Outbreak of Lunacy

Statutory warning: PG-13 content ahead. Please exercise discretion.

He was staring at the distant leaf in the autumn smitten tree while the devil was rumbling deep inside his flesh, beyond the streams of blood that were making their way to and fro. Fear and terror took turns and flickered in his eyes - he was a host to the evil of the worst order.

In a moment of lapse, a seed of rage was sown in his soul and before he realised, fate was feeding it with stimulus for lunch. Soon satan screamed inside his head, mouthing most painful insults on every social connection he had, until he let out a scream like a wild screeching cry of birds of prey. Broken mirrors, scarred furniture and bleeding wrists and nails carry evidence as he helplessly watched himself sacrificed for filling the rage's appetite.

Late in the evening, when a speck of darkness touches his presence lust spreads itself inside him like fire that every inch of clothing on his body burns his skin. He rubs himself on pillows and pillars, writhing in helplessness as a need for sex engulfs his existence. Finally when lust takes over, he picks her out his dream, gives her form and shape and makes her watch as he undresses and gets drenched in a shower. He entwines his self with her and watches from afar as two naked bodies dance in delirious excitement. He feeds his lust with curves drenched in sweat, with cries of climax and a deeply animalistic violence that leaves everything as just flesh and blood. The pleasure of voyeurism feeds his delusions and suspends his belief to a state where he can't say whether she is real or otherwise, or whether it is a dream or a life of its own that he's given to live.

Self doubt creeps in insiduously as he imagines known and unknown around laughing behind his back. He rushes to solitude inside confined spaces in every alien city scared of making himself a laughing stock. Trust disappears like a feather in a wind and he's left on a stage full of masks, each one masquerading every second. Frustration forms his aura - as a voice inside that forces him to run - just run out of his seat into the dark unknown - to end his life, to complete this game of hide and seek. He believes in forces around him that clutch his life as evil vices. Pain seeps through his veins with every turn he makes as every step taken is a step missed and every posture taken leaves with him a nagging pain in muscles that have been sleeping so far. Sharp corners and subsequent steps come to life and move near and far leaving him tumbling down the stairs and tearing his skin.

He sat there dreading the moment when his alter-ego would break the walls of solitude and present itself to everyone. When this smiling, convivial, trustworthy poster that people have taken to believe would be replaced with a dark abyss of lust and rage - when all the life he's lived so far would be washed with a single outbreak of Lunacy. He watched himself tied to the tracks of life facing a dark tunnel while the trailing lights of the train of reason were disappearing from his vision leaving him in darkness - a scary, unending, terrifying murder of reason - of life.

Talk of costly misses ...

This weekend has been bliss - I have been lazing around, going for rides in cars, walking by the river side, taking a lot of snaps and cracking a truck load of poor jokes (and thankfully having a company of those who laugh for even those!). Went over to heidelberg (again!) and clicked a couple of snaps - a fascination I carry from the days of INSEAD (thanks to prashanth and chaith) - one of these days, I will make a list of things that have stuck to me since my days in INSEAD. Anyways, as with the agenda set previously .... I have yet another anecdote from my BITSian days.

Let me name my protagonist Mr.X (sounds spooky!) coz at the time of narration of this incident, X's parents weren't aware of this little truth I am going to tell you - I am not sure how far and long the story has traveled by now. Yet, for the sake of my word that's now caught cobwebs - Omerta! About Mr.X, if I ever have to make a list of 10 guys in my peer generation that I am a great fan of, he will be one of them. One of the most intelligent, responsible and poised gentlemen I have ever met. Having been in BITS, I have seen a lot of brainy chaps. But rarely have I met someone in whom the intelligence had transformed itself to a completeness of character and virtue. I haven't met a single guy who hated X - he was such an admirable amul baby!

So, our X, intelligent and focussed that he is aspired for the IITs and gave the preps his best shot. He was voted a sure-shot winner and a sizeable population in chennai expected him to join the elite bunch of engineers. The exams got over, he told everyone that he's done well but finally when the results were out, he didn't make it. X took it in his stride, applied for BITS and finally scraped in as a late entry. First year, as he was expected to - he cracked the courses out of shape (this, I realise is a very bitsian term :-). Late in the second year (which incidentally was when I came to know him), we were all sitting on a saturday evening in one of the rooms in our wing and one of us asked X how did he manage not to get into the IITs. He gave a half smile and remained silent ... "you know, I have never told this to anybody. I had indeed done all my papers well in the IIT entrance. But only after coming out of the exam hall after I finished my physics paper did I realise that I hadn't written my roll number in the answer sheet. But nothing could be done about it then". No one in the room could believe their ears. Every year probably a million students work for 2 years to get into the IITs. Here he is, equipped with all that is needed out of someone to make it and he FORGOT to write his ROLL Number. I would have died out of remorse had I done something like that when I was 17. And I would have at least cribbed about it, every second day in the 3rd month, every year! But he, He never talked about it to anyone till that very second. After that incident, I never heard him mention it even in passing to anyone. For him, probably, it was a closed chapter and life had to move on. Probably when looked at from a higher perspective, it's probably a trivial miss that makes sense later. I have to add that he went on to do respectably well in 4 years in BITS, made a job, a dream job for many in BITS, talking about Bhagavad gita for half an hour and is doing amazingly well there. One word --- Composure.

A tribute to one brave kid ....

I am not sure whether krishna will ever reach this page - but an incident from his life that he once narrated to me has been on my mind for a long time waiting to be penned. To feel and believe that I am the beginning and the end of my concerns and the scope of this spot gets boring after sometime. For a long time, I have been compiling a list of events and narrations that have touched my soul and left me scathed and transformed - let me make a modest beginning by penning them down to gain some perspective of how life can actually suck (and stop myself when I feel like cribbing on some trivialities).

The details are very hazy - coz he told me about it an year or two before. His entire family was traveling in a jeep (or some vehicle that could accomodate 6-7 people) in a highway. Somewhere in the way, his brother suggested to ~K they swap places. Just after 15 minutes, a drunk truck driver zig-zagged through the highway and rammed the truck on the jeep in which they were travelling. Of all people in the jeep, ~K was the only one who didn't sustain any major injuries. Imagine being a 22 year old standing amidst the ruins of your entire family in a pool of blood - everyone writhing in pain right in the middle of a highway with no one to help.

He managed to call for emergency to get them to the nearest hospital. His brother suffered a major fracture on his leg, his aged dad had multiple injuries and worst of all, his mom had such a deep gash on her skull that they could see right through till the brain. The hospital that they went to wasn't ready to operate on them since the cases were too serious. He had to rush them to manipal hospital and had to do it soon. Finally, when everyone was admitted and were handled by expert hands did he have the time to sit and weep.

It took the family about an year or two to recuperate. His mom is still not in perfect health (and sadly, will probably never be). The financial implications were considerable and more than anything, that incident has transformed him and his beliefs a lot. Having been with him for over 6 months and seen him in such close quarters, I would know how much his family means to him. Imagine having the lives of the ones you love the most in your hands in the middle of the highway, with no one to help and no way to go. You don't have to hold a gun and stand a post to show courage - This is courage!

puny pixels of peculiarities

Ew!!! I know the title sucks. let's move on .... I do feel like writing a lot today. So, thought I would pen down my most quirky and weird habits.

1. I don't know to spell most of the common english words, I mean even the most common of them. Thanks to dictionary.com and microsoft word, my english is mostly readable. I mostly go by the sounds of words and the way they look to gauge whether they fit or not.
2. I am ambiguously ambidextrous - my only claim to this ability to playing cricket left-handed. I almost do everything else (writing, racquet games ... )with my right hand. Volley ball is an exception I guess.
3. If I have one thing in each hand, out of which I have to throw one and one I have to retain, I always end up throwing the wrong thing inside the dustbin. Happens to me all the time.
4. I dont know whether this is usual - but whenever I eat food with my hand, my forefinger always goes away from the rest of my fingers as I get closer to my mouth
5. Any time I am alone (doing whatever - eating, walking or staring at the mirror) , I talk to myself - LOUDLY! Many a time, I rehearse an argument or a fight I think I will have with someone soon. Most of the time, these arguments never happen.
6. I talk to god a lot (i mean talk loudly) - probably he's the one I talk a lot to after to myself.
7. My greatest problem in life is I don't have preferences - really, I don't have a preference for any issue that's before me. I can give you broad guideliness for platonic issues. But where do you want to eat? what do you want to wear? should I buy this one or that one? which car? which color? which dish? blank slate!
8. Anytime I sleep at home - I don't pull over a blanket around me. I wait for my mom to come and do it for me everyday. EVERYDAY! And thankfully, she never forgets.
9. I am an extremely sensitive movie watcher - excessive violence or pain don't disturb me. But what disturbs me are trivial things like - an innocent man being cheated (I always wish I could go into the screen and tell him what's happening - mahanadi being a case in point), a rich guy becoming poor (Uyarndha ullam for example), child abuse (I will burn the reels of monsoon wedding and kadhal kondaen), and any scenes where pregnant women are suffering. Till I was thirteen, I used to hide under our dining table. Now, I go drink some water or search for an invisible piece of paper under the seat
10. How many times in your life have you wondered, while looking at a girl, how life will be if you marry her? I have got a lot of single digit answers. Mine will easily cross 3 digits - even four. Not that I transpire for an intimate relationship with every girl I meet. It's just that that is the first thing that comes to my mind. I think, laugh about it and leave it - but sometimes, I even get adventurous and tell the girl I feel so - and most of the time, those girls took a couple of days before they started talking to me again
11. Pessimism - thy name is me as you would find in the following points. Actually, in terms of attitude towards life, I feel extremely positive. But when let to think, I imagine the worst of disasters. Everytime I start writing, for the first couple of lines, I wouldn't be convinced that I haven't actually FORGOTTEN how to write. It's only after a couple of lines that I regain the faith that the quilt is not yet broken :)
12. I always think about death and dying - it's silly. But quite frankly, everytime I cross the road, everytime I go in a plane - I feel I would never come back alive. Every now and then, I make a list ofwhat would be my greatest regrets if I die this very second.
13. Most of the time I silently wish disasters occur (on the same lines, I imagine myself in the most tragic moments possible). I always have a feeling I have never been tested enough - plane crash, death of the most loved ones, losing a limb are usual recipes for thought.
14. I have been having the same set of dreams since childhood - at least most of them. Even the details don't change.
15. The habit I hate the most about me is picking my nose. I think I have a problem coz after about half an hour of no-nose-picking, I find it hard to breathe and a truckload of phlegm is settled there (trust me, I find it as much eww!! writing it as you feel reading it. But truth time is now!).
16. I am very scared of jails - probably, every one is. But jails are the places I am most scared to be in ever!

Statutory warning

This blog is meant to be on the top of all blogs - a statutory warning that holds true for all blogs.

This dish (the blog i mean, just realised dish can be used in quite a few senses.. let me continue) -This dish is served bland. This aint revenge to be best served hot (courtesy, tarantino!). This is unadulterated, unexciting, uneventful ramblings ... faeces of thought process that when out serve to balance the support mechanism within ... silly experiments with words and the way they sound ... all this spiced with i-dont-wanna-make-you-laugh sense of humor of a iam-waiting-for-my-six-foot-grave agnostic!

the agenda for the next few days -

1. how i barged into a ukranian girl's room and adored her bed and bedding while she lost all relief seeing me after relieving ((I am so prompted to add .. revealing just to add a poetic flavor. Listen to this "lost relief after relieving and revealing herself in the rest room" - alliteration as they acknowledge aye! continue if you still remember the rest of the sentence ...) herself in her restroom.
2. how i wanted to write about the accident krishna's (my ex-room mate) family went through
3. my experiences with pool (the table game, I mean!)
4. my suicidal motives and "breakable" fundas that are chewing my brain.

let's hope i get the time and the inclination to write these over the weekend. tough call, I know!

A weekend that refuses to end ...

To say, I have got used to Europe would be heights of presumptousness. This place certainly holds a certain magic that I bask in everytime I come here. However, silence seems to have set in like a pall over this place much thicker than what I have seen it elsewhere. It's like I am in the middle of a curfew - I probably have to wait for the first week day to see if the cars vroom their ways to the highway. Probably I am just in the wrong side of the village. Anyways, took time to go to Heidelberg, the gard du nord for walldorf, to get some essentials. Fought with the claws of doubt to finally settle on a 15 euro sweat shirt that's become part of my skin since last evening.

Of course, the most interesting incident so far has been the call I got from ~P at 12:25 am. While I was walking away through clouds of thought, there's this ring, all too familiar in the last two days, that cuts through my lines of thought and wakes me up - a horrible horrible ring tone that I am sure I will never grow to like. I croggily pick up the phone to hear her tell me that there are a couple of men in uniforms outside the hotel door who are asking her to come down and open the main door because a fire has broken out in the hotel. Now this was too bizarre to be handled in the state of semi consciousness - still I managed to convince her as step 1, to see whether there's any other soul in the same premises who can actually give her company and convey the message over to the men in blue in german. I meanwhile took the time to rev my logical engine and figured out that even the modest of abodes in europe should be equipped with a fire alarm and hence the whole hotel must be out by now. She called me, as promised, in 5 minutes and told me she couldn't spot anyone in the hotel. I explained my reasoning to her, tried my best to allay her fears through whatever words I could find and asked her to go to bed. I promised to land there personally in case the threats persist (by no stretch of imagination, would I actually look like a samurai who could stand in the line of fire to save the damsel in distress. But thanks to my male valour, when I did propose to do so, I felt no fear. Male valour to hell - I think it was my half sleepy presence of mind!).

Anyways, I guess the men in blue lost patience and left. When I woke up finally, 730 in the morning, the call was the first thing on my mind. I bid my time till 8 in the morning and walked my way to the hotel (you see, phone is an excellent invention. But is pretty useless, when you don't know the number to dial). There was no trace of fire or any sense of alarm. The car park was empty and there was not a single cop around. She was fine alright, in one piece and still sleeping. So, I went down to the reception just to let them know what happened so that I can at least share the sense of alarm I felt last night - that guy was ... hmmm, for the right word, puzzled! Some intruders tried to barge into his hotel, and he was ... PUZZLED! Probably, he thought I had delusions of people comin' in barging in on my friend's window. He promised to look into the matter (sic!) and stared again into the computer screen - where, I am sure he must be trying to figure out the next moves of his minesweeper game.

I didn't want to bother my friend with this silly explanation and was soon on my way home - probably a jog through the rain drenched streets, while the sky didn't completely stop sneezing. As I reached the main road (while the hotel was on a right lane right angles to this) , and walked past the next right, right next to the right I talked previously, I saw men dressed in orange uniforms and a huge van standing next to a building that might just have been behind the hotel my friend's staying in. For a second, a whole image of doubt painted itself before me. probably, those men were actually cops and wanted to enter the hotel so that they can make sure the fire didn't get into the hotel. Probably, they were just pranksters - We would never know.

Funny, the web of choices and the alternatives we take - leaving a sense of what ifs that lay unexplored forever!

from C block, building 3, SAP walldorf

And finally - after the arduous journey through the cramped lufthansa, I am sitting here in a 4 member office room half here and half lost in andromeda waiting to crash land in my bed. Considering my previous experiences with the wings that fly, this time was like a 200 Rs tirupathi darshan - ended up talking to ~P till the wee hours of the morning (which I admit is ambiguous usage coz I have absolutely no idea how the wee hours manifested themselves in the land beneath our feet while we flying and frying (kadalai) on top. For simplicity sake, let's assume IST for all further references).

When I finally managed to catch some sleep it was 7 in my watch (now this is truly unambiguous usage) and by 11, my flight was taxying (is this how one spells it?) in the frankfurt airport. A 2 hour drive through roads bordered by photo copies of a same house (I was actually trying to figure out which is the actual original one in my sleep) left me at the guest house (spelt horribly in german) - room number 6 to be precise.

I am feeling too sleepy to describe the details of the indistinguishable houses on the sides and the humungous SAP office that spans a small city. If I change my mind within the next 15 minutes .. shall come back and update this blog.

after a hiatus called life ....

I am here an year later ... a life's past between now and then - love lost, lands crossed, locations shifted, vocation morphed, vacation taken ... scarred, scared and starting anew.

A modest apolitical beginning to start with - look at it from a 45 degree inclination, it might even look like a vote of thanks for the last 3 months

15 best things about bangalore - (the order's not important)

2. Saturdays with Sundar (and all the scrabble and sumptuous andhra food that goes with it).
3. Vp's laughter
4. blessing called breakfast in barista (my one luxurious yearning out of my earning)
5. mom's phone calls
6. the 3 minute 37 second odyssey of solitude from home to shuttle pick up point
7. hot Idlis for 5 rupees
8. landmark @ forum and all the books available there.
9. occasional dinners with kana
10. kiddo's calls
11. lecture sessions to ramya behn fmba (future mba ;))
12. Nandhini's home delivery
13. Yuva - SAP - Netweaver (the highlight of my professional pursuit)
14. nithya's appreciation for kottals of the nth order
15. my back pain and the subsquent right to crib or not to crib (about it)!