Miss the manners

You would think that being educated would guarantee some semblance of manners and etiquette in people. It’s a foolish hope I’ve realised. Education just guarantees literacy, everything else depends on morality, upbringing and conscience.  

I’m not talking about grand gestures and thumping parades; it’s all about simple things. At the food court in a mall, do you pick up your tray or leave it there for the cleaners? If you happen to drop food on the floor or the table where you sit, do you pick that up as well or it is the cleaner’s job? I make it a point to put everything on the tray and as far as possible dispose it off myself (unless the cleaner pops up and insists on taking it). I understand with kids, it’s difficult to be so fastidious, but maybe we can try and do what we can.

It irritates me when I find people behaving so callously. Sure, there are people assigned to do a task, however menial it may be, but that doesn’t mean that we have to make their work all the more difficult. It doesn’t give us the right to deliberately add to their burden.

Take for example a public loo. For us it may seem like one stall, one sink, but that poor person has to do the entire bathroom, all the stalls and all the sinks for an eight- to twelve-hour shift. Must we be so uncaring and cavalier?

We’ve all picked up an attitude of others picking up after us. We grumble when we see a mess, but what do we do about it. Are we contributing to it or making a tiny effort to lessen the burden? What gives us the right to grumble, when we are as guilty as the next person? We blame ‘them’ the others …it’s never us, but how are we in our office, where we are seemingly surrounded by ‘others’ who are just like us? Like the ladies loo in my office; we have notices put all over asking, no begging, for cleanliness but no. The floor is left wet, the seat wet and sometimes with pee droplets, the occasional red blobs and skid marks of a healthy bowl movement! Why? Why? Why? Each time you step in, you wonder what surprise awaits you. Toilet rolls are used one and empty ones kept standing (are we counting how many we use in a day?), used ones that fall on the floor are left there, make up stains and hair strands dirty the sink. Is it too much to just take a peek behind you to ensure that everything is clean and flushed? You got a clean, pristine bathroom; why not leave it like that for the others?

Maybe I Love You

I feel like I'm baring my soul with this and I'm exposing too much. I rarely am comfortable with letting others in. I hide it all.

It wasn’t magical, there were no sparks as such but it was real. My head was filled with the fantasy-coloured opinion on how love would be, how it would feel to be in love, how I would know that I was in love. It wasn’t anything I thought it would be, yet it had everything I hoped to feel; the only thing was I had to watch love go away to realize that ‘this’ what  I was feeling, this numbness inside, the paleness on the face and the tears brimming my eyes were signs of a heartbreak.

This was a gentle sort of love, the kind that slowly builds. It was something I felt, but having never felt like this before, I didn’t know what is was. I put it down to possessiveness and proximity and dependency and a million other things, yet I could never explain why I was happier when you were around, why I was so conscious and shy when you were around, why I aligned myself to mirror you, why I looked out, after and towards you, why your opinions mattered, why it used to upset me to see you upset, why I cried every time we fought and why every time I reached out to sort it out.

I cannot find another reason to explain that need to be around you constantly. It filled my heart with so much joy, yet I never recognized it. Sometimes, I think I did, but I quelled every thought that sprung in that direction. I ran from love, I ran from you. I realized it, when it was time to wish you joy, when the wetness on my face was from the tears pouring from my eyes, and the incomprehensible listlessness that followed me everywhere was the ache caused by the inevitable grieving of my broken heart. My face may have been serene, there may have been laughter even, but I cried inside, far away from prying eyes.

It took so much pain, to feel love at last. But I have no regrets. For you gave me love, you brought me to love.

PS: Listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGB4STuFC4c&feature=related

All grown up?

Why did we ever want to grow up? Being an adult is tough. You are responsible for your life in ways you can never imagine. Every decision you make or fail to make is entirely yours. What to eat, where to live, whom to love or hate, where to work, whom to be indebted or obligated, whom to help or avoid, these are just basic decisions that you, just you, have to make.

What was wrong with being told what to do? At least if anything ended badly you didn’t have to deal with the fact that it was your mistake. You had somebody else to blame; somebody else to rely on. But no, we had to want to grow up, we had to have it all. We had to be independent, had to live separately, and get stuck with the choices we made. When we were kids, if we sucked at playing the piano, we could give our parents the ‘I-told-you-so’ look but whom do we blame when we have a big fat ‘F’ circled in red for an arts test, an elective we thought we could handle? We may have tons of excuses but it boils down to just one thing—you messed up.

As kids, we cribbed about having to study irrelevant things and envied our older siblings for having the choice of subjects and clothing and freedom and money. And when we reached their age, we realised that being in college was not all that rosy. Who knew that you had to read tons of books to write out a decent essay and that you had to work so hard to afford a wardrobe? And it only got worse. You kept hoping that at some stage you would achieve some semblance of order and living. No wonder Peter Pan never wanted to grow up! It sucks being an adult.

Of course, you get to stay up late and pass out drunk, and eat take-out food every day, but when you have to clean after your upchuck and appear bloated and bleary eyed at work, it no longer is fun. Being grown up and being responsible is hard. Unfortunately responsibility is not just going to go away. Either you learn to stand up and take control or face the consequences.

But being an adult is not really that bad. You just need to shake off the lethargy and get a system in place. You make mistakes and you learn and it’s a pretty good feeling when you fall and rise up all on your own. The clothes, the sex, the independence, no curfew or parents to report to, it’s all great and all but nothing comes close to the feeling of exhilaration you get when you come on top despite all odds. You have a problem, you figure out a solution and that’s all there is to it.

You realise that being grown-up has it perks, like being children had its perks as well. What matters is how you look at it. Are you going to whine about having so much to do or are you going to take care of it one thing at a time? Because there is something to be said for this whole be-the-architect-of-your-own-life—nobody else can do it for you and nobody can take it away, unless of course you let them. But like all things, in the end it all boils down to you.

Round 2

So we made it through Round 2 of the Foosball Tournament. This victory was made sweeter by the fact that we beat the team that classified themselves "Team Winning". Who's laughing now?

Somehow I feel that the tournament is going to fizzle out with injuries, absences, drop-outs and work causing teams to be shuffled, losers getting second chances and match schedules rearranged!

Feels like heaven

The feel-good factor. Most of us have that something that makes us feel good all the time. No matter what state of mind we are in, how tired or how busy we might be, its presence is enough to make us forget everything else. Chocolates, food, wine, books, stamps, babies, cars, butterflies, nature, people, places, silence, service, prayer—the list is endless.

Libraries, book stores, book piles, books, a book—that’s my thing. I simply love books and anything that has to do with the printed word. Libraries are like a candy store for me, my heart beats faster, I lose hand-eye coordination, I break out into peals of laughter and don’t know where to start from. My eyes glisten up like a Christmas tree, and my fingers itch to touch and run through the aisles and aisles of books. I turn into what all greedy people turn into when they face temptation—drooling monsters. Once I calm down and find something to read, I am enclosed in a capsule of warm and fuzzy feeling of being home. This is where I want to be, to live here and die contentedly, surrounded by row after row, stack after stack of books.

My college is a 140-year-old institution founded by the Jesuit priests, and it’s no surprise that it has a library that literally melts my heart. Actually, the college has two libraries—the reference library and the lending library. I was familiar with both. I knew where every book of my interest was, and one could find me sitting crossed leg on the floor of the lending library surrounded by a stack of books. In the reference library I would sit in the section where they had these restricted books—so called because they were original and old copies of books that couldn’t be taken out. Imagine how excited I felt to be in the exalted company of ancient books.

The smell of old mouldy books (except of course the ones with industrial glue) and the crispy crackling sound of new books, are as appealing as the smell of first rain on scorched dry earth.  The minute I hold a book that I want to read, I am transformed into this other person who can’t be bothered with trivial things like food and drink, day or night, work and rest. I immerse myself into it wholly and give it my undivided attention.

I find myself renewed at libraries. I go stark, raving mind when I find a new library or a book store. I go wild with euphoria—the feeling I get is indescribable, almost like a cross between a running around like a kid in Disneyland and a bubbling brook that wants to break free and dive headlong into the vast ocean. The silence of the place, the gentle rustling of pages, the scribble of notes being made, it’s like dying and finding heaven.  Like James Crossley once said, “It is impossible to enter a large library... without feeling an inward sensation of reverence, and without catching some sparks of noble emulation, from the mass of mind which is scattered around you.”

My personal collection of books I something I go through once every year, and every time I pile them up and rearrange them, I get a feeling of uncontained joy, happiness and peace. Each book has a story to tell and a few of them are markers of personal milestones. I now get what the dispossessed and philosophical Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest felt when he said, “My library was dukedom large enough.” My collection is beyond and above anything a property of sentimental attachment and my very own small universe of knowledge.

PS: I stumbled upon this post that put that a smile on my face - Date a girl who reads

Mother's recipe

Patoleos (sourced image, I didn't leave any for a pic!)

There's nothing like a meal cooked by one's mom that acts like an instant pick me up! My sister just got back from a short break home and packed along with her some of my favourite food. Considering that I had a bleh, hastily chowed down lunch, dinner was an exciting fare of fried rawas (Indian salmon), prawns in rechad masala and for dessert patoleos made in honour of the Feast of Assumption! I couldn't have asked for more.

Hail to the writers

As I child I used to read a lot of books. Each one opened up a world where characters didn’t just exist on page. They used to come alive literally with words that were spun together so elegantly. My fascination for the written word exploded when I studied literature in college. Here was the whole unexplored world of authors I revered and some names I never ever heard of waiting for me to read and learn. Each of the books not only showed the authors’ flair with words but also revealed how well they understood human behavior and psyche. 

To take an idea and display it across pages without losing your way is a task I find extremely difficult to perform. What I lack in flair, I have to make with the doggedness. All my life, I’ve marveled at people’s ability to write beautifully. It’s not just the images they evoke; it’s the sentiments they arouse. All good writers possess this ability to express everything that the human emotion range has to offer in words that fit perfectly. Most of the times, this admiration turns into a rage of jealousy. Why can’t I manage to hold one coherent thought for more than a fleeting second? Ideas and words run away from me like people shunning the diseased. I sit to write but no thoughts beyond the first line come. Imaginative writing is not for me. Give me a piece of research where I have to quote or work on an interview and I can do a fairly decent job.

Writers are inspired by the world around us. Ordinary things get transformed into something new and brilliant, a vague feeling becomes an awe-inspiring emotion, a shifty, shapeless entity transforms into a character to be loved or reviled. It amazes me, this endless capability to be able to exactly and correctly capture the subtleties, the nuances, the theatrics that an action or incident can invoke. How do writers manage to explore thoughts and actions and investigate what drives people? How do they manage to bring out the darkest desires, and scrape the skin off our hidden emotions and expose the raw, unprotected aspects of human behavior? Across genres, words that touch the heart and evoke happiness, tears, joy, pain, guilt, release, confidence are the handiwork of people blessed by the ability to put down in words exactly what you and I feel.

When I sit to write, my thoughts are contained and restricted; I sit and stare most often, frustrated by this impotency. At times, the words just flow and spew out like a rabid disease that needs to be fed. There is this urge to write down every single little thought that pops in the head. Nothing exists beyond the words. As long as the fever lasts, I can only breathe words. Nothing exists beyond them. And when the frenzy ends, there is this sense of loss, like a piece of me was taken away.