Dear random readers, and also you freaks who come here regularly! March 2007 sucks. In protest against this highly sucky month, there shall be no updates to the blog. Now, I know that a few of you at least are hooked to the madness that is me, and for you, I have a simple suggestion: Buy me a drink.
Regular programming shall return in April. Unless April sucks too. We'll decide that on April 1.
Cheers,
-G!
Life can be lived according to five simple rules. And one complicated one.
1. Be more tolerant
The people around you are infinitely stupid. They will constantly amaze and impress you with new and creative displays of stupidity on a scale unsurpassed till now. And it will keep getting worse. Don't be nice to everyone without discrimination. But do not be cruel or harsh to fools either. They can not be blamed for what they are. Ignoring their stupidity and staying peaceful is far better for your blood pressure anyway.
2. Don't let yourself be pushed around
You will make friends with the people around you. And no matter how hard you try, you will end up making friends with some of the stupid ones too. Face it. Most of the people in the world are the stupid ones. And once you make friends with these people, they will be unreasonable, and they will try to be wilful. You do not deserve this. Because obviously, since you are reading this, you are one of the intelligent people in this world. A simple solution is to smile and nod, while humming your favourite song in your head. The world remains a better place with music, and without the words of the infinitely stupid.
3. Don't get angry
This might seem like a repeat of rule number one, but it isn't. That one tells you to be more tolerant, so long as you don't have to suffer fools. Rule number two is a direct spiritual successor to rule number one. That tells you not to let yourself be pushed around by the fools you end up suffering. And rule number three in turn derives from rule number two. Don't get angry when the fools try and push you around. Humming your favourite song isn't enough and can incite them further in some situations. In those situations, you will feel tempted to tell the fools to fuck off, but don't. That only escalates tensions, and probably won't do your blood pressure any good either. Hugs are a good solution in this situation. There is an added advantage in this, which is that if the hug doesn't work, you are already in position to knee the fool in the groin. In an entirely peaceful and tolerant manner.
4. Say thank you
Even though they are fools for the most part, most of the people in your life will do things that make your life easier or happier or a combination of both, which is a rare and wonderful thing. When they do these things without any expectations of a reward of any sort, it is a truly beautiful thing. It's easy to take them for granted, but saying thank you does not cost you anything. And it can bring a lot of joy to the world. This rule is particularly important when you're talking to your parents. You're probably going to outlast them. You might regret not saying thank you after they're gone. Most of them are fools who don't understand you. But they do love you.
5. Don't be so bloody insecure
You're surrounded by fools who make foolish demands on you, as the first three rules have made clear. At times, if you possess any self-reflexivity at all, you will wonder how any of your intelligent friends can stand you. Of course, it's unlikely that you have any intelligent friends at all, aside from me, but I suppose you could be wondering how I am able to stand you. But there's a reason that your friends like spending time with you. Considering that you read my blog, you're clearly an intelligent person. With a good sense of humor too. And hell, if you're €a repeat reader, we'll even toss in good human being. So clearly, the reason your friends spend time with you is because of you. So stop being so bloody insecure.
6. Smile
I said that one of the rules would be complicated didn't I? This is the hardest to explain, and the hardest to carry out. But smile as much and as often as you can. For one thing, it confuses the stupid majority. It can actually make some of them very uncomfortable. Which is a wonderful thing. And it can also make you a little happier. Which is more important than anything else.
This is probably the most self-indulgent (and sanctimonious) thing I've written in a very long time. I'm definitely not trying to entertain anyone. Three of you, at least, know why I have written this. I'm not telling the others right now, because I don't think I should. But all of you should know one thing. No matter how ridiculous these life lessons sound, I believe that they really work. This afternoon, I was feeling tense and worried about a number of things. Tonight, I'm feeling at peace after a long time. I have not felt this self-assured in ages. Who knows? Maybe if you relaxed and smiled a little you'd also like the world a bit more? And remember. After a while everything seems funny.
Hey there. I just wanted to apologise for the highly self indulgent entry I posted last night. I've not even re-read it this morning, but I remember vaguely what I'd written and I know that I should be apologising. I was half asleep when I wrote that piece, and I wrote it to move towards further sleepfulness, so don't hold it against me.
What I do remember of it though tells me that there is some hope for it yet. I think there were whole paras missing in the middle, and the conclusion wasn't very conclusive either, and I should do a rewrite.
On the other hand, I probably won't, because I'm lazy. For now though, until there's a suitably entertaining new entry, you could scroll down and read the story about that goat, The Sacrament, which I liked, or you could even read last night's entry, and leave comments letting me know just what all went wrong.
Feel free.
I'm very unsure of this story. But I sort of like the flowthrough. So I'm putting this up as a first draft, and want advice on where it's headed. Because so far I don't see a point to it. Please comment. Be ruthless!
When I was a lot younger, I thought that moving around a lot was the only way to live. The idea that you could live in a single city, in a single house, for your whole life, was shocking. Of course, when I grew older I realised that we were in the minority.
This story isn't about moving around a lot though.
Somehow, everyone I know now is going through a period of turmoil in their life. It's a strange feeling to see lives that seemed to have finally sorted themselves out get fucked up again. A friend of mine says it's our cold-weather front of discontent. It's kind of like being a forces kid again I suppose.
You get up and pick up all your stuff, and pack it into neat little boxes, labelled and sealed, and you move. Once you get to a new base, and pick out your rooms in the new house, you slowly start to unpack your boxes again, and put everything out in the open again. And by the time you've got most of the boxes open, you have to pack them up and move again. You lose a lot of old things that matter, and you acquire a lot of new things too.
Most people I know are still losing a lot of old things that matter. And the ones who've gotten new things to worry about are worried too. They know they're going to have to move again soon.
Forces kids are also usually very social. When I was a lot younger though, I was very anti-social. The combination was rarely pleasant. I was an introverted forces kid, surrounded with chatty and confident forces kids. And while I always thought that they were vacuous and pointless, I'm pretty sure that they thought the same about me. Of course, I was justified and they weren't.
But this story isn't about fitting in either.
Everyone eventually works out how to do that. The ones who don't are instantly recognisable. They are the ones who have dreams, and rarely know how to make them work. And so they believe that the people who can fit in will never be able to stand out.
Now when I was studying in Delhi, I studied in a forces school which had a lot of civilian kids too. While there was no clear division between us, it was very easy to tell which ones were the forces kids. They tended to stand out. Maybe because they had seen the forces life, and were determined that they be able to escape it.
But each of them was also very proud of being a forces kid, and talked down to the civilian kids. Not always intentionally and certainly not always, but they did. But if they weren't going to be a part of the forces, their kids would be complete civilians. I don't know if they thought about that.
The goat was munching on grass contentedly. It was still very young - if it were a month younger kid would still be the proper technical term. The goat was not on a farm, or any other such livestocky location, but was in fact chewing grass inside a house, or rather on top of one, as it was tethered to a post on the roof of a rather large house. And so the goat stood on the roof and fed its fat round face on big bundles of green, juicy grass.
"This," he thought happily, "Is heaven. It should stay like this till the day I die!" Of course, he wasn't nearly in goat heaven yet, but compared to his life so far, this was pretty close. He'd never been this comfortable before, and he doubted that he would ever be this comfortable again. Little did he know.
For the goat, life had never been harsh, and there had always been food aplenty, but this lavishly indulgent life, which he had taken for granted since he got here a month back was a whole new experience. He could still remember that night last month in great detail, mostly because almost all other nights he'd seen had been indistinguishable from each other.
It was the night of the last full moon, a month ago now. His owner had taken him far from the farm, where life hadn't been all that bad really, and put him onto a truck. The journey seemed to take all night and none of the other goats on the truck had any idea of where they were headed or what was going on. Instead they just kept complaining, and bouncing into each other.
They had all been taken into a huge open maidan, only it wasn't open, but overflowing with people and goats. The were big goats and small goats and old goats and young goats, goats with thick coats and with big horns and with strange accents to their baas. Goats everywhere and people everywhere walking here and there and pulling the goats and pushing the goats and prodding the goats and staring at the goats.
Now as it turned out, not a single goat there knew what was going on. The were all as bewildered as he was, as none present could speak human. Expect the humans of course, but since none of them could speak goat it didn't help matters either. One human word though was used again and again throughout the day, which impressed itself on him - bakr-eid. He had no idea what it meant of course, but remembered it nonetheless, even as he chewed his grass in the warm sun which kept off the winter chill, and mused about how much his world had changed in that one day.
He had been poked and prodded endlessly and after some time one of the people who had poked, prodded and peered, had talked to the master, and then suddenly the goat realised that he was being dragged away by the new human.
How he had protested then, he remembered, grinning to himself in the way goats do. He had fought against the pull and tried to run back to the herd, as soon as they'd stepped out of the maidan. He was lucky that the new master hadn't let go, but dragged him into this opulent world, and a life of fresh, juicy and tender grass. He fervently wished that the rest of his life would be like this.
And what happened after that? Well. I never did get to find out, but I've always liked happy endings. So in my head at least, I try and think of the goat, sitting on that roof, sunning himself, and eating obscene amounts of grass.
And I never, never let myself think of the biryani that was sent over to our house from the house with the goat on top.
I've been tagged once before, by a rather random person who didn't know me much and thought I'd be happy to jump onto the bloggers bandwagon and fill out the rather irritating tag. This time the person who has tagged me is closer to me, and since it's one of my new old friends (don't worry, I'm not going to go into a speech on that phrase, not right now anyway) she may be forgiven for doing so. And since I don't have the energy to write something, but I feel twitchy when I don't update, I think I'm actually going to fill out the tag.
So much for intros.
Three things that scare me :
Old. The word was just not enough. He felt so much older than old. Age lay around him like a dark shroud, leaving him old and alone. These two words he knew could sum up his entire life now. There had been happiness, and excitement, and yes, life had laid its harsher marks on him too, lines of sorrow and anger etched as deeply into his forehead as the laughter lines beside his eyes were.
His face was a series of crags, crevasses and ravines, each of which had a story behind it. Many of the stories were the same, because people never really learn from life's lessons until they have been driven home repeatedly. He had been hammered relentlessly on the anvil of life, and shaped by its lessons. His head was creased and a straggly white beard had brown patches near the lips, stained by the countless cigarettes he smoked. His eyes were yellowed and watery, and his breath reeked like a bar the morning after, stale alcohol and countless cigarettes.
Once he had been young, strong and vital, a name in a world run by names, but time had worn his down, erased all memory of his name, leaving just him, old and alone. He sat in his chair, fumbling with the pack of cigarettes he always kept near. It was a gift from one of the few people in the world who still knew his name, and cared. That that anyone had ever really cared, he thought, as he put the cigarette into his mouth, brown teeth coming momentarily into view. He struggled with the matches now, looking with despair at his shaking hands.
He had been very proud of his hands once. He'd had big strong hands, hands formed by years of hard work and struggle. He could make anything with his own two hands, he had always boasted, and it was actually not that much of a boast. He had been strong, but capable of great delicacy with his hands, and the fingers had been long and straight and smooth. He could do anything with his hands.
He could have gripped the world in his fingers.
Wrinkled, gnarled, twisted fingers, skinny and clawlike, which could barely hold a cigarette, could barely light a match now. Twisted and disgusting, with spots and lines. Shaking with no warning, and with no reason, so that he couldn't even strike a match. Time had left its mark everywhere, on his face, on his fingers and on his soul.
After two or three attempts the match finally struck, and he flinched as his dark room was suddenly lit up by its light. Shakily he brought the match closer to his face, careful that it didn't come too close to his beard, and lit his cigarette. He dropped the match into the ashtray, and once again the room was dark, the only light being heavily filtered sunlight which forced its way through a grimy wire mesh and a dusty, dirty glass pane, and then a thick curtain. In the twilight of the room the lit cigarette burnt bright, and he focused on it.
Just then his door was thrown open, and bright light from the room outside streamed in. "Grandpa!" a piping young voice screamed, "The test went great! Thanks for all the help grandpa!" The old man smiled, and his world seemed lit up for a while. He stepped out of his room, and sat with his grandson, asking about school and telling stories about his youth. He used all his skill to tell the stories, because there was no one else to listen to him anymore, and for a while he felt alive again. But then his grandson got up, and went off to play with his friends.
The old man wanted the boy to stay, to talk to him and keep the world bright, but he knew he could not be so selfish. He smiled wistfully, wishing he could be young again, and then walked back into his own room, where he could be swallowed up by the darkness.
