Pinned

I can't say I remember many descriptions people have offered of me. One however, which I want to remember, came from an amigo of mine. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings (in Brooklyn.. I'm a bad ass) for some.... wings.. and beer.. Don't let the nondescript lack of options in the name fool you. There is some neat stuff on the menu. Sorry, was digressing a bit.

Anyway, I was telling Little Johny about some stuff I was going through. I, in all my seriousness, was on a roll describing my mental state (poor bugger wasn't even getting paid for this). Johny, in all HIS seriousness, suddenly responds with - "Sounds like a you got pinned by a woman stronger than you".

My reaction over the next few milliseconds went from WTF to Are You Serious??? to ab crunching laughter. It's like getting kicked when you are down only to be rejuvenated again because you realized what a moronic rant you were on. He later tells me to stop being a bitch and to pull myself together. I'd totally respect that but he later came back with a "I don't like Pink Floyd" statement. Too bad. He was soo close to be listed in my chest thumping respect list. Tut Tut Tut..

Oh, and apologies for the delay aah... whoever reads this.. probably no one... but still, in the off chance that there is someone, Merci. (thats me showing off the few words of French I know)

Rise of Nations

It's said that the Phoenix rises from its own ashes. An interesting ideology I think. If you look at many of the great cities today, they have all risen into their present splendor after being burned to the ground. Seattle, London, Edinburgh and many more have had their own history chapter named "The Great Fire of whatsisname". I experienced a similar thing in my house today. No, it wasn't burned down. Rather, suffered the great flood of May 2010.

When 3 boys live together, there is a good chance of the living environments to be just barely hospitable. Not very different a scenario at 20 River Court Apt. 203. With the lovely Manhattan skyline view, fresh air from the sea hitting the room walls, the whole place has quite a pleasant feel, until you look under the carpet and into our bathrooms. To be fair, when it comes to being messy, I guess I am the most.

All started when Vidhan, my room mate and old friend from Duke was living the dream being on-site for his company in London. Santosh, the diligent worker was sipping his Chai Latte at Starbucks studying for his CFA exam. I'm home alone, watching some garbage movie which I have seen before on my laptop aching to do something exciting, like maybe watch paint dry. Over come with a sudden urge to do something, I decided to clean the bathroom. Do NOT ask me why. I just did.

I don't clean often, but when I do, I am pretty thorough. Armed with a bunch of paper kitchen towels ( Would soon go through almost a couple of rolls), and some disinfectant I don't remember the name of, I start cleaning the 'king's thrown.' Basic logic failed me as I start flushing the paper towels down the commode and closed the lid for me to sit on as I scrub out the dirt on the mantle ( not sure what else it is called, but I just keep my mouth wash there). I move to the sink with the commode lid still down and I still keep flushing heaps of paper towels down the thrown. Basic physics dictates that when something is not completely blocked/open, the pressure will never rise till adequate levels, so the water tank never really knew when to stop flushing. After about 15 minutes of cleaning and ground water level rising on the floor till conspicuous levels (the floor had stuff on it too which starting floating on the top of the water) and the mats wet with the toilet discharge, realization dawned (talk about being bit on my behind by the obvious). Initial reaction, Oh Crap and the panic button. Second instinct, call the reception. I soon realized that even if I call for a plumber it would take a fair amount of time for him to come here (roughly a few weeks), by which time we would be swimming in water which had massed through the toilet. I'm rather proud of what happened next, but the lack of foresight to see this coming if I stuff the toilet with big thick paper towels brings my pride back to the ground. I fix the leaking water (don't ask how) and (this level of stupidity irritates me) I flush again. As before the water with chunks of dirty paper starts rising till its out of containment again. I had to clog the damn water tank manually again. By this time the water had started exploring, as it tends to do, areas outside the bathroom and the thin trails of water with all the surety in the world started maneuvering through crevices and slight paths to the living room and the corridor. I'd consider myself very lucky to not have it enter any bedrooms. Now that the damage had been contained, yet done, I start the fixing act. 2 hours of soaking and squeezing spungebob, disinfecting the trail and cleaning out the stuff which was floating on the water surface (I don't know what it was and I would never want to touch it again), resulted in one spic and span bathroom. Finally a shining floor, where everything white is white, magnificent.

If only there was a way to destroy my room. Maybe it would be clean again. I hope some politicians take inspiration from this.

Rabble Rabble Rabble........

Staring into nothingness, I realized I hadn't blinked in two minutes. I might as well have been asleep if not for the thought that everyone around me survived this for so long. Arms become fixated at the thought of fear. Thoughts become paralyzed at the eminence of the known unknown. I want to reach around to grab support, but with transfixed arms and paralyzed thought, I displace myself within two positions without occupying the air in between. The monotonous spurts of noise are as normal as air we breathe. Is this the kind of predictability we aspire to.

Someone called me lucky once. That implies that I am in a situation/state which others might aspire to. The age old cliche 'be careful what you wish for' comes to mind. Luck is a funny thing isn't it. You can have all the luck in the world, but then you grow up to thinking that everything works the way it does for you. No one is hanging on with the last thread of their life anywhere. No one is thinking about greed, or hunger, or patience or success. Luck makes you weak. Luck makes your abilities a perspective. They say you should be contented. With luck you always are. But its a contentment without the possibility of failure. It's like a movie where you have a vague idea about what's happening next because you have read the reviews before watching it. Luck also implies that everything is as absurd as Sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill only to leave it and go down to roll it up again. The existentialist argument for individualistic perversion, in mind, actions and choice. But then he would argue the reality of true choice and my argument would fail, because now I cannot argue belief. I can argue morality, but it does not deny the absurdity.

This is one deluded time for me. Make sense, something make sense. Make these delusions stop.

Johnny Walker Way

Most of us live everyday like every other. The early morning soul crushing alarm, getting out of bed after a sleepless night. The soft sense of insomnia drifts into oblivion as the shower hits your body like stinging ice sickles. The cold morning and the stinging Northern US wind. In either case, there is an uncomfortable silence in the the cold, the subway rush and the knowledge that the wait till 5 has just begun. The same people riding the train everyday; the same compartment. You always get in 5 minutes early and grab your hazelnut coffee. The same gathering around the coffee machine talking about work, the game last night and how bad the coffee is. The same job for the whole day, the whole week, the whole month.... The thoughts of how you wanted to be a cowboy sheriff, pilot or something cool have disappeared. That is when it gets dangerous, when you accept the monotony. Sometimes, you conjure plans to hijack the work place or blow up the building with you in it. The lunch is the same chicken salad sandwich with chips and a soda. Sometimes you mix it up by changing the cheese from Cheddar to swiz. The rest of the day passes by with the same lack of thought going through your head. A bored look at the computer with your application console on one half of the screen and minesweeper and a chat window open on the side. The clock hits 5 silently. You pack up your things and start towards home. The same people, same faces. After a couple of years of you ignoring your lack of company in the crowd, you start recognizing them and even acknowledge their presence with a quiet 'excuse me' when you have to reach the exit door.Home. Another unbearable place. You are barely 30, single, hate your job, eat frozen food for dinner, no friends, no life. The thought of waking up the next morning is excruciating. Head starts to ache, you ran out of your supply of the little yellow pill, last night. The bar looks inviting. A shiny crystal glass, johnny walker on the rocks which slides down the throat in one swing. Time by Pink Floyd playing in on the music system (mockingly), a glass full of Johnny Walker and a comfortable leather couch. All the pain of the day was worth this feeling. The Johnny Walker way.....

Sensible Ramble.....

I was thinking aloud about the most random things and couldn't really think of anything in particular. Irregular bursts of ignorimity, bereaved clouds in front of my eyes, a gentle ramble of words just strung together whose sense goes just as far as grammer. It was almost like thinking someone else's thoughts, sort of a boring moksh disturbed by the off and on sound of the 70's show and scrubs theme songs.
It wasn't that I couldn't think of anything, it was just that I wanted my mind to wander.
This isn't the first time this has happened. After a bad night's sleep followed by a Monday morning and a long meeting at 4 in the afternoon, I could just about keep my eyes oscillate between half open and closed. The client was there, my manager was there and I had no idea about what was happening. I somehow managed to fake sincerity enough for them to not give me too much attention. It was followed by an evening of no concentration which included writing a detailed, boring, structured and bordering hair-pulling email to someone whose name I can't pronounce, about something which I'm working on only because I get paid for it.
May the rambling continues.
God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

"green garbage day april 1st"

Got you suckers!!!!
Believe me.. believe me more..

Look up to me, so you can see
This is as enlightened as you'll ever be
Pay close attention, for this is needed
Believe me more and ill garuntee you'll be cheated!!!!!

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT WORK

It was 2AM. I lay still in my bed. No rolling over, no movement. The memo I read the day before weighed on me like the sentence a wrongly convicted felon awaits. I wasn’t even trying to go to sleep. It seemed like a futile privilege. Any other day I would be out like a log, but that day, it would have been just a supposed replacement to pass time. I opened my window and lit a cigarette. Ordinarily it would relax me. But for that moment, it was just something to do as time crept at an excruciatingly slow pace. I wished I wouldn’t have to live this day, just one day.
I reached my office a little early that day, or at least it seemed early. I went to my friend’s desk to see how he was doing. He gave a familiar petrified look which I had been seeing all day, from my mirror to the people I rode the elevator with. Forced small talk had never seemed so painful. I put on a pretentious smile and gave a false nonchalant see-ya-later.
After staring at my computer screen for a good half hour I told myself to clear my mind. In reality I just wanted to get out of there. The gloom was getting to me. With a friend I went down to have smoke. We got out of the building and the place was swamped with cameramen and people with rolled up sleeves with notepads in their hands, all in a general hurry. A strangely humorous thought entered my head. My claim to fame could have been being one of the people on television who got laid off from the financial industry. Numbing thought. They turned out to be just a movie crew shooting for some Hollywood chick flick, but the moment was surprisingly funny. Or maybe the situation in the office was so glum, anything would have been funny.
I think the clock struck 10.30. My output for the day till then was an impressive zero. Considering I could’ve just got fired in the next couple of hours, I thought I was holding up very well. Suddenly, I saw one of the most dreaded sights one could possibly imagine. One of the HR Heads was walking towards me with a cardboard box. I somehow remember her wearing that brown suit and white shirt, the significance of this is lost to me right now, but for me, that’s now the devil’s attire. That’s what he looks like: an aged woman in a brown suit and white shirt. The closer she came, I was barely short of hearing my heart beat. No blinks, everything slowed down. The time seemed unbearably long.
She walked by and went around the corner. I sighed. I realized that for the moments she was walking down the corridor I was holding my breath. A few minutes passed. The whole mood in the office was grave. The 11 o clock IM’s from friends were missing. There was no random talk about the game last night near the coffee machine, or the weekend plans. There was a sense of chaos under an apparent cover of order on the whole floor. Just when I had started breathing normally again, that lady came my way again. This time I was just hoping that this day would end soon, whatever be the decision. She passed me again. But this time I could hear what she was telling the man no one ever spoke to at the other end of room. She just put the box on his desk and asked him to clear it out and go to the 11th floor. Those words send shivers down my spine whenever I think about them. This was beyond mockery, or insult. At that moment it seemed like I was living in a despot regime.
She walked by me a couple of times again and every time my heart ran a 100 meter race. It was finally lunch time. The excitement of the whole day had killed my hunger. As of that moment I had a hard working nothing to show for the day’s work. I again saw the HR women. But this time, she spoke to everyone remaining in the room. I don’t exactly remember the words, but it was something to the tune of ‘we aren’t rendering any more people jobless…..for now. Round one is over.’ Heartening moment…..for now. The rest of the day at the office wasn’t much better. The regular meeting with my manager, a couple of smokes in the afternoon, catching the train home with the same people I see every day. Met my friends at night and told them of the horror I faced. I don’t suppose they could ever understand what I went through, but just getting this off my chest was relieving enough.
“it turns out that behind apparent order lies an eerie kind of chaos; but behind that chaos lies an even eerier kind of order” – I don’t know who said this (neither do I care)