Low Light

Sometimes I wonder if I can see in darkness. I don't trust the dark enough. But once the lights are off, I see almost everything. How eyes adapt. Even the streaks of mellow street lights filtering thought tight maroon curtains are enough. The notification light of the cell phone is enough. Multiple cell phones, iPads and such. 

I had a knack for total darkness back in the day. I celebrated my tweety-fifth, sitting alone on the bathroom floor and smoking, in the dark. My roommate knocked on the door when she had to pee, badly. I don't remember her name. All I remember is that she had straight hair, like ironed hair. She would iron her hair every morning before we left for work and I would steal glances at her, in between my several morning pretend chores. 

Morning chores. Evening chores. Now, night chores. I don't need the strength to go on from day to day, week to week, hour to hour because I busy myself with such chores. Water the plants, assemble breakfast, pack a lunch, dry out the clothes, don't forget this, don't forget that and such. One after the other, jam packed schedule. My routine is my one bloody saviour. Never having a moment to sit in the blank, pitch black darkness to merely think is probably my secret. Otherwise I wouldn't get a reason to get out of bed. In a way, this is the best thing ever. In other ways, it's the worst possible damage I could cause to my soul. 

When I am in a routine, I don't let the little sorrows of life catch me. And when life crumbles like a pack of cards, instantaneously catching me unawares, it's probably the numerous alarms I set to wake up, to go back to sleep, to take pills, to pay bills, to get to work because I need money to pay said bills, that eventually get me back on track in my no thinking life. 

Earlier I loved the darkness so much, it brought me ecstasy. Somewhere in the middle I weaned myself off it, you know, how we do that. But now, again, I am using darkness to catch a break from this mindfucking to do list that I have turned my life into. Because I want to probably grow that courage to go on from today to tomorrow, inside me, for real, and not just fake it around.

Hallelujah 

An Introduction to Murakami

I wish I could write listless fiction. Like Murakami does. A story needn't have a beginning or an end. Either. It can be, peacefully be, a random extract from time. Happenings of a day, or an hour, or a lifetime. It needn't even carry any direct meaning. Or a climax. Or a moral. A story in itself is a being. It begs no justification. It can be about a man getting random telephone calls all day, or making spaghetti brunch for himself, or listening to records, or taking a train alone. Or an elephant vanishing into the blue, or an insomniac woman driving around all night, or a man with nothing but a strange sounding name. It can be about me-you. It needs a faceless narrator yes, one who is neither happy, nor sad. Who is neutral enough to merge with Murakami's canvas. And his sole job is to narrate, read out Murakami's fucking brilliant mind like a dispassionate reader. Isn't the man a genius? And genius is clearly an understatement. There are days, when all I can fantasize about is reading him. He addicts me. With his bare words. I don't know how to stop. Or to look the other way. I am obsessed, with him, like I am never with other stuff. 

Probably, I love him so because in his incomplete unpredictable abrupt endings, I have snuggled up to a new found comfort that not everything is entitled to a meaning. And things can be, just because they are. Just for the sake of being, and nothing else. And I am otherwise so fatigued with jumping to conclusions and drawing deductions that I find a certain relief in Murakami. It's okay. It's normal. And even if it's not, that's okay too.

That's okay too. Because Murakami says so. 

Paradox

You lose hope, not overnight. Not over the night. That's too sudden. In the period of a night, you cry out. And wake up swollen. Eyes burning like fire. Skin glistening sorrow. But you don't lose hope. Hope sheds itself over days. Months. At times, years. You slowly let go. Consciously, breathing, let go, like noone's watching. But you are. You believe, that way it will affect you less. Pity you and forgive. Well, does it?

Similar to the process of unloving. Unloving, keep note, is not the same as falling out of love. It's an active verb. Falling out of love is more passive an event. more real, commonplace, easier. Unloving too, doesn't happen overnight. Slow squeezing of the heart, is supposed to take time. There is no anesthesia for this one. Quite the anti-process of amnesia happens here. Instead of forgetting, one remembers. Tiny details. So much that entire events feel little before the little nothings. Unloving takes its own sour time, and mostly with no certainty of results. 

What tempts me the most is that, is there freedom beyond these? Untethered freedom, as you would put it. I don't know. And ironically, I wouldn't want to. Either. 

Losing all hope was freedom.

- Narrator. Fight Club

Baby Steps to Sanity

There are these following stages to sanity. Sometimes not in that exact chronological order. But whatever:

1. Singularity: And all the other fancy-pants terms used for being by oneself. With a sparkling clean head. Making through the day, calling for cabs alone, standing by the ATM machine, waiting for cash alone. Etc. Not being stuck in some wait. Content, by measurable parameters of human reason.

2. Infatuation: Being one of the most dangerous sorts of fixation. One-sided. Unspoken of. Driving oneself to the ends of insanity. And making her fall off the edge, with the elan of an enchanted lover. Living, vicariously, lopsided towards imagination. Hunted by cravings of the anti-pragmatic kind. Counting the inconsolable, unsettled gasps of a perennial adolescent.

3. Non-committal Non-serious: The conscious choice of being in this kind of an arrangement finds its root in the dearth of conversions of series of infatuations into regular affairs. Parties engaged are mostly busy convincing themselves that this is indeed the non-committal non serious thingy. And there are no stakes. Either party exclusively look out for their reasons.

4. Non-committal Serious: This usually kicks off at a book shop, or a meeting at a common friend's. One doesn't understand why one likes the other, given that the track record of past flames doesn't match with. But there is a certain level of comfort. Understanding of mutual flaws. Something that comes with seasoned loveless-ness. Parties are semi-involved. But neither has the bloody guts to commit.

5. Committed-Serious: Finally, when the most necessary issues of arrangement are worked out by the art of persuasion and the fear of dying alone, parties enter into what is commonly called as a relationship in romantic parlance. Movies, dinners, stay-ins, taking the sex for granted. Etc

6. Marriage: One day you are made to believe that you were created to only pro-create. That is the beginning of marriage and the end of what is called life in common parlance.

7. EM: Stands for Extra-marital. After the boredom of feeding on the same face for years kicks in, one finds an artist on the street, with long hair, or an unkempt beard, living on alcohol, the perpetual hedonist, or any one specimen stretching from 1-5 above, she secretly elopes with whatever she previously cursed as unconventional.

And then someday, if the stars are pleased, gets to Sanity.

Unrelated prequel: here

Mild Love

I am not saying that no one will love you how much I do. I am not saying that you will ever regret having lost out on me. I am not saying that an appendage like this happens rarely in our whole lives. I have no claims.

Only, some nights I merely wish these were all true. Unconditionally. But, now, tonite I know for sure that these things that I do not say,  are indeed true. Every letter, every space between words, each pause and punctuation, is true. You will never find anyone who loves you how much I do. Even if you do, and there exists my competition, you will still regret having lost out on me. I haven't figured out the reason for that yet, but you would.

It could be because, every germ of passion in me awakens when you are around. The way I get drenched in sundry emotion, Baby, I cannot explain. I know, nothing lasts. But lets put that cynicism of a lifetime apart for a moment, this feels endless, undying. At least, for now it does, tonite it does.

Un-

The act of un-loving fucks with the mind, peeling off layers of memory is as painful as peeling off skin itself; there comes a point, when there is a hollow in the heart felt, and the pain ceases to be emotional per se and assumes multi-dimensional proportions, like you can actually feel there is something wrong in the left chest, some kind of void, or an emptyheartedness, a physical actual pain, and it's not as funny as it sounds though, also there is this waiting emotional outburst, that waits for nobody knows what, and one loses the ability to cry, like one is waiting for that stretch of time, when one would sit on the bed and scream and let out the motherfucking gasp, but somehow there is no time, no opportunity, to cry at a time, so there are these frequent escapes of intense shortlived emotion, hot tears, heavy breathing, like almost panting, not knowing what to do, looking away puzzled, staring at the washroom mirror puzzled and then crying, and watching drops crawl out of one eye and wonder why the other is not grieving, along with which comes this mental incapacity, incapacity to believe, to let sink in, the hard realization that whatever is happening is indeed happening and it's not a dream or some kind of nightmare, the shock is so overwhelming that one sometimes refuses to accept in their subconscious that this was indeed possible, lastly, there is this shame, one is ashamed that one could have the degree of naivety to discard all bodily organs of intelligence and for real embrace the inane stupidity of love, one keeps relapsing into phases when she thinks, how could she have been so foolish, what was she thinking, what was she thinking, while in the act of loving itself. 

Etc.

When we have lost our initial brush of awkwardness. And have outgrown that shy silence of first love. When we are talking until we are constantly running out of things to talk about. And travelling into and out of each other's minds. There would come a time, and phase when we wouldn't know how to toy around with so much love.
We would play around with forks at the end of dinner dates and wonder if it's over already or should we order dessert. Strike a rhythm with our nails on coffee cups, or break into a tune not understanding what to do with the next five minutes of time. We might face a silence between ourselves which may not necessarily be awkward. That silence will make us feel that may be. May be we are not ready to take the leap.
May be we need some more time. A few days, weeks or years. Or may be we are not right for each other. Was it some ex we left behind. Or someone else who we were about to meet in the future. But never did, because we met you. And other such imaginary doubts.
But honey. You know this. And I know this. No matter how far we run away to, how many others we try to create this love with. None will be as raw as the love we have. Here now. Wondering what to do with this silence that has creeped in without a warning, between us.
No matter what we think say or do, we are going to find our way back to each other. Tomorrow or the day after.
..

Being Discreet

Funny coincidences. Accidents. Good ones. Beat you up. When you are alone. Over worked. Coffee. Sans sugar. Staring. At the screen of your laptop. Unusually bright. For your dark room. The light almost bites your eyes. Then at the window. At the moon. A faint one. Behind the swaying bough of coconut. Seriously. Seriously. Planned holiday. Ticked on calender. Pending approvals for offs at work. Tickets on waiting. Indian Railways. Time. Sluggish. Lazily inching toward dawn. Seems like, the night wouldn't end. Plans made and unmade. To scrape off broken nail paint. From on toe-nails. That grow like they had minds of their own. In all unwanted directions. Thinking about half heard love stories. Of girl-friends who have moved away. Into cardinal cities. But have still stayed put. And who had to disconnect. The call. Because, something/someone turned up. Thinking about the sheer variety in guys. One encounters. Day in and out. Taken and un-taken. Taken and yet to be taken. How they laugh. How they appear on the surface. On first meets. Delighted and fresh. And one doesn't delve into. The untold histories. Buried deep inside them. Somehow. That doesn't matter. Not right now. Because all that does, is right here. Now. Inching toward dawn. Me. And the moon that has moved up higher than the boughs of the coconut now. Somehow a strange adjective comes to my head whenever I feel for the moon. Fucking. I look at the moon and say. The fucking moon. The fucking moon. Don't really know why. Could be the profound angst. I have. I treasure. Anyway. Period. Period. 

Knowing.

His trapezoid toenails. The bush of hair just behind them. I focused on those as the rest of everything happened. Nothing else mattered as much as my incessant desire. To pluck each one of those strands of hair, from his toe knuckles. And see him swell up in pain. I so knew lust.

A rusty nameplate hung from a grille where a creeper of moneyplant flourished someday. Both the names on that plate, no more. Grown children fluttering around in the funereal home. Impending grandchildren. I so knew the unseemly futility of life.

Sitting on a mountain top. Staring into a deep deep valley. Wearing a crazy hat. Sombrero. Watching a shamless sun shedding itself on the canopy below, uncovering a dozen shades of green. Cold wind hitting my face, I understood life's unconquerable ability to make us forget. Move on. I so knew that liberty could be. And is.

Trying to decipher illegible writing, my very own, from cheap ruled notebooks. On penulitmate exam nights. Mouths raw from insomnia, as I fell off from the edge of my bed, I realised. Whatever we do, we get nowhere else. Except where we are here, now. I so knew truth.

......

Maya

I am told this world is a dream. Brahma's illusion. It's funny to even imagine, why the fuck am I being screwed so bad in someone else's illusion.

I used to dwell on the truth that everything I see is the sum of everything I imagine I see. I was shut off. There was a distinction between what was me, and what wasn't me. My four walls defined me. Protected me from diluting in my obsession, my cure-less narcissism. 

And I sometimes, in wildest dreams, I tried even to distillate whatever truth there was, however minuscule that may be, from enormous proportions of what everything just seemed to be.  

But now, with time, I have begun to live outside myself. That's the cost we pay. I'll tell you how. 

I am a lose summation what everyone imagines that I am. That I should be. Losing out on breath, I am aimlessly trying to become that one person that I ought to be. To get a better life. 

That notional ideal, is not the one thing I wished to be. Be-come. In fact, I didn't wish to become anyone. Anyone other than what I absofuckinglutely was. Not one trait more or less. No metaphor. No nothing. 

But look, now I live via others. Evaluate every moment of existence by how much I tended to become some tired-of-life-end-of-the-world-frustrated-tireless-moron. And I can't help myself. 

'What is truth? What is sanity? Did Jesus rise up from the grave? Do Hindus not accept that the world is a kind of dream; that Brahma dreamed, is dreaming the universe, that we only see dimly through that dream-web, which is Maya. Maya, may be defined as all that is illusory; as trickery, artifice and deceit. Apparitions, phantasms, mirages, sleight-of-hand, the seeming form of things: all these are parts of Maya. If I say that certain things took place which you, lost in Brahma's dream, find hard to believe, then which of us is right?'

-Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)

Chhaya.

Chhaya. You're not beautiful. You have one of those thousand faces, that one could easily miss. Very predictable. Very rejectable. You ain't fair. And your dusky doesn't sell either. It's a bad dusky. Almost tending to dark. Tanned. Like grilled in the sun. Your lips are too thin. Very unkissable. They're not even rosy, they're a darker shade of brown. Brown lips. Your nose isn't like that of a princess. Not as pointed. And look, you don't have a nose ring either, that could have added some quotient. You don't. The eyes, they don't have lashes long enough. Not dreamy enough, no. Big eyes, don't make up for all your other lacunae. Big eyes are not worth a dime. Your hair doesn't stand up for your face either. It's not straight, like ironed. It's not curly, like curly is supposed to be. It's a mad wavy. Nobody would fuck that. Take my word. The chin, even the very end of your face is a ridiculous bony protrusion. It makes you look older. Way older. Yours is a lost battle. Your cheeks are sunken. And despite your sunken cheeks, you have a double chin. Have you asked yourself why. Because, you're ugly. 

There is no thing called inner beauty. It is one of the most pseudointellectual illusions ever created, to satisfy man, to euphemize your ugliness. Don't listen to them, Chhaya. Listen to me. I am the truth. 

And beauty is an opiate older than life itself. It's a myth because nobody knows what it is, truly is. Beauty is a bias, not even the creator could overcome, Chhaya. So I have created thee. To always remind me that your exact antithesis is what appeases.

Man-Woman-&-MBA

It's a much denied fact, but we all look for support. And when all else fails, we look for an ideology we could stick to. So as to say, if at the end of the day, everything else is taken away from you, you could still say, you stood by what you believed in. Or pretended to believe in.

I am going fishing. For one such comforting ideology to stick to. You see I do not have many other sources of solace or engagement. So I would rather hunt down my beliefs, and try to knit them into what they call a belief system. And call it a day. And go off to sleep again, as my mom says.

It's a funny post, me writing about all this. You see I never had the time or more importantly the stretchable attention span to look for an ideology, I was running the rat race like all of you. I don't intend to call you a rat anyway, if you quit, I do bow before thee. Why I was engaged breathlessly doing what everyone else was doing was because the risks of being unique and hence ostracize-able weren't involved at all. So there was a comfort, a safety rather. It's my typical middle class, I-don't-want-to-be-left-homeless fear. It has nothing to do with anything. I have been brought up on fear. Not that I aspire for the filthy rich worthless millionaires, or sympathize any less for the decaying chunk of the population in slums.

Just that I have been so busy with me, that there has hardly been anytime to be actually concerned per se. But now, I have been lounging lazy for two months, and I need something desperately to comfort myself. So I am here to knit my belief system. So that I can call something my own.

I was never slightly inclined towards the left, but as a kid I have seen appalling poverty around. I mean really! So I began thinking that something should be done about all the poor people. I read a few books, I wouldn't name them and bore you to death, but the filth in their lives was so accurately described, I was drawn closer and closer to wanting to find a solution.

Then I saw the helplessness of it. Conversations with people, with myself, the absolute inability of the system to change, the lackadaisical attitude towards it all, frustrated me. And since I had so many other frustrations in my life, I quit on this one and became indifferent.

Later, I read some more books and gave my heart to individualism. And thanks to my stint with a master's degree, I supported the staunch capitalist, and became a vague rightist. You get these bi-directional sways of my heart, don't you?

There were too many questions, a quagmire of them actually. A mess inside my mind, justifications I sake, guilt I felt. The lingering silence became very disturbing, but that disturbance is anyway a respite from my perennial issue of heartache.

However, now I have stopped looking for the absolut. My solution, if I may call it one, is that I have begun seeing things on scale, that extends indefinitely in opposite directions. And everything can be explained in a relative context to something else. But that something else is never the absolute, can be explained again with respect to something else. And so we move on the scale, in either direction, and sometimes multi-dimensionally.

And if the luster of the title attracted you, but the post bored you to death, but still you read on till the end, then you may in fact ask for an apology!

Perestroika

Perestroika.

Reconstruction.

You must wonder why I don't write these days. Because I have been thinking. A lot. I cannot write when there is too much influx into my head. The problem of plenty. The plethora of ideas creates a chaos, which is disturbing as well as consoling at the same time, the latter because it reduces my willpower to categorize thought. But much of this is beyond you, I suppose.

I do not write because I have been reading. You already know how I use fiction to drug my senses. Use it to hasten forgetting the past, and creating a new present, reconstructing.

I don't write because I have been thinking about Dominique. Dominique Francon. Wondering if Rand's characters could be for real. I am forced to think that can there be after all, no reason for my existence besides me. Because all this time,I have engaged myself in a quest to find a reason for my existence which is other than me. But now I am compelled to wonder if the antithesis of that is possible. Can one survive and live, solely, with her own-self as the source of all energy. If she could, then I shall stand healed. Healed. My bibliotherapy would have worked. I would find my muse in me. Do you understand?

Aren't I that way anyway? If it is true that anything creative can be created by only one mind, without any interference from any external collective force, aren't I that way anyway? Haven't I been writing all that I ever wanted to write, without asking you what you wanted? I have prevailed. Only I have prevailed. There has been none but I. At least here. At least here.

So ain't I chasing the impossible that I already have become? At least here. Do you understand? But frankly, you don't need to.

Six-feet-under

Besides a couple of men, if there is anything that has swept me off my feet, it's change. I have seen the inevitability of it. I have succumbed with helplessness to its overpowering rigidity. Change is one thing we cannot tamper with. Move on, we have to. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes unacceptable, but mostly nostalgic.

It is considered a ritual to stand back and look at the time bygone everytime a change makes an appearance in the horizon, to collect memories and to keep them for life. But I speak from experience, those memories you think you are gathering for life do not last your expectations. Things fade. And they fade out fast. You don't even realize the swiftness and agility with which your system adapts to the new environment. I feel silly when I cannot recall what sandals I wore before I got my new floaters. You could blame it on my memory but that I do not keep things I have no use for, I must have felt a bit for those sandals while disposing them off. And now look, I don't have the slightest memory of what they looked like. That's how easily we choose change over constancy. The present over the past. And I am not getting more impersonal than I should be.

So when I see people celebrating in grand farewells and taking pictures, the nerve-ends in my mind give me a jitters. Most of this wouldn't come of any use anyway. We forget. If the thing hasn't influenced us beyond recovery, we forget. I take an active interest to ensure that the change that is coming upon doesn't change me internally, but just touches the outlines of my personality. Battle after battle, I try to remain the same, but when you look at me, you say, look, she has changed, and sometimes beyond recognition, because apparently I have. This is my weapon of personal defense.

I don't think you have reached this far in the post, but if you have, you would think I have become one of those bloggers who make no sense of the 2 sided thing called communication and just go on yap yapping and yap yapping. Okay, then so be it. I have a quite a few farewells to go to, and as I gape at them wide-eyed, I wouldn't open my mouth I am sure. Allow me to do the talking here.

I despise being swept off my feet, be it by men or by change. Because sooner or later, chances are that you land up terribly grounded, or six-feet-under. So personal defense, you see!

incognito

There is a certain beauty
about sanity
hard-earned sanity
I hope, you know


Thus
She was beautiful
staring into the mirror
An intent glare


Deep, very deep
like drilling into her soul
Unblinking
Calm, like dead


Though never as alive
One protruding chin, thoughtful tresses
thin brows, large deep set eyes
and that killing glare, oh


After a lifetime of being cursed as ugly
A moment of sanity told her
that she was indeed
Beautiful, insane no more.


But not the kind that
titillates the flesh
But the kind that
frees the soul from it, the flesh


Beautiful, sigh

Beauty

Here, I am just trying to capture what I see. And I like it when my words obey me. This is a struggle in search of beauty. The abundance of it scares me, but I am still searching. I don't know if I am a non-conformist or what. I ain't a conformist for sure. Ain't I something in between. Aren't we all something in between, afraid only that we're totally reaching either shore. Isn't there beauty on either shore anyway. I will tell you. Tonite I will write about beauty, the one thing that has scared my wits. I want to write something that defies your interpretation, reach that zenith of exactitude.

There is beauty on either shore. If you're a conformist, you live like one. You go breathless for what you are supposed to have, have it, live with it, sometimes look through the glass at the illusion on the other side, the greener grass. But you live on, without raising a voice, revelling in mundanity and the security of it. Your clichéd life. And one day you die, and be buried. I am not being sarcastic, trust me, but there is beauty in that.

If you're a non-conformist, all you do is ask questions. Question the time trusted realities of life, so much that you threaten to extinction their very existence. You break rules like they never were. You pursue the un-pursued, look at the one who is not like you like she were a retard. You live like you have nothing to lose. What is to lose anyway. But sometimes, you look into the houses of people who chose to settle down and call it all off, and take my word, you feel for the possibilities you killed on the way. And there is beauty in that too.

But you're neither. You're in between, afraid only that you're totally reaching either shore. I am neither. But I am pretty confident I am on my way from one to another, from the former to the latter.

Hope is unreasonable, illogical, stubborn..

Tonite I am a self proclaimed star. No, I am not drunk. Nor have I won anything due to my talent/attitude. Most of the time I am pretty sure I don't have either. But there's a reason behind my self proclaimed stardom. There has to be.

I have had a decent share of rejections in my life so far. That's the victory I am talking about. Living despite these failures. Learning to deal with them, learning to be indifferent to them, is what I have in my kitty today. And I swear these are hard earned.

Everytime I fail I have wanted to be alone. Hell, I never analyse what went wrong. I just vent it out, I scream like there are no walls. I despise company, even in good times dude, in bad times company is evil, fatal. I deal with life, alone. I hate help. Help is pity. Now with time I realise that the number of things that could hurt me that irreversibly has shrunk. The degree too has reduced.  That's the victory, hence the stardom.

I have grown up like a person inside a person, pretty much in isolation. Perfect isolation is my moksha, the light at the end of the tunnel. Insulating myself from everything outside me is the ultimate idea. As long as I am on that path.. sigh


I have won, yeah in this very life. But after being almost choked to death. After biting dust. After having seen my worst fears come true. After having fought & lost, and fought & lost. And I am so used to it by now that winning in the first go is not something I would choose, it's crazy I know. I like to put up a good fight, I like to tread on the edge of the sword. Springing back to life after tasting death. The stubbornness of this hope is resident in me, at least for now. This is the victory, hence the stardom. Sigh

Unfaithful

The degree of involvement between two people varies, on a case to case basis. You couldn't tell a more involved couple from a less involved one. Or could you? These things are sometimes very vague. Also, defining right from wrong is none of my business. But sometimes, what I behold is so outrageous that I wish I could make the right from the wrong.

I ain't angry. Adultery isn't punishable by death. Neither should it be. But is that why it is so rampant? What is it that makes it so difficult for people to love the one they love. The one. What is the impossibility that distance brings along with it? Why is cheating on your boy/girlfriend so easy? So much so that it hurts my eyes. Is it love only in the romance of being close and not in the being apart and missing each other and falling deeper into love with each other? Why do people fall apart when they're away? Why do they look for other sources of entertainment to keep their minds engaged when they're away from the one they so loved? Can that ever be justified? Why do people cheat on each other? How much more is being in it harder than falling in love? It shouldn't be like that, right? It all comes together. The pain, the joy. All of it. Is there no guilt? Why is love taken for granted? 

It's not fair. Despite being the uninvolved third party, my heart proverbially goes out. For the one who is so trusting and away and so much in love and is absolutely unaware of what people are up to. Commitment is not that tough, ask me. It isn't. Though it's none of my business. 

Hoopla!

What's with virginity anyway? Why is it that big a deal? Why is sex tabooed? Why is the the truth censored? Why do we not talk? No wonder we have perverts running on the streets. Perverts, right amongst us.

Why is the excuse of culture brought up everytime we sit down to discuss the real issues, everytime we try to adapt to the times, to become more real human beings? Why do we live inside the closet? Why do we banish the ones who speak their mind?

Culture is not what was, nor what its self proclaimed keepers claim it to be. Culture is what is becoming of us.

Why can't sex be just dismissed as just another need of the body and/or mind? What is the big deal?

Did the IIT R student community plead guilty and apologize, I do not stay updated enough, but apparently they did. But why? Why are such undeserving issues blown out of proportion by a grossly irresponsible media? They are consenting adults, intelligent enough obviously, they could make whatever they want out of their lives. Why should they be banished for doing so? Why are they being judged? Is it just because they did it out in the open? Huh!

Here, we have co-ed hostels. Who knows what happens behind closed doors. Rather, we all do! But no way is this being blown out of proportion. It's someone's personal life, and we the people, do not have a say in it. Absolutely not any.

So what's the difference between the two instances? The former happened out in the open and the latter behind closed doors. Is that the big deal? That we can't be more open-minded? Did our culture prohibit us from becoming so? Why are we such parochial a society? Why the hoopla over this trivial an issue? Gimme a Break!

Antithesis

I am not the girl next door, you have fallen for. Your perception of me, makes me feel that I have been lying to you, all this time. It fills me a little guilt, and more fear, what when you realize who I am. Will you stay?

I am the one who doesn't get the silliest of jokes, yet yearns to be beyond the last blue of horizon. I am the one who is older than her age, yet the kid around. The one is almost always sorrowful, yet bursts out laughing, once aloud, and then her laughter keeps returning after undefined intervals of time, many don't understand why.

Inside me, two contradicting theories meet, and fight, to relentlessly disprove each other, and highlight my insanity and deviation from normalcy with an augmented obviousness. You wouldn't get me!

I am your antithesis. We have only one in a zillion similarities. I am aware of this, and what strikes me most is that you don't have the slightest idea!

I am a lot more things, you don't know. And I would rather not show.

And everyday, there is a moment when you charm me, and I realize that there is a person in you I don't know. I would rather not know.

It must be true that opposites attract. It must be true that mystery keeps people hung on each other. But for how long is the more pertinent question!?