Past & Me

Moving ahead with life anticipating what lies ahead is something I have always been unable to connect with. They say that people who look and plan ahead are the ones who really reach somewhere. Strangely though, I have always looked behind and have been able to move ahead. And I have ample proof to say that I have not lagged behind. My journey till date might not have been one of the success stories you read about but it is certainly not a fail-tale either. I always get a strange power within when I look back and analyze and try reliving my past. Be it the one with the smiles and sunshine or be it the ones with all gloom and rain in the world, I always find myself lost in those lanes, quite happy. Reliving them in my mind and soul not only gives me the power to face tomorrow, it also gives me the power to laugh at fate and accept the power of destiny and time. Those memoirs are and shall always remain dearest to me.

Today, I stand at another corner of my life. Today is my last day at this apartment. From tomorrow, I will be moving in to a new house with my friend. Simple and common…..Isn’t it? Yet, it is a big day for me. As I sit here writing all of this, I can still remember how I came here. It was four in the evening and we hadn’t been able to find a rented space and the next day we were supposed to vacate our flat. We got this one through one of my friends. We didn’t like it at all but we didn’t have a choice. The next day was one of the longest and toughest days I ever had. It took me fifteen hours of hard work and fight to finally get a bed to sleep at four in the morning, the one on which I am presently sitting on. I was so tired; I wasn’t able to sleep for hours. And today, all of it has changed. The people around, the bonding with the ones I was staying and the ones with whom I am supposed to stay, my personal life, my career path, my pocket, my choices and my priorities. This change, which is almost always unavoidable, makes me sad and happy. I am happy for I am better today. I am sad for a phase of my life stays here. From tomorrow I would never be here again. I won’t have this roof over me. It won’t feel the way it feels now. From tomorrow, this night and this house and these last hours in this house will remain inside me and become my past, a part of me I always have cherished.

The day isn’t far when I will be crossing these roads and the localities around on my way to some place and I will try to feel and think of how it was in here and what all I got and lost during my stay. Many who know me say, I get way too nostalgic and some feel, I am a fool of present living in the past and some opine that I overdo things. They might actually be correct. All I can say is that I try to gather as many memories as I can. Feelings, moments and people…aren’t they all that life is about? Just because I am done with all of it doesn’t mean I will let go off them so easily. They happened to me. They are a part of me. I am not dead with what I have today. I shall die with all of what I had too.

A sad tale of many a weeks.....

A few weeks back my job search was spoiling my weekends and now it’s the house hunting. While my job search has put me into a dead end wherein I am waiting for an offer letter from one of my dream organizations for the last three weeks, my house hunting has finally paid off today. After daring the summer heat from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon on the last two weekends, soaking ourselves in tons of cold drinks and water bottles, we finally got the space we wanted. Though we have declared ourselves to be the so called “family” instead of “bachelors” believing in the plan that my parents would come and stay with me and my friend, we still need to make that happen. Here the way a house hunting works is you see a “To-Let” board and walk inside and the first thing that comes towards you is a question; “Are you are a family or bachelor..?” Their concern as the owners is understandable but just because I am a bachelor doesn’t imply that I believe in thrashing my landlord’s place and creating havoc at night with booze parties and spread unnecessary unsocial clutter. It would be a risk that they would be taking but they could rely on other means to make sure that their worries are ours. It felt as if I am sinner if I am a bachelor. And even if you don’t want us for we are bachelors, at least you can get some manners in your talks to make a point. That isn’t the case either. I don’t have the power to choose my landlord’s nature and behavior. Wish I had that. The way you speak to people, even more so when you are talking to people you don’t know, speaks a lot about your family and culture and mannerisms. Isn’t that what you seek when you plan to go for families for renting out your space? In near future, I guess District 9 would become a reality for the bachelors. While many deserve it, a few like us don’t. And there is no system in place that I can prove my uniqueness. Whatever…..i am done with all this. Next in line is packing up my stuff and settling over at the new place. And guess what? It is supposed to happen on the coming weekend. Arghhh….all my weekends are getting spoiled with all the Mondays unperturbed. :(

Morning Dilemma

Going early to office is not that bad and I have my own story to tell. As is always the case with me, my eyelids remain half closed even after I have brushed my teeth, washed my face, had coffee and taken the bath. Every day, I hang in the mid-air at the front seat by the auto driver trying the best out of my hands, with the other commuters looking to see how dearly I love my life and want to be alive. Girls always take the back comfy seat and daily, I listen to different voices swearing, gossiping, claiming, sharing, laughing, complaining and GOD knows what not. But surely, it turns out to be the last thing you would expect someone to talk about that early in the day. And my mind enquires, what are these people made of? Morning, wind and silence go so well all together. It stays a morning and the wind flows by and if only I would have had silence…….

One of my biggest motivations to go to office early and leave my bed, sad and desperate to have me again is my morning coffee at the IT park garden right after my morning onsite call once I reach office. It is the transit time when I get the freedom to start the day by cursing my lead and wishing all the bad that I can for my manager. It is only then that it feels that I am at office and I am ready for the day ahead and the sleep in me fades away. And after having five such mornings comes the best one, the Saturday morning when I have all the time to make it up for the lost. But after five weeks, with immense sadness, I would like all of you to know that I don’t feel that sleepy in the mornings on the weekends. It’s the weekday that creates the want and the need…. :(

Not fair :)

That I wrote things positive in my last post and went out to have dinner with my love and friends and my love lost her mobile and we searched a lot to get it back without any luck is tough for me to forget. Not much that I can do there. :(

Yesterday morning till three in the afternoon and today morning till two in the afternoon, all of it went to search for a rented space. I and my friend will be staying together and we need to move out before the first of the next month. Weekends are all we have. Sadly, heat and soaring temperatures are also a big part of what we have. I could see the surprise even in the eyes of a stray dog as we were going to take a look at a nearby apartment with the brokers at two in the afternoon. Well, he never can really understand the meaning of staying together and that too at one place in something we call a house.

My mother has been detected with high sugar levels in blood and my father isn’t doing very well either. It seems like I will be moving in with one of my friends soon to a fully furnished two bed room house back at the locality where I had spent more than a year of madness. A quick thought which I am considering now as a solution is that I make them stay here with me and my friend. He doesn’t need much space either. His days are all about T.V. and his mobile calls to his love. Most part of our time during the week is spent at office and we would be having a few hours at night everyday and mainly the weekends. We don’t mind having them around for a movie too. My major concern is whether they will be fine with such an arrangement and if they would find it good being here. Time holds the future and the answer to all my concerns and all that has already been written down in some unknown book hidden somewhere. All this isn’t fair guys. They have laid down everything named future and it’s all about us and we are not supposed to know it. The rules should have been like they have it written down the way they have it now and we get to know what happens next (or the supposed to be ‘future’) and we try to change it all and if we fail, we get what’s written and if we win, we change the course and from there on, the future gets re-written again for us. Nez…..that’ all for now…but do think about the rules part…..all this surprise and unknown stuff is ok but they aren’t fair.

It's New

My days are going on pretty well these days except the heat of summer. I am learning to swim and my four day presence hasn’t gone to waste. I am becoming comfortable with water gradually. It feels fine now to exhale inside water and when it’s dark outside, water doesn’t scare me that much. I am confident enough to freely move around the pool with a little support these days. On the flip side, I am playing Dragon Age: origins, which is unarguably the best RPG of 2009. It has been a long time that I felt like completing one I started. You have to play it to see how detailed and near to perfect the work is and what a great work the guys have come up with. Though sometimes I feel bad that I don’t have enough time to play it daily and my work timings are the one to blame. And lastly, I have cleared all my interview rounds with one of the largest banking concerns in the world and I am eagerly waiting for the offer letter to come. I am meeting my love everyday and she is here to stay for another month. Now I can hold her hands and see her smile whenever I want to. One of my best buddies is back to the city and here to stay. Now I can have my nomadic mad night life again on the streets. But apart from all these, I have many a bad things going on too. But since I am just back from swimming and one can always choose, I prefer not going into those lanes as of now. Happiness is so short lived. Let me try to live it as much as I can for those tensions and depressions are never far from me......

Fear of Fear

I daily get up at seven in the morning. Believe me when I say that it is a record. My work timings have changed drastically from what was zero to a one. I am at my desk by eight thirty and my day ends by six. There are no more night outs at office and there is no afternoon travel to work. Though I am yet to adapt to this new way and it is almost a month down, I am finding it good. It leaves me with good enough time to relax and do my stuff. The heat is the only thing which is taking the better off me. But it is not that I haven’t tried something new amidst all of this. I tried to swim. I always had the fear of water. A shower is good enough to make me feel drowned. So you can well guess what would have happened when I entered the pool. It is of normal depth i.e. 5 Feet and five inches deep, and comes up to my chin, but is surely masterly in overpowering my will. One thing I realized is that walking in the pool is really a nice affair. It feels very nice. And on the second day when I was feeling one of such feelings the instructor forced me to jump into the water thrice and I gulped in three glasses of water. I was panting and the sudden change of my role didn’t allow me to even think of what I had just taken inside. I had been there to learn swimming thrice in the last two weeks and it still stays the same. I am unable to face my fears and I am feeling so bad about it. I want to make the count four and more but every day, as the clock hits six, I somehow manage to get a reason to escape my fear. It might be that the only way to surpass and face it all is to accept the way I am and then go and take a plunge. And that is what I am doing here. Yes, I am scared of water. Yes, jumping into the pool is even scarier. And yes, tomorrow I shall go and learn to stay scared. Wish me luck!

Summer '82 - Summer '10

“Summer”……the frames from childhood days are still clear and deep set. We used to have two mango trees. One was in the backyard, the bigger one and the desi one. It used to bear the fruit in galore. All through the afternoons you can hear the ripe ones falling down. I used to rush out with a screaming cautious caring mother behind me on her heels to protect me from the warm summer winds known as the Loo. But, what used to be on my mind was always the black crow, sitting up in the branches, my competitor. And also fresh are those nights, when I used to sit with my father, outside in the garden lawn watching the stars amidst the cool air flowing by with the summer flowers all around us. And how can I forget those morning cuckoos when I used to go cycling to the mountains to try out some summer adventure. Then there used to be the “summer vacation”..the vacation…..which kept us going all through the year at school…..stuffed with all that I like. It was simple. It was a carefree world. It was freedom. It was the joy of expression. It was my faithfulness to me and my soul. It was all about being me. Those days were undoubtedly the best summers of my life. The more I grow with years, the sweeter they seem to get.

Today, the “Summer” is no fun. Today my summers are all about suggestions. Sometimes it is me suggesting my roommate to mimic me and put all the clothes inside the fridge and wear them after sometime or sometimes it is him suggesting me to hug three chilled bottles of water to get a feel of being alive. In-house activities are now centered mostly round the fridge and thankfully, I don’t have to share my coffee with anyone these days. Almost no one seems to be interested for the drink. Ice cubes have lost their glory due to their downtime. Water bottles have come out as the clear winner. And to add a bit of nature to our ongoing fight to survive, we are having a watermelon for the dinner. Taking multiple baths is no more an option. Water is scheduled now for an hour in the morning and thanks to my manager, I am the lucky one to get it first in the morning as I rush for my office with dreamy eyes and a heart full of hatred. I certainly don’t want to miss these summers in future…….