Careless Whispers

Mere whispers running amok
Riddling me with doubt
If rules are never kept
Why must I keep faith

All around me they drive
With debris of failure
And yet they hold true
Without a trace of failure

What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger

After they complained that my blog was defunct it was time to get down to some serious writing :) I couldn't think of a poem so I had to put in some reflections...

I remember going to a gym once a long time ago and I still recollect my trainer, a burly monster of a man, proclaiming "Hate your body". Physical pain is good. It drives you; nay even better inspires you to put in an extra notch. I was out for a jog today after waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon. After the 7th round I wanted to stop. Then again after the 11th and so on. I didn't . I drove myself until I could run no more. My legs gave away and I had to sit down to support myself. I treasure the sense of achievement afterwards notwithstanding the pain in my sides.

Failure is good. I can't win every day. I probably haven't won in a long time. That's what makes every little success in life so amazingly special. That also why I revel in the company of those who I love; even if they aren't around me. Sometimes hearing a long distance voice is enough to lift the most depressed spirits. Success is relative.

I am endeavouring to be less talkative. Difficult task really... A good starting point for me is not to participate in group discussions when people are drinking. Red and flushed faces excitably gesticulating to press their point home in a smelly smoke filled Bombay pub. Listen em out. They are my friends and I must hear them out. If I don't want to talk, well I won't. I will listen. If it makes them happy to spend time with a silent me, who they are making fun of; let them. I am thick-skinned. At least I can still make others laugh. Ponds the entertainer lives on.

Someone, a good friend once upon a time, bullied me to have dinner with her on Friday night. She presumed I would be a good kid at work :) I guess she spoke out of personal experience . How many at IIMB would believe that? Hardly many. After all, there are people who would always bet the opposite view as me. The contrarian approach with Ponds' market knowledge...coz he is a great guy but he doesn't know a great deal if you know what I mean. Sometimes a joke can be stretched too far even if friends do it.

I sill want to win...

Forbidden

Love tempt me no more

Bind not my feet to strange chains

And my heart to forbidding stone

Long have you toyed with me

Deluded my wild senses

And blinded my puny affections

Long have you misled me senseless

And made me believe I could have

What was never meant to be mine

Must you leave me bereft of all joy

Must you torment my every living moment

Must you always darken my doorstep

With your unwelcome craven shadow

You made me wield the pen

And weave a landscape endowed

With your essence, its every strand

Enmeshed in your bewitching snare

A honeyed trap and no more

For an unsuspecting fool poet

A prisoner to my very own words

A mute witness to those who left

You leave behind many a memory

Of what could only have come to pass

You promised and yet you forbade

Seizing every insignificant gift you could

Dark nights and even darker thoughts

Have you rendered on my soul and mind

Till at last I have lost

All but abject guilt and shame

Your prey now tires of the game

Pray now let me escape this endless void

I shall now glide away singing

An elegy to unrequited love

Rain

Rain drops splashing across the glass

Spraying their wrath at me

A relentless enemy strikes without

Travelers together on an endless journey

My reverie broken I stare

At a city I barely call home

A new side I discover

Of life through tinted glass

As the elements haunt the streets

Even the powerful must seek cover

Forcing life to stand still

They who must but always run

Now helpless, stranded and sore

I press my face across the glass

To catch a glimpse of my life

As it used to be and could have been

A vision into a glorious past

A bunch of carefree souls I spy

Who splash mud and water all smiles

Radiant, full of hope and alive

If only I could get back

I would trade the very world

Every single ounce of joy

To go back to my friends

Goodbye

Tonight I bid farewell to a dream holiday. Tonight I bid farewell to 9 unbelievable days of fun juxtaposed right in the middle of an official leave. Tonight I bid farewell to 2 dear friends. I shall not summarise my Singapore trip. Please refer to the blog marked as The Globetrotter in my linked blogs for a far well-written account. Suffice to say, the trip had gambling, scorpions and snakes, starfishes we could touch, Hard Rock Cafes and Singapore discs and every conceivable animal, bird, fish or insect you can think of. Was it fun? An emphatic yes. Would it have been fun if Monkeyman & Chotu weren't there? An even more emphatic No..

Chotu has been a friend since a long time. I have known her for almost 5 years now. That's a long time for friends you make after school. In the 1st 3 years, we slaved for the Economics Society. We made telephone calls to zillions of politicians, diplomats and the likes to invite them for talks; most of who wouldn't even take our calls. We ran around to do the bidding of those who commanded us because they were a year senior. We brainstormed together, discussed eco, and thought of psychometric games for our dear sponsors. Pretty much an exhaustive list. We also fought bitterly at times over stuff I believed then to be extremely important; today I wouldn't fight with her even if you offered me a million dollars.

We began the next part of our journey together. Somehow, I guess we were meant to be friends even after college. We got through to all the same IIMs, didn't make it to the same IIM, got the same job, got through to the same university abroad. We almost landed up going to intern in the same company. If only things had turned out differently, she would have been around a little longer. But one doesn't always get what one wants.

This journey was carved out of paid leave at office - post entering the big bad corporate world :) Student life's never going to come back. Being apart from Chotu helped me realise how important she is in my life.

In IIM Chotu practically took care of me. If I came back to my room, a public common room really, and find the lights switched off I knew Chotu had been slinking around to use my Superslim mirror and had put an end to my criminal waste of electricity as she put it. She would take the pain of reading every stupid blog I wrote and leave a comment behind. Did I mention my b'day mail, my yearbook writeup and everything else? There are so many happy memories, I cannot begin to list down. I will give it a shot though. Chotu and I wandering around campus, right in the 1st week, looking for a fag (mine :) and I claim to be very good at directions. Needless to say, we got lost. Chotu painting my face in Unmaad. It was blue and red and it had a cobweb, a potential ecosoc cover in the past. Chotu being ah well pursued by over enthusiastic gentlemen in a particular L^2. Jooz and I till date shudder to think of how we almost changed our orientations that night. Chotu's b'day nite treasure hunt and I fail to get a shortlist from my summers company. I am heartbroken but only for an instant. The treasure hunt was on. Next morning, Chotu wakes up early and drives me out of my room to Attica's to talk to me. That memory shall be imprinted in my psyche forever.

Why is she so important? Because she watched over me when I went through the darkest phase of my life. I wish I had listened to her advice more. I wish I had heeded her word. I would be a far saner person if I had. I wish she was sitting by me this very instant.

And then there is Monkeyman, the most remarkable person i met in IIMB. He continues to amaze me each time I meet him. He's everything I want to be. He combines a unusually sharp intellect and a drive to commit to and work hard for whatever he thinks important with a complete absence of self-doubt. How can someone be so oblivious of failure? How can someone stand up with confidence each time, focusing only on his goal and not be afraid or scared? He has the determination of a child and he yet he is far wiser than me. And might I say he cares. I shall remember the first time we met. Watching a tsepak game and then we caught a movie early on a Sunday morning. He gave me this small image of Ganesh once in first term. Now I detest religion, I really do. And yet this gift was the most special thing I have received in a long time. I proudly display it in my room till date.

I believe I bonded with him first when we were both indicted together. When our fate was to be decided by authorities for a crime which was just a mistake. Our whole batch being intimated that we had sinned. I cannot erase that horrible day ever. I remember him strong, Chotu resourceful and me shattered. I remember him standing by me when most wouldn't. I remember him all brave and fearless. I remember him teaching me about mortgages, suggesting my CCS Topic, taking my interview for finals (the only one who did so), coming to my room everyday and ensuring I was strong, by me when I was going through the final placements. And yet everytime he was around I felt her presence. Her concern, her standing by my side. Even when she was miles away, I could sense the two of them by me. I still do...

My version of "..If I have no time to stand and stare..."

Are trains a forgotten pleasure?
Relics of a bygone era now removed
Far from the pages of a jetsetting age
Save for some unfortunate small-towners
Who need must travel by train
To get to warm food and bed

Trains move much like life
Unpredictable journeys with rank strangers
Some care enough to stay longer
To turn companions on a hidden fate
Some locales zip by like they never existed
Others consume mind and time

Some fleeting moments shared between stops
By people who may not share anything else
Can outlive even the length of the journey
We see sights which inflict our conscience
With burdens which must haunt us for long

And yet many a time we lose our way
For there is none who can drive us all way
The journey is only worth the wait
When the path matters more than our stop
All journeys however must end the same
In a place from where we cannot return

Must we care about where we are headed
And figuring out how fast we get there
Too hasty to make a new friend
Or even catch up with an old one
For a journey isn't worth much
If I have no time to stand and stare

Change

I will not dwell upon how ephemeral change is...Its' way too overrated. I would rather dwell upon my life because face it I can't help talking about myself, what with being narcisstic and all that. And writing here to get it out of my system is way better than to keep throwing it at my friends day in and out. There's one thing I live by. No one can understand you the way you do and to expect people to do that is plain foolhardy. No gf, parent or even the closest friend can ever really get to you. And to expect such a herculean task from anyone is self-delusional.

I guess I am now afraid to bare my soul to any individual apart from my two-dimensional screen. I can't really expect someone to sit with me 24x7 and take heed of every thought that springs to my mind. That would be selfish on my part and understanding this heralds understanding change...How often have people penned down in your slambook, "Never change - stay the same so that I can always love you like this". People change and they change a lot. An old friend will never get over his image of you when you had good times together. That's the hardest part of moving on as also of meeting the old friend again. Always disappointing for both chaps. Both coming to terms with the stranger standing in front of them, it breaks whatever old memories they shared.

So I went from being a nerdy oversized introverted kid to a hyperactive overdriven stick-thin workaholic to a work-hating alcoholic who would rather sit and dream in all day in a drunken stupor to more recently a cross between all three. I used to come back home and revise whatever I did in school each day. I would stay off all physical activity except for a few rounds of cricket and an occasional game of football. I still remember carrying fiction to the compulsory games break because i wanted to utilise my time. I remember my teens - awkward trying to make friends for the first time in my life; being aware of girls; being mortally terrified of them to the extent of shunning them. I remember my first brush with religion. Finding faith was beautiful. Honestly then, it was better than first love. It was the 90s. Economic growth, booming markets, IT jobs fresh all around - the days of the new Indian nuclear power. I guess that's when Americans started associating India with the still sleepy South Indian city of Bangalore and not the Cherokees and the Inuits. And I was lapping it up. Dreaming big for my country - dreaming big for myself.

I don't know where politics thurst in. But it did. The beginning of terrorism, the BJPs jingoism and the Kargil war had cemented my national pride. I identified with the right wing fundamentalist thought-process. One had to be a capitalist. One had to throw open our economy. One had to be strong against terrorists and to protect our fledgling economic miracle. And one identified with the men at the top. And then Gujarat happened. And I was disillusioned. I had championed faith, discipline and dreams not murder never murder. And how much more I racked my brains I could derive no semblance of reason for such divisive and reckless hate. My brief love affair with right-wing thought was over. I turned my back on public policy, my childhood heroes and my aspirations of a career in civil service, never to return. I would rather be a hypocrite and blame the random politician than join his ranks and taint my hands in blood or corruption. It was time to move on to a scarier place, St. Stephen's.

What happens when you snatch a gawky. awkward 17 year old from his books and push him into a world where glamour meets intellectualism? Either he changes his ways or he breaks and quits. I believed I was smarter than any who crossed my path in college. But I wasn't like most people around me in college. I wasn't used to making and keeping friends, or to co-exist in other people's spaces nor did I care enough to carry on a polite conversation with anyone around me. ...

To be continued