3992 : Reading List 2022 : #14 : India's Money Heist by Anirban Bhattacharya

A totally brilliant read. A complete page turner and based on a true story. Do read it, totally worth your time. 

At 349 pages brings the 2022 reading total to 4020 pages.

3991 : Reading list 2022 : #13 : An Actor's Actor by Hanif Zaveri

A quick breezy read on Sanjeev Kapoor, the actor. I kind of liked it, but strictly to be read as a lazy memoir.

6/10 overall.

At 248 pages brings my 2022 reading total to 3679 pages.

3990 : Tears in Heaven

To those who recently passed on, I wish I could sing this for you. I really wish. Ahem!!

I sing like a pig, but I would still like to get one chance to sing for you. 

And that miss, neatly summarizes our life.

3989 : Layla

I am sure I have posted on this before....but listening to Eric Clapton playing Layla with JJ Cale is pure bliss.

3988 : Drive in happiness

I have a shitty memory overall.

Strangely, but I always seem to remember and associate songs with when I first heard them (or maybe when I totally fell in love with them!!)

Like Amy Winehouse will always transport me to Connecticut, New York. Always. 

And Vishal singing "duggie dugg dugg" will always transport me to such a happy point where I was driving across the country with my best friend. 

Drive in the happiness.

3987 : Shailendra + RD magic

Humne tumko dekha always transports me to a time, that I was so violently happy. 

I want to sing this for someone. But who?

I want to laugh aloud as I sing this.

3986 : Today I am truly thinking ...why do we fail?

I am looking back at my losses, and I feel so deflated. 

The chump has been chimping.

Hans Zimmer, you are my soundtrack today.

I am imploding.

3985 : The master and the puppet

Listening to Omar Khayyam....

Hum Khud hi tamasha, tamashaee bhi 

ahem!!

3984 : Fading

Fading away is a very strange experience. Let me explain. - the dying (or the dead), they never really die. They continue to live not just in our memories, which is the most filmi expression - but they also continue to be around.

We examine them for their actions, long after they are gone.We continue to examine their beliefs, their books, their writing, their conversations with us. 

And conversely, the living sometimes fade away too. We try and forget some of our living compatriots, even as they sing and croon like a kingfisher. We kill their memories as a coping mechanism, sometimes as the voice of silence.

This strange dance of those juxtaposed with us, is quite intriguing, na?

3983 : The sweet nowhere

In the recent months, three people (I know) have had a close encounter with their ends. I have known all of them fairly intimately. Does their brush with "D" (death of course) bother me? Not really. I am minutely aware of their mortality and mine. What's kind of triggered in me, is a strange with obsessive examination of my own life. 

What I am seeing is offputting. Let me explain - I am observing the bizarre games we play with each other (I play with others), and I wonder, do I need to play these games at all? Something about the futility of our banal every day. Like do I need to be fret that, the plants were watered 30 mins later than usual, or should I suggest to someone that the red she is wearing is quite blinding, or should I fight for a cause on twitter (or even in real life)?

What does matter? In years of living, all I have realised that being happy with yourself, and with someone else too - in that moment is important. Almost to the point, that that might be the only thing that matters. I am true mercenary in that sense, I will always encourage happiness today over almost everything else. For myself and for folks I can influence. 

As a side fallout, I don't want to speak about operational issues with anyone anymore. In the past month, I have virtually not spoken much at all. I have been looking inwards (into what is a hollow tumbler), and grappling with the deep vacuum inside.

A bit like urban meditation, but in the J Krishnamurthi school (unlike the Vipaasna school...which I am not good at anyway). As an example, I met my brother after many years. Even with him, I could hardly speak 10 sentences in 10 days. We even drove together for a few hrs, and even in that, I could hardly bring myself to speak.

So - what does it take for us as solitary individuals or as friends to be happy, to be in the moment? My answers so far, include awareness. A drink (yes, I love my drink- be it coffee or the peated brown thingy). A smoke. A honest to goodness conversation, about the dead fish and the smiling skies.

And yet, why cant we do enough of that with our friends, with our children? If wonderful conversations are the only games that matter, why cannot we do more of that? If doing something creative is a real way to experience the moment of being alive - why do we diss it all the time, in our own lives and as a collective experience? 

In times like these, I have been also obsessively working, reading and sometimes stealing a drink. Is that a journey to escape? Why does it feel like I am more lost, and more entangled and yet totally disenfranchised with my world? Why does it feel lonely? Why does it feel like there is no cul-de-sac - its rather a road to nowhere?

The night is darkest before dawn, is the kind of BS, that I tell myself - was never true and never will be. There are parts of the universe where darkness is absolute. They have been waiting for the dawn forever. I will join that team for today.

3982 : What ends but still never ends

Stories are a bit like death. They never seem to end. Death does nothing to a person (at least for two more generations). He/she can continue to live in versions in our heads. Way longer than they were alive.

Especially for our intimate folks, the river never stops flowing.

On a day like today, I do wonder what I have lost and yet, what I might never lose yet.

3981 : Temple

Rushing between office calls. And found 10 mins to listen to Begum Akthar singing "Yeh Jo tum mein hum mein....."

And it reminds why soulful singing is way better than technical wizardry.

She oozes life into a song, that will melt a rock, possibly.

If I could build a temple, I would do so, at Begum's feet.

3980 : Nostalgia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_(1971_film)

I bumped into this via a book. From wiki, here is what it says.....(phew!! performance art is so magical when it wants to be)

The film is composed of black-and-white still photographs taken by Frampton during his early artistic explorations which are slowly burned on the element of a hot plate, while the soundtrack offers personal comments on the content of the images, read by fellow artist Michael Snow. Each comment/story is heard in succession before the related photograph appears onscreen, thus causing the viewer to actively engage with the 'past' and 'present' moments as presented within the film.^[3]

3979 : The end of time

You keep saying, let us speak on that later. That we must park this for later.

Do you realize - one day, there will be no tomorrow.

3978 : In the coming days

Was he worried about an impending earthquake? Or the end of an era? Or a fire in the basement?

He stared at his whiskey through the crystal. A shimmer, a tinge of gold.

There was no siren in the air. There was no alarm ringing. As he sipped the peated stuff, he told himself none of this bothered him anyways.

And yet, the brooding sense of a catastrophe gave him immense anxiety. He could not put a finger on what he was worried about. 

Brooding. He began weeping.

Maybe he was losing his mind.