

My physical body is reacting to the forces acting upon the mind. I am tired. Really fatigued. I have allowed myself a break from work since afternoon.

I have almost taken a digitial break. I have not checked my phones, or my work emails or any other way in which people can reach me. 

I needed this time off. I needed to disconnect.

I find it mildly amusing, that the only time my mind is allowed (by the world around me) to disconnect is when I am really ill. At all other times, even on the worst of days (esp those on which I am still not classified ill), my family will make demands on me, my work will put immense demands on me, and I will have my own creature habit demands.

On a day like today, I have let everything pause. I have worked 19 years without a pause, and my body is hurting. It wants to ease off. Completely ease off.

Its also clearly saying that if the only way, I am going to take a break (or get a break) is by falling ill, then its going to attack my insides with a vengeance. I can hear the wise voice of my body speak to me.

I truly need to break off from the world at large. Driving feels like escape, but I then need to escape off for a couple of weeks at least.

The break away is coming, so is the break down. Something shall give. Someone will lose. Some shall learn to breathe.

2205 : The dog, the camel and the poet

On that fateful day, they hauled him up. They accused him of writing revolting rhymes, which focussed on lost love, on revolution and a world where god does not have a place.

They told him that either he abdicate all his poems, and swear his allegiance to the new God of All things, or that they would imprison him - chain him and torture him till he finally broke.

The poet in him refused to bend - they kicked him till he was in foetal position, which in some sense was their perverse way of bending him to their will.

Having killed his resistance, they lifted him onto the truck and there he was on his way into one of the infamous camps. At the camp, they gave him a small room, which only got natural light during the day. 

In the first few weeks, they cut off his rations, and urged him to straighten up. He was famished, and yet to continued to write. His pen growing stronger under the gaze of his weakening frame.

Soon, they cut off access to sanitation, hoping that his own stink and pus would fill his aches and he would soon wilt away. The fetid nourished his soul, and soon from within the malodor rose his sublime words.

Next, they decided to send him to the torture camps. For 3 days every week, they hung him upside down. His body reeking of pain and anguish, had a new perspective on the world, and he continued to write albeit with the lens reversed.

Months had passed by now. One day the city patrol officer decided to ask him to compose a paen to the suburban edge, and he did write a piece...but it turned out so insidious, that instead of a reward he was handed a 100 flogs.

An year into this, they finally decided that he was incorrigible. They took away his pen, his paper and his books. A few days passed by, and he looked silent and mellowed down.

One particularly overcast morning, though, they found him dead - he had turned his stomach's insides using a piece of iron he had wrenched from the window. He had steadily bled of his death. 

As the overcast conditions cleared, and the light made way, they saw his body lay in a true foetal position. Like a dog, as Kafka would say. He had died just like a dog. They called in the cleaners and asked them to take his body away. 

As the cleaners cleaned his room up, they mumbled what everyone knew - taking away his pen and paper, thats what had killed him.....what a way to die....that is what broke the camel's back.

As the light further shone in, they could see that wall above him had a scrawling. It was fresh, you could still see the lint from the stone, trying to powder its way out. It looked like he had scrawled it yesterday night using the same iron piece as he had used to kill himself. 

On the walls were clearly written - "You simply took away what forever took to find"....

2204 : The thing that floated on the river forever

He sat down down within the boat, and took the paddle. He had learnt rowing as a small kid, and once you know it, you never ever forget that trick. He still did not know swimming though, and while had rowed many miles, he was always sure that on the day his death came calling, his placid body would float on the river.

As he rowed along the water, the "swish" of the oars breaking the silence of the water surface, he realized that this is the silence he had been craving for.

As he went into the midst of the silent river, for some unknown reason - he suddenly flashed the day she had asked him, if he would live his life with her. He had always loved her, and it was an easy answer. He had said yes nonchalantly, his bloody heart not even missing a single beat.

She had laughed, hugged and implored him - I want this to last. You are far too important to be lost. Will you try and be around always. 

In his answer he had included the word "forever". He had of course meant it completely at that point, not for a minute had he been facetious. Truth be told he had wanted it forever as well.

He cared for her far too much to let her not be his "forever".

A score and a dozen later, here he was here rowing all alone. The forever had lasted the score, but the horizon looked lonely and lorn.

On the day the "forever" had been solemnized, she had given himan amulet, she said it would symbolise every good thing they ever meant to each other. That amulet, was still stuck to his body, almost as if it were an additional appendage.

As he became conscious of it, he removed it, and stared at it deeply. The black, the silver, the riblad oxidization - all were jaded, but it still seemed alive. It still had a steady cadence to its breath. 

Laying his oars inside, he examined it closely for the next few minutes. It had indeed withstood time, in fact it had outlasted his "forever". Jagged and jaded, it had still not faded at all.

The early morning sun had just started to rear its head over the horizon, and in the faint orange hue, the silver looked like gold, almost like a shiny piece of white dazzle.

And in that shiny razzle dazzle, something caught his eye - a broken charade and a hidden truth - both of which hit him very hard. 

In that singular moment, he let his palm float high above the water...the amulet dangerously dangling between life and death. In a single swoop, he let the silver fall away. 

It sank like an anchor stone, quickly and swiftly. The ripples it created were still moving outward. The river though had consumed the silver. The warp of the ripples had consumed his "forever".

A few moments of silence later, he was acutely aware that the boat was drifting in the water current. It occurred to him, he not longer point to the exact spot where he had dropped the amulet. The surface of the water now had the look of sameness everywhere. The discontinuity had been lost. There was nothing on the surface to show the break. 

He touched his body to where the amulet should have been. He could not feel his skin. He touched the water, hoping to touch the coarse silver. All there was, was a cold bite to the water. 

He had just killed the forever, and in this case, even the body did not float. What floated was the sameness, stillness and a universe that told him that this whole story was just a figment of his imagination.

He remembered Floyd singing -  Time Pass, the River Rolls....and he gave a wistful smile.

2203 : Silence of the lamb chops

My desire for silence is getting stronger and stronger. Everytime I struggle with something on the outside, I begin to look more into the inside.

That means, I struggle to participate in life at least the way folks would ideally expect me to. That becomes a drag on them and a drag on me....both.

One day soon I might become all silent. We shall see :-)

2202 : The science of bullshit

I was speaking to someone yesterday who was passionately telling me that she has to ignite the passion for "science" within her child. She said it naturally, "at least our kids should understand science".....

I know her only just as reasonably as you can know a person if you meet them 4 times a year for 10 minutes.....and in that brief interaction, I kind of know that she is extremely God fearing (yes I think she fears God, her version of God is retributive), she is definitely living within the charades of the modern world (such as medicine, religion, large businesses) and she likes the charades.

I did sit and cynically wonder, how would her kid ever actually learn science. How will her kid ever come to love science - science which is supposed to cater to our deepest need for meaning.

Our schools and we as parents are doing the greatest damage to our kids. That I am fully convinced of. And every soul destroyed is a soul destroyed...and knowing that hurts me deeply.

There is so much broken in the world today. We need our children and ourselves to correct that one solid inch at a time.

To do that, we need to protect their (children's) souls and their innate sense of goodness.

I do worry if my daughter will remain untarnished in these modern times, but I will most definitely try. I will help her break down this world, one charade at a time. If she knows what is broken, and if she still has her soul intact, I am kind of sure, she will work to get the world better one beautiful inch at a time.

2201 : What lies beneath...

For years I have been obsessed about lying and the business of truth, but not in the mk Gandhi sort of way. He seemed obsessed with a literal definition of absolute truth.

I have been grappling it more in the yudhistra, gurucharan das manner of speaking. For the best part of the last 10 years, this has been a meditation that has taken a lot of my mind space. And I have to admit I am far from arriving at a conclusion.

The truth I seek and see is more akin to "dharma" than the absolute definition of the an absolute truth....and yet dharma is one of most impossible and difficult meditations to resolve.

What dharma suggests is that in most cases, there is am absolute version of what is correct. Especially when applied with the context. As am example, dharma when applied with my context might tell us that euthanisa is the way to go, while applied with you context might say that the answer is wrong.

This is where dharma become a meditative bother right. Knowing what is right in every circumstance, which yudhistra was supposedly such a champ at, is not just difficult, it is also tiresome to sometimes conclude.

And that's been my obsession. To be the yudhistra in my own eyes, and more importantly to be able be differentiate and distinguish.

With years of practice, I thought I had become a very honest (not in the literal sense...but in the intellectual sort of way).....person.

But in the recent years and times, I find myself lying. I find myself lying, because I am not allowed to talk the truth. The culture of silence that the world encourages, also means that we never are allowed to speak the uncomfortable truths. Not just not speak, but also not acknowledge.

As an example, I cannot walk upto someone at the firm I work and say honestly that his design for the problem completely sucks. I cannot say this not because I don't possess the intellectual honesty or the intellectual acumen to differentiate, but I cannot say it because saying it would mean I would break some charades, and that would destroy some facades between the four walls of an office.


It kills me know that I live and exist in a false world. That is one realisation that constantly gnaws at me in my personal world and my professional world too.

A world that does not allow me to be honest, especially in a safe sort of way, I am inclined to reject it. I am inclined to slowly withdraw from it, and choose seclusion over a world that is not safe.

I am bothered, in the last few days and months, because there are clear instances where I have had to prioritize lying over the dharma. This is a very soul nibbling situation in the real world.

I need a quick escape from this, else over time, it will kill my soul, just like a cancer would kill the physical body.

This is the new age cancer, and I want to fight it again, just like I once did.

Soon something shall give.

2200 : Crazy

This is from Adamski (Seal) singing Crazy a 1990s cult club classic......this line is for some reason stuck in my head....I must have repeated this a million times today.....

In a sky full of people only some want to fly
Isn't that crazy

2199 : Page against the machine

Years ago, he had walked upto her and asked her if she was willing to walk the path of life alongside. She had nonchalantly asked him why, wondering aloud how would it matter to anyone at all - if they were not together. She was being flippant and he knew it too.

In response, the next day he had sent a blank sheet of paper in an envelope. She had obviously been perplexed by that and wondered whether it contained hidden ink, or needed to be watered, or heated for the words to reveal themselves. Towards evening, she had hunted him down to ask him the code to the secret. He looked at her directly and said with a blunt honesty, that he carried to this very day, quipping....thats the state of my life....a blank slate....if your presence is missing, its a bloody empty echo.

She had loved that metaphor, and yet they would wait for what felt like 12 long years, before they eventually moved in together. The piece of paper by then had been parched and had begun to stain. The brown smudges were all over all the sheet. What essentially had looked blank was now tarnished with years of disease. Neither of them noticed it, and every single time they tried to write on the paper, yet another disabused blot appeared, this time the blue curmudgeon staining the paper further.

And then there is Today, it is another day...far removed and far long after the moving in event. As he stood with his coffee cleaning his wardrobe, he stumbled upon the creamy sheet of stained paper. Memory was straining and his first instinct was to crumple this moth ridden paper and move on, but something in the figment held him back. He looked at it closely, and random fragments came into focus.

Tried as he did, hard enough, he could not remember the story coherently. He could not place the page....and yet he knew this was intimately Her. As he searched for meaning in that memory, he sat down to have a good sip of the coffee. As he gulped, his body let out a loud involuntary sigh....an usual sign, he recognized  to mean the loss of something personal.

He stared hard at the fragile page,  just like a wild animal would try and comprehend Dante's Inferno. Trying as he did, he could not find any clue on the page.

The page unfortunately did not contain the story of them. What he held in his hand was just a angst ridden, moth infested, smudged pale blue sheet of crumpling paper - albeit one which had once held an imagined story.