Well, so I've been thinking there's a whole bunch of us, struggling writers, random bloggers, horsing around on the Internet. We spend time creating identities, looking for our own identities and god knows what else we're looking for all the time in the address bar of our browsers. I mean, there's a fair amount of writing talent that floats on the Internet, scattered here and there on lonely blogs whose authors keep checking their visitor stat counter everyday to see how many people came and actually read the shit they came up with.

So, I figure how serious we all are about all this writing stuff. I mean, are we going to be good writers or not? Are we going to be published authors of our novels or not? I've always thought of writing a novel, but I never wrote one. The first one I started last year, has only a chapter or so written. Lame, isn't it? I can't even call myself a writer. Are we really gonna write something worthwhile ever? Or are we here just to fool around, cater to anonymous comments, have discussions on useless politics and biased opinions and views of life?  Don't we want do something with our writing? Don't we want to write something that will actually come in print and be read and passed over generations?

If so, and if your answer is a strong and guilty yes, I guess it is not too late to make a new year resolution.

So, how do you celebrate a cold Christmas when you're all alone for the winter break and your flatmates are gone to sunny California?

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Eat a lot of pie and watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

This french pecan silk pie was killer. Had a ton of whipped cream on it. Also, as you may already know that I live in the land of obesity. That reminds me I gotta do some ab crunches next morning.

Can a perfect society exist? Is the existence of a flawless society of humans possible? Well, I ain't got any frikkin' ideah.

I entered my office this morning and found everyone working - glued to their computer screens - as usual. I am always curious to peek into the screens of my peers, I don't know why. I am always curious to know what they're upto.Are they surfing (youtube/facebook) or communicating (chat client/gmail) or reading a paper (research paper/journal article)?

I always want to know that and sometimes I would like to peek after every few hours. Evidently I am not working on these days and just idling on my PC and hence it helps me to know that the others too are just chilling out. So, I feel its OKAY to chill out. Its OKAY to stay distracted and read that trivial news section on msn once in a while. Its OKAY to go through all the fresh posts from the people on your blogroll.

However, an interesting thing that I have come to notice is the correlation between age and focus. For example my old professor, whenever I see her and have a peek at her computer, she's always communicating or reading a paper. I don't know how people spend the entire day without watching a single video :| And then this another mature guy in my office, like double phd guy, he's always so focused. Always reading papers or writing them. Never in the past whole year I have seen him surf.

Another visiting scholar, old married girl with a daughter, also keeps on reading papers all day. (Actually I have a really good position to peek into her screen so I can tell for sure). So I don't get what's the deal with reading papers all day. I mean, how the hell do you get so much focus? I just can't imagine.

If I think too much about it, the answer I get is - perhaps it's because they got family and all. So they finish work at 5 and runoff to their families for fun or whatever (you know right ;p) And for that they stay focused on work as long as they are in office in daytime.

But for people like me, single, young, and silly, I see it kind of impossible to stay focused. Perhaps I still haven't realized what I am meant to do. When I reach 40, maybe I'll know. And after all, that's the biggest question of life, isn't it? What do you really want to do in life? Answer it asap and you're good.

Ow that reminds me I have a paper to write.

"What's your progress?" asked my professor with regard to the summer research that I'm supposed to conduct in return of the money I get paid.

Note: It's interesting to observe how my writing style is constantly influenced by the authors I read. From Salinger to Steinbeck. Btw, Grapes of Wrath totally ripped me. Totally.

Now the real post, the thing I was going to talk about:

These days, I always wonder about these questions no matter I'm free or busy. They just haunt my mind every now and then. I wonder why?

Q#1 Why do some people still think that life in US is like this?

Q#2 Why that little hot chick in the gym is usually reviewing her chemistry notes while running on the jogging machine?

Q#3 Why my average of words/day output of fiction writing is so terribly less?

Q#4 Why my Chinese peers are just SO DAMN GOOD at everything (researching/sporting/flirting)?

Q#5 Why I miss Her so much?

Q#6 Where do the ducks go when the lake is frozen? No, really, where do they really go?

Q#7 Why the roads are so goddamn slippery?

Q#8 Why every casual sentence spoken by Holden Caulfield has so much depth in it? How?

Q#9 What does a Chick mean when she emails and say, "We ought to do lunch sometime!"

Q#10 What's the bloody meaning of ought anyway?

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Current Book: "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger (Still)
Current Music: "Dilli..." from No One Killed Jessica

(A subtle change in format of posts (see bottom) from now on, about which, a regular reader like you, might not need to be notified.)

The Holiday Break has just begun and the festive mood still evades my presence. The buildings at the University are now closed for a two week break which means limited access and no heat.

Outside, as snow pours relentlessly with flakes dotting my vision, inside, I find desolate corridors, darkened hallways, closed offices, empty restrooms, dusty door knobs, silent seats which were all once occupied by my colleagues. There is a false assuring humming sound of the workstations that were left running by them in haste as they escaped to their holiday, partner, home or life.

I ask myself why I have not been able to make much progress on what I had decided last time, but I find no answer. J.M. Coetzee helped to heighten this guilt and regret. Perhaps it awoke a quenched fire? But what is there was no fire at all? Ah, I digress and talk of things that make no sense.

Point? I have to get things straight. I have to get a lot of things done in these few days. Once the new semester begins everything will be sucked out. And I will be sucked in a hole that has no end. There will be scope for nothing but misery. I don't know if Coetzee's book is doing this to me, but I often think that my dream job would be a clerk or an assistant at a remote library of some distant town where I am required to arrange books and their shelves in far away sections where nobody bothers to look or trespass except that of a rare young couple whose presence will not cause much interference to that clerk lost in centuries of literature.

I pray for health this Christmas so that my dentist and physiotherapist stopped ruining this break. Because I can't let days pass by like this. I just can't. I must find time.

I must write.


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Current Book: "Youth" by J.M. Coetzee
Current Music: "Never Say Never" by Justin Beiber ft. Jaden Smith. 

Me chilling out.

"Stop. Wherever you are. Just stop. Stop running for a moment, will you? 


Catch up your breath. Let your throat welcome the soothing air back to its calm motion. Let your lungs capture the breeze which could have choked them if you hadn't stopped. 


What are you running for? What are you running after? What are you running from? I know there are good things that you want, that you're running for/after and there are bad things that you are running from. But this is a marathon, remember? Its not a sprint. You will wear out if you continue like this. Calm down, stop. 


Take a break, dude."

This wasn't me speaking really. This is the voice I heard in my head when I found out that there is no bus service on Thanksgiving Day. Spending my one week break of thanksgiving holidays at my office had lulled this inner voice until now. So Thursday became the first weekday in the past few months that I skipped college. Skipped work. Skipped email.

Skipped everything that was important.

I did act a bit fidgety about all this complete holiday and shut off thing but then I realized that the inner voice was right. I really needed a break. I had to stop running. After all who am I? Who are we? No matter how big an achievement we make, we are still at nanoscale when compared to the world. We are those tiny particles oscillating about our own axis trying indefinitely to fight the inevitable thermodynamic equilibrium this system will attain one day. And don't even get me started what role we tiny specks of carbon have on the giant universe. And the multiverse?

Meh, I digress. Had a good thanksgiving dinner at professor's home where everybody enjoyed the turkey and wine except me of course. So I finally took a break, and had a Harry Potter mania kind of thing with friends this week. We watched the previous movies back to back at our home on a projecter. So it was all home theater stuff with popcorn, huge screen and loud sound. Then we went for the 7th's first part, which was "totally awesome". Scariest of all movies in the series and a masterpiece. Perhaps I loved it so much because the 6th one was so terrible.

Since I have taken a break from science, it is art that I will catch up with. There is a novel that I have been reading very slowly, I want to read some more of it. Then maybe I will perhaps write some shit up and send it to a contest or the market. Then there is a secret writing project that needs some attention from me. Hmmm, lots to do still. Break? What break? Must go work.

I checked the bus timings and my wrist watch one last time before I grabbed my bag and jacket and made a run for the main door. The exit door of the building was a few meters ahead and I had to reach the bus stop within 60 seconds. Because 60 seconds is the time the bus takes to reach the stop closest to my building from the bigger stop where it is scheduled to arrive at 10:11 PM.

I glanced my watch again as I pushed the heavy steel exit door with my tired hands. The minute hand was slightly past 11 minutes and the second hand was moving effortlessly towards the completion of another goddamn minute. The moment I stepped out of the artificially heated structure and stepped on the bare concrete pavement, a cold wind brushed past my ears, reminding me that I had forgotten to employ my jacket's hood. Straggling with my loose bag and flowing jacket, I managed to wear my hood and cover more distance towards the stop.

I saw the bus coming from the other side. It rode the pavement with a considerable effort and engaged itself against me in a 200 meter parallel sprint towards the final destination - the bus stop. I could hear my own cold escalated breath and the crunching sound of fallen leaves beneath my stamping feet. I realized the beginning of fall.

Not much later, about 30 seconds after, I made it to the stop and climbed the bus. The driver nodded and smiled at me in a manner athletes often do after finishing a race. But it wasn't him that caught me off gaurd. It was something else.

It was this strong stench flooded in the bus that caught me and my nostril hair off gaurd. The stench of alcohol. And noises and shrieks too.

Friday, Alcohol, What else? I thought and moved on.

I moved past many shoulders to find a seat at the back side of the bus, where nobody was daring to go and sit and why so, I don't know why. But I came to know the answer of 'why', soon after. The back side was more or less taken by the people who had troubled the olfactory receptors of the sober commuters. Making my way past drunk, shabby haired, half dressed undergrad girls and boys, I found a seat in the corner but before I could find some rest from the sprint I had a minute ago, I found myself talking to a guy who was having a normal Friday.

Guy: Whoa dude, so you been studying?
Me: Uhm, yeah? (I looked at my bag I had now kept in my lap and nodded)
Guy: Wow. You're studying till 10pm on a Friday and am getting drunk. 
Me: Well, no-not really..
Guy:I will be prolly working for you someday. 

Me: huh?

And then he broke the conversation in the same sudden manner he had started it. I took some time to figure the last line he spoke to me and pretended busy in my own thoughts. Then their was a she-friend of this guy, who was talking pictures of herself and her gang and yelling to everyone, "I am 21 and I can drink, how about you?".

I looked at my bag once again and of all those things that I did on this Friday and all those boring things that I will be doing on this Friday night. Then I thought I am 21 too.

But am I living my age? Are we all living our age? Are we living? At all?

I am not in a very cheerful mood as I write this. This is a post out of stress, worry, fear and mostly regret.

I have this rule of mine (its not mine actually, it's a world famous saying kinda thing) that says "Do only 1 thing in your life and then expect success. You try to do a multitude of things and you will fail, miserably. All those great people are known for 1 field..."

Yes its more of a saying rather than a rule but I like to thrust this rule upon everyone I meet and try to tell them that it IS the secret of success. There is nothing simpler than focusing towards your one goal when it comes to mantras of success.

But the bloody irony of this is that I almost always fail to follow my own rule. I don't focus on my love. I do it though, in fact I give it my highest priority and highest amount of hours in a day. But then in the remaining time I am like, "Oh I should do this and that and this and that! And that too! That,  yes I am going to learn and experience of course after I get a time slot free in my schedule."

Because perhaps somewhere inside I am weak. And afraid. Like everyone else who can't focus on one thing and put all the eggs in one basket. Because we all, are afraid to take such a big risk. We can't afford to make this big an investment and are afraid, "What if even I do everything I can and still fail?" "What if it wasn't the thing for me?" "What if it doesn't work out?" "What if I don't have any plan B to switch back if all else fails?' 


"What if?"

And so I will make every day of my life a struggle. Every day I will try to put as much into as much I can find. I continue this for a few days. I kinda do well in some of the stuff. I feel happy. And then, suddenly it hits me. BAM. MY body gives away. My mind is never, ever ready to give it up. But my poor body does. It gives up of the torture I put through it. Of the sleep and rest I steal from it. Of the calmness and relaxation I never give it. I land in the bed, trying to figure out why don't I follow my own rules. . .

And the story repeats itself over and over and over again.

This is not the first time, I have got screwed up. I have got these medical conditions plenty of times in the past. I am a carrier of enough diseases already. And it seems if I go at this pace, I will keep on pouring flaws into my health till the pitcher is full and ready to burst.

But yeah, one another rule that I would like to tell you is, "If you feel you are screwed up inside, go ahead and see a doctor. They are amazing folks you know. Don't be lazy or stuff, just go."

Its another rule of mine which I often break. Two days back I was like, "Ohk I am fine, I am fine". But today I mustered up myself and finally went to my doc. And the meeting was really, really relaxing. Seriously as I said, doctors are amazing folk, they take your worry away.

So after the doctor has done the diagnosis and given the prescription and assured me I will be fine in a few days, he is like:

"What's your age?" asked the wise doc with a curious glare in his eyes.
"Uhm, 21" said I, rather casually.
"Hmmm its nothing to worry about. Though, you know, your body should kinda work till at least next 9 years. Problems should be arising after 30, not before that. But anyway, you will be fine."

I kinda feel a bit weird as I exit his door and kinda relieved that the issue isn't as big I had thought but somehow I feel it is. Because then I remember that old pundit that has told my mom that I will get a lot in my life, riches, success etc etc and some other things which he was true about, but kinda I will be down at 30. Yes, bloody 30. Not that I believe in the astrology shit, but still 30 is way too early to go down on bed.

And then I remember my dad too, who often says to me that he is worried about my health etc and wants me to live for 100 years and live a very healthy life. (Backstory: I hardly, hardly take care of myself and he kinda knows this fact well). And then I tell him proudly, that "Dad, I don't want a good length in this life. Just a good breadth. That's all."

Although right now, I kinda feel different. So I will just shut up, take my pills and lay down on bed as I hope I get enough length in this screwed up life. Not 100 of course, but perhaps average please? lol ;p


SO, what do you think dear reader (if any ;p)? Do you believe in these rules? Does life's breadth matters more to you than the length?

Hi

Following is an excerpt from a forward email I got a few days back. Below this is my view on the same.


We live surrounded by our alternates, what we could have been.


Oh, if I only had that last number right (just one and I'd hit the lotto), accepted that job, finished that course, got there earlier, got there later, said yes, said no, went to London, married Dora, taken that test…


Right now in this Imaginary bar where I drink to forget what I've never done (the bar is actually called "Imaginary") sat a guy by my rigt side and introduced himself:


"I am you, had you taken that test at the soccer team"
He really has my age and looks. The same grimace.
Why is that? Wasn't your life better than mine?
"For a while. I played the major league. Got to the national squad. Major deal. Lived the big life. Until one day..."
"I know, I know..." Said someone sat beside him.
We both stared our interloper. Had our age and looks and not a bit happier. He went on:
"You hesitated. Should I stay in net or charge the attacker? You stayed, got scored on and fell in disgrace. Dropped soccer and became a mediocre advertiser"


"How do you know that?"