Thursday, July 27, 2006

So, well...

If you would ever care to know what masochistic withdrawal symptoms would feel like...

1. Get yourself a high speed Internet connection.
2. Do this in an environment where mostly everyone locks themselves in their rooms with their high speed net connections.
3. Now go delete your Orkut account.

225 friends is a ridiculous number...I know there are studs with a lot more, but I'm too introverted to have 225 of them. Especially when I find myself browsing through their communities to figure out where we might have met. I wish it werent impolite to reject a friend request from some1 you dont remember anymore.

Knowing myself, I'd probably start the whole shebang again sometime. Issue sheepish apologies to all and sundry, and go gung ho over arbit communities that define me.
I wrote that I was happy, yes. Happiness and self cynicism can coexist.

And for fuck's sakes, dudes....get the damn blogpost sites back. What are you banning next, email lists? telephones? how about the bloody Morse Code?

Edit... Results of a perfectly sober morning. But I did wake up at 4 am and stare at the lappy ( & orkut) for abt 3 hours, before wanting to dismantle the whole joke...so just put this all down to a cranky body clock

Song of the moment
"Lord of the rings" cover of the "Requiem for a dream" theme

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

So there’s all of maybe six months.

Discount those bumboo – up- large intestine days before the exam. Discount those days when you’ve to fill up application forms for placements, or when you’ve got to scrub up and return home before your folks take a bus and worriedly end up at your room.
There should be another set of stuff that should be factored into the above list of exceptions…but rite now me too buzzed to want to list them. Or pretend that they matter to me.

But there’s all of 6 months till I’ve got to wash up and act like some mgmt lackey sucking up to some other mgmt lackey who ended up there 3 years before I did. Till I wash up sober, clean shaved, deo & tie in place, meeting deadlines, aligning performance goals with company strategies, asking other people below me to act responsibly and in the interests of the company I only currently work for.

6 months to reclaim a boyhood I’ve never really let go of. To play football and LAN games.To pick up tennis and baddy. To read fiction without feeling guilty. To pacing the hostel corridor in shorts and little else, theorizing on life or the next blog post …while Knopfler strums away in the room. To rip into people with little thought of the consequences. To plunge into anything I find a liking to, inappropriate or not, useful or not, harmful or not.

6 months to reclaim a collegehood I never let myself have. To actually go chase a girl and to want to take it someplace emotionally significant. To not care about beer guts or hangovers. To pick up a bike and car driving license. To pick up the guitar. To go to Goa. To travel. With the girl I successfully hounded just now. To cement some friendships I’ve left ambiguous. To have more beer by the campus lake, by the seaside rocks outside my engg college, in a studio apartment in Mahm, or another flat in Lokhandwala.

6 months left now to prep myself for what’s next. To figure out the big picture about what I really want from my job, and the subsequent career line that might just give it to me. To trade off between academic interests, bloated salaries and 5 day weeks or onsite chances. To maybe work on something of noteworthy value that I can show for all these years of education. To figure out what I’m about…what she should be about…where life goes from here. Whether I’d want to keep coasting or settle down. To figure out my first big purchase. And stuff I’m not going to write about here.

I’ve always been this grandmaster at posing questions like these to myself. It’s what I do when pacing that corridor at 4 am. The only reassuring ring to the whole business is that there will be 6 months of beer. Cheers.

Song of the moment

Fortunate Son ; Credence Clearwater Revival

Sunday, July 16, 2006

No more movies for me.

I just watched the last great movie I’ve been hunting for…Trainspotting. And this is a week after Requiem for a Dream punches me in the face…(scarily intense flick). Both on drug addiction and recovery / the downward spiral…but Trainspotting’s somewhat more watchable. The dialogues are brilliant though…and I never imagined Ewan McGregor pulling off a lead like that.

Here are 2 gems I had to post…Ewan plays the role of Mark “Rent-Boy” Renton.

1. The opening lines of the movie.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

2. My favourite…made me wonder about my chances of ever hitting off with a girl in a bar. Diane’s just dispatched some previous bloke who offered her drinks, by chugging her glass, and then his…and then walking out of the pub. Renton follows her outside…mightily impressed.


Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Excuse me, excuse me. I don't mean to harass you, but I was very impressed with the capable and stylish manner in which you dealt with that situation. And I was thinking to myself, now this girl's special.
Diane: Thanks.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: What's your name?
Diane: Diane.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: And where are you going, Diane?
Diane: I'm going home.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Well, where's that?
Diane: It's where I live.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Great.
Diane: What?
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Well, I'll come back with you if you like, but like, I'm not promising anything, you know.

Diane: Do you find that this approach usually works? Or let me guess, you've never tried it before. In fact, you don't normally approach girls - am I right? The truth is that you're a quiet sensitive type but, if I'm prepared to take a chance, I might just get to know the inner you: witty, adventurous, passionate, loving, loyal. Taxi! A little bit crazy, a little bit bad. But hey - don't us girls just love that?
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Eh?
Diane: Well, what's wrong boy - cat got your tongue?

She then walks off into the taxi...and leaves the cabdoor open for him. Looks like there's hope for my types after all.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Cobweb Inspection. Introspection

It’s a bit late…I know. Even later than the date on which I was supposed to make the comeback post. Sometimes I get too hung up on how to begin…or on what apologies to provide for my procrastinating, or on how I should sum up the past two months.

And summing up it has to be….there’s so much to talk about. I may bring up incidents during subsequent posts…but there’s no 1 thing I can give justice to. The uptake of the entire episode is a very visible beer belly, a semi permanent grin and a new found faith in God for letting me end up with the bunch I did launch into the cheers with.

I mean, yeah, you do walk into an internship in a BPO and hope the superior girl - boy ratio would strike you lucky. You do hope to finally figure out the hoopla about Pecos, and Bangalore being the pub capital and all that. But you wouldn’t dream about finally scratching off stuff from the list of things that you’d moaned about not having done ever in your life (refer 1st post in this blog).

I’d list out the events some time later…for now am more hooked by the way life looks, once I’ve hit the Earth again. Looks like my days of manic, self centered depression are over…those nights when I’d stare balefully at a whisky glass and wonder about my emotional life, or the lack of it…they don’t haunt me anymore. The last shitty thing that happened to me was being denied the right to give that med entrance exam due to domicile issues…and in retrospect…the dude who decided that made the best career choice of my life for me.

I’ve been clinging to my unhappiness…there’s always been at least 1 reason that I’d happily give you, but I’d refuse to listen to your advice and solutions. Most often you wouldn’t get the chance to talk about what’s eating me…I’d just let you know that my life sucks beyond yours…and lets leave it at that.

It did produce some decent humour though….the best vitriolic one liners emerge only from the very best vitriol that’s been locked up and brewed carefully within you. The happiness and general contentment has been seeping in for a while now…(post those CAT results, mostly)…but summers turned out to be the final blow. I do catch myself humming songs…or grinning in the mirror, or talking to people I’d never be able to talk to 4 months back.

Dear reader…I’ve cheated you of merry tales of drinking and debauchery to let you know that I’m happy. It was my first post after 3 months…so do give me a break. Had plans to finally turn this blog public…guess it would have to wait for something better.


Song of the moment

Danny boy, don't be afraid, to shake that ass, and misbehave
Danny boy, I know you got time, but what are you waiting for,
Anyway the dust may just blow away, if you wait for a windy day

Sewn – by The Feeling.