Well, this didn’t seem to work too well… either you guys are Really, REALLY shy, or I have one hell of an over-inflated opinion about myself… which do you think? Anyone, anyone?? Drat, I was sure that’d get some of you out, at least, oh well. Looks like I’m stuck here alone, but I like it alone, I guess; gotten used to it by now.

LAST WORDS...

I'm sorry I've been ignoring this place for awhile; not only is it Ramadan these days, but I've been dedicating myself solely to my Facebook wall, not that I miss my Blog... but I think trying to maintain the both of them would be stretching things a bit too far, and there are a couple of other things that I had in the pipe line that I need to get to... so, if anyone's interested, I mean if anyone's out there (why do I feel like I'm talking into the abyss right now, like that robot that's on Mars at the moment, who, at least has the rest of the world glued to it for the time being), you can join me here. I hope I'm giving you the right directions, and maybe if you can make it out there, we can "chew the fat" as they say...

THE SHOE SHINING BOY

I’d gone to get my coke from the shop around the corner—yes, I like making references to the Hollywood, hey days—when I decided to get a piece of Kaju Katli too that’s my favourite sweet in the whole wide world, well, India at least ((I love my mom’s Chocolate Chip Cookies as well)) and so I entered the store, went to the fridge and picked up a bottle, and then went over to the counter and asked him for a piece of the sweet, and he said sure… so I took out my 20 rupees and handed it to him and asked how much is it, thinking that the sweet would still be the 8 rupees it was before.

That’s of course until he had his place renovated, and spent a good amount of money on it, so now, with the inflation and all—everything was going up. So as I was taking out the money to pay him, he said, no, it’s okay if you don’t have it, I’ll take it tomorrow, but I said, naah, I have another 10—I’ll pay you now (in case I forget tomorrow) but he said the thing is I’d rather keep the little change I have left for the people I didn’t know when they’d come in, then spend it on you; after all, you’ll be coming here tomorrow as well, so I’ll take it from you then.

So I said sure, and I went out and sat on one of the stoops, and noticed this guy who I’d always see on the corner there, always with his little cardboard of a shop, and as I was sitting down, he was just getting ready to leave. I thought great; I’ve never really seen him getting up and leaving, so I thought this would be a great new experience for me… I’ve always assumed that it’s just ready for them for some reason, their places of work in the mornings, like say if you and I were going to the office… imagine if for every day for the rest of our lives, we’d have to go to our places of work, and set it all up from scratch!

That’s what these guys basically have to do, day in and day out, and today I was able to see what exactly that entailed… this guy, maybe around 18/19, spent the next half an hour closing shop, which amounted to a kind of a hutment of sorts, which had two bamboo sticks propping up what made up the roof of the place, which was a sheet of plastic I think, and a lot of strings which were tied around to the corners… and then there was the “shoe box” in which he kept all of the tricks of his trade… the shoe-polishes, the brushes, and an assortment of nails and shoe-laces to fix up whatever anyone would bring him.

And what was the last thing he packed up, fastened to his two bamboo sticks actually, but this really tiny straw-sweeper but a much, much, much more tinier version than that, and certainly nowhere near as in such optimal condition. And after he’d finished, he started crossing the road as quickly as he could, to go up stairs to the building across the street which had rooms for bachelors at the top, so I figured that’s where he’d store everything, until the next morning, when he’d repeat the whole process in reverse… and you know what, when he was crossing the street, I couldn’t help it, but this tear started rolling down my cheek.

I mean, here I am, drinking a fucking coke, and there are men, boys really, working so hard to make ends meet, any way they can. I hate people sometimes, they can’t see the fucking beauty right in front of their eyes, but it’s staring right at em… and as I’m thinking this, it’s the same guy who strolls past me, and our eyes sort of meet, and we both kind of smile at each other, and you know what’s the next thing I see… he’s just straddled one of those, although I’m not sure whether it was his, or just a loaner, since the thing would definitely, definitely be out of the reach of most guys, so he must have a very generous and well-to-do friend.

But it did teach me a lesson: it’s always good to have your heart in the right place, but for god’s sake don’t lay it out on the pavement for everyone to trample on, because that’s exactly what’s going to end up happening, even if it’s not intentional.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME…

It had started out with my dream scenario, something which in all probability wouldn’t come true, but I thought—what the heck, if you’re gonna dream, why not dream big… so, yeah, for a small-middle class family such as mine—it was a pretty big deal. We’d sold off our wonderful Villa, and were now going to move into an apartment, something which I had always wanted to do. But not my mom; she’d grown up in a flat, and basically knew of all the hassles that came along with it, but I of course saw things a little differently than her.

With my rose tinted glasses, all I could see was getting out of the hell-hole that I’d been trapped in for so long; don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I’m not grateful to my dad for having bought this for us (his three children, my two sisters and me, to grow up in) but to maintain it was a pain in the ass, and as the years would pass it only became more and more of a burden on my mom and I (well, my mom really, and then my dad).

And to give you an example, she’d do everything, my mom—mop the floors, wash the clothes, cook the food… and me, I’d get depressed and withdraw basically all the time, and seeing her do everything would only make me more depressed. And as if she didn’t have enough to worry about, now she had me to add to her already overburdened pile, which is when I wondered if enough was enough… both my sisters had now left us and gone, and if we were just able to find a nice flat in a good enough neighbourhood, I was ready to bail.

It took some time for my mom to come around to the idea, but come around she finally did, thank god… dad was basically fine as long as it had a Masjid nearby and a healthy muslim population… which it does, the mosque is literally next door to the building, believe it or not (so my dad plans to walk out the front-door for all of his five prayers amazingly, something which he’d not been able to do ever, not even in his youth) and his best friend stays like a five minute drive away, so you know where he’ll be going every Sunday, with me driving him of course.

And then there’s mom, she’s already decided on the layout of the area, and spoken to the carpenter who’s going to be working on the place—so we’re good to go really—and how and where everything needs to be arranged. I hope this place turns out just the way she wants it to: her no. 1 complaint in the old place was the size of our kitchen… it was tiny, so she’s really going all out this time, which I thought wasn’t far enough cos maybe it could still be bigger… but the architect and she agreed that it was enough, and tomorrow the work’s finally going to start, in all earnestness.

Me, what do I want from all of this, what I always wanted—some peace of mind, my p(ie)ce of mind, really. Which is what I wanted 3 years ago, when the market hadn’t crashed and we’d decided on selling the house… and now this is what I’ve been reduced to, no, it ain’t pretty, but it’s a helluva a lot better than what most people are lucky enough to get, and I ought to be thankful for that, instead of the ungrateful brat I am sometimes… which is also what I’ve noticed about me… trying, I mean really trying and not letting everything affect me so much anymore, or not as much as they used to in the past… so you’re not gonna get the SUV that you wanted, tough. And that bike, yeah, you’ll just have to make do with a scooter, dude—but you know what, maybe it just isn’t my time yet, and it’ll come one day hopefully, and then I can get all those other things… but until then, hey, you gotta learn to crawl before you can walk alright? Of course, I don’t want to make empty promises and suggest to you that any of this is a done deal… far from it, who knows what tomorrow holds, my dad might want to use the money somewhere else… so, like I said, it’s what dreams may come. :)

MORNING GLORY

You know it’s going to be a good day when you’ve woken up bright and early in the morning, or in my case, not slept at all… the early morning mist is a splendid thing, and oh so rejuvenating. I love to go for my morning walks whenever I’m in the mood to, and today happened to be one of those days—the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and I was smiling… remember that scene from American Beauty where the guy says he was happy or something right before he gets shot in the head, and there’s that smile on his face, a smile of contentment—that’s how I was feeling, and so I threw on my jogging slacks and a Tshirt, and drove up to the nature reserve right next door to go and walk.

Parked the car and entered the gate, and what’s the first thing I see, but this really suave elderly gentleman walking his dog… and not just any dog, no, this was your true-blue Siberian Husky… beautiful sight really, to see the both of them out there, the guy with his cut of Silver Hair and his dog with his own silvery-blackish mane. Next were the peacocks… this park has quite a few of those (India’s National Bird I think) and you can always hear them ((I don’t know what you call it, cawing?, maybe)) whenever you’re walking past the exterior walls: and for a guy who rarely gets to hear stuff like this, I have to stop for awhile and just listen… it’s amazing.

And then of course there had to be the women… so beautiful and pretty to look at, but I couldn’t really look just glance when they were far away—but it was enough to know that they were beautiful… I mean, you have to be to wake up so early in the morning (what, I think it was 6, 6:30 at the time) and these femme fatales were already out working, doing their best to stay in shape. I thought I’d do something fun today, and actually count the no. Of wonderful Women I’d be passing, and you know what, I had to give up after the first 14; there were just too many of them, but I enjoyed my walk though, and the birds (((peacocks that is—get your mind out of the gutter, will you???))).

I then reached the end and turned around and walked the way back… there usually are a helluva lot of cool cars to keep you company when you’re there, and the Jaguar happened to be parked there a couple of days ago, and as luck would have it—I happened to have my camera at the time, and there was no way that I was going to let an opportunity like this pass me by… how often do you get to see a JAG, in the flesh that too—wish that’s me sitting behind the steering wheel some day. No, wait, I’d much rather be planted in one of these, oh yeah!

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was what happened after I came home, and my mom and I were sitting around chewing the fat… I don’t know how permanent it is, or premature to be talking about this, but it was only a couple of months ago that I’d said I’d figured out that what I had to be doing with myself was to NOT be falling in love with women all of the time… well, that plan sure got shot to hell pretty fast, didn’t it. But then after weeks and weeks and weeks of deliberating, and turning, tweaking and cajoling, I have now come to the realization that it is an impossibility for me to not fall in love with the object of my affections.

But do you want to hear the good news—I have finally come full circle. Before, I’d be so glued to this other human being, that there would be nothing that would prevent me from being encapsulated by her… but not so now. Now, I’ve finally found what it was that I was searching for, that thing that would hold me and everything else together again… and I thought it would be her, along with my writing of course, but she’d be playing a major role in it. And I think that’s where I was so wrong… you see, I have this good friend who I always used to ask how she could survive for all these years, alone, without anyone—and she’d always tell me that she was alone, maybe, but she never felt lonely… she had loads of other things to do, one of which was her job, and I’d always wonder how much of truth there was to that: to be substituting love for work, I mean, what kind of a life is that??

Well, be careful what you’ve wished for, because I just found out after I realized how it was that I was going to work on my book, how I’d start it, finish it, and what all would come in the middle. And that’s what would always worry me from the start, to the extent that I’d try and dump it on someone else and then expect them to be my savior… when all I needed was a little motivation to get myself started, a little bit of a push, and now that I’m on my way—I hope I don’t stop.

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

Guy: I don’t have wheels… on my car…
Girl: Okay!!! (laughing)
Guy: That’s one thing you should know about me.
Guy: You’ve got five minutes?
Girl: Yeah…

And there begins our odyssey into the beautiful and wonderful world of “NICOLAS WINDING REFN”’s newest film, DRIVE—starring Ryan Gosling… no matter how hard I try, I still can’t get my brains to remember the directors name… shite! Anyway, there’s no way you can end up forgetting the name Drive, so try and stick to that and google it to find the others—sometimes, along with Winding’s name I even end up forgetting Ryan’s and Mulligan’s… maybe I should go in for a brain scan or something?

Just from the first scene—that first time when they meet, as he’s walking towards the elevator and she’s walking out of it, you know—or rather, I knew that there was something big that was going to happen between these two (I didn’t know who Mulligan was at that time), and I just love it when I’m right… cos in their next scene together, Carey is walking through the isle of the same supermarket that Ryan’s in, and he notices that there’s a small boy with her, so he turns around and starts walking in the other direction… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this, to avoid the woman of my dreams by doing something so asinine…

But, of course you’re going to have to watch the whole movie to know what exactly happens… yes, yes, they do end up falling in love, but what is it that happens to bring it to a screeching halt… There are two scenes here which really standout for me: no. 1, where Ryan is carrying Benecio through the corridors of the apartment building where they live (Carey and Ryan stay in the same housing complex) and there’s something about a woman trusting a man enough so as to give him her child to carry, and Nicolas did a fantastic job to capture that.

Scene two is to come later on in the film, it’s the one in which Ryan’s taking Carey out for dinner, I think (they’ve graduated to official Date status now) and she reaches out and plants the palm of her hand over his, when it’s resting on the stick-shift, and that’s it… no touching bodies, no squeezing body parts or anything else… that’s all you need to know that there has been something significant that’s just occurred between these two people. And to drive home the point, what does Winding do, but he lets Ryan close his fist with Carey’s hand resting on top of it, and it’s magical.

Of course, I want to try and keep this thing to a minimum, and just talk about those scenes which made the most impact on me, so I’ll try and not bore anyone who’s actually bothering to read this stuff with too much detail… but the next scene/s are the ones with the cars of course, and Ryan drives three of them which I’d put in my garage, any day… the Chevy Impala, which Bryan Cranston says is the most popular car in the state of California ((I think that’s what he says, and not the city of LA—I’m sorry, I’m very anal about this kind of stuff)); and then we have the beautiful Chevrolet Chevelle that he uses to take Carey and Benecio home, and then out to the flood gates in LA, and finally the date where he gets to touch her… and of course the Ford Mustang, I think it was, which he uses for the final car-chase scene, and boy-oh-boy—does he know how to handle himself when he’s driving those machines.

But he knows how to handle himself in a lot of other ways too, and you soon find that out, not the least of which was the way how he dispenses with those two thugs who’d been sent to get rid of him and Christina Hendrick’s… and then there’s that guy who shows up at his apartment building, while he’s in the lift with Carey, and he knows that this might be the last chance he gets to kiss her, and so, he gently holds her by placing his hand on her back, and leans in to kiss her as softly as he can, and that scene is the highlight of the film, with the light suddenly dimming and only the focus remaining on Ryan and Mulligan, and them kissing, and then…

Ryan turns around and becomes this monster, the monster that he feels he’s been sent here to protect Carey and Benicio from, because all of this was for them, the robbing of the pawn shop so that Standard could get the money to pay back the people who he owed money to for protection when he was in prison, and for Carey’s sake (and Benicio’s) when he finds out that the two goons he’s just seen leaving his building have threatened Standard’s wife and child by warning him that they’re going to come after them next, so he then decides to get involved.

The last thing that I want to talk about is, when Ryan, or rather The Driver enters the Topless bar and goes in to find the guy who had hired him and tried to get him killed, is sitting right there with his face deep in a woman’s breasts—he takes out the hammer that he’s brought along with him and slams it down on his hand as hard as he can… with him screaming in pain of course, and Ryan just throwing him out of the chair and onto the floor now. A few of the girls run away after seeing what’s happened, but a few of them are seated right there, and they’re looking at what’s going on, and there’s Ryan, sitting on the guys chest now, and he just looks at him and says—do you remember this? (((it’s the bullet that two of his henchmen had given to Benecio as a sign of retribution if Stanley wasn’t able to pay back the money he owed…) And he takes that bullet and shoves it down his throat as deep as he can, and just as he pulls back the hammer to strike, he stops and takes the phone that the guy had asked one of the girls to use to call Ron Perlman…

There’s more, much-much more, so please be sure to watch it, if not for my pedantic review, then surely for Ryan and Carey’s sake… and Nicolas’ of course.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

The car was starting to make that noise again, only problem was, it was worse, much more worse than it had been the week before… this time, besides the slight sound that was emanating from the engine (or at least what I thought was coming out of the engine) now seemed to have shifted to the silencer/the tail pipe, and it felt like the thing had broken, or was going to by the sounds of it… and from a previous horrible experience which was caused due to my negligence of the cars absolute requirements, like the need for there to be “coolant” in the engine at all times, instead of thinking that it wouldn’t mind that much if you didn’t fill it; after all, it wasn’t like it was the fuel or anything, just some green coloured liquid.

(((Yeah, well, I only found out the importance of that little green coloured liquid when the car had died on me and had to be towed to the service station, and I had to end up paying a bill of 20,000 rupees for rebuilding the entire cylinder block that I had just destroyed as a result of doing what I had done)… so the result of all of this was my mechanic telling me, “the next time you notice something funny with your car, no matter how inconsequential it might seem to you, stop—just take the car over to the side of the road and stop, or better yet, bring it into your mechanic and get it checked out—not tomorrow, or the day after, but right then and there.”

Which is why I was begging my dad to let me take it in yesterday, because I’d already delayed it for the past week, and I was afraid this was going to be something serious when the car started making those funny noises whenever we had to go somewhere, which was almost daily last week, finalizing the deal with a guy on the new place that we plan to move into ((and I knew the sooner we got it into a sound body shop, and had someone who was qualified to give it a once over, the better it would be)) but dad being dad, of course didn’t agree with me, and told me to just keep driving on—it’s vital that we go today of all days and get this done (((and it was))).

But why was it at the price of the car again… that machine has given me so much, been with me for 12 years now, all throughout my teens and beyond—and this is how I repay it, by tearing out her heart, and now, what I’d later find out—was that I’d just blown out its Gasket, which would put it out of commission for another day or two… what is wrong with me and Cars. Why am I hell bent on massacring them like this… ??? Well, that’s where we ended up going today, just before we had to go to the place where we had to finalize the deal… I’d told my dad that we’d get the car checked first before we went anywhere, but he said we couldn’t afford the time, but then we were free to choose the time of arrival, so we picked 12 o’clock, and went to get the car looked at first.

Well, the going was pretty bad as usual, the same sound reverberating in the car again, but at least we had a very short amount of distance to cover… and besides the ominous vibrations I had to deal with, the car was not moving at-all like it used to, no power what-so-ever in its pickup, which was a shame, because that car could RUN… we’d just got it overhauled a year or two ago, and it was now in mint condition, just like the day we bought it.

So my dad and I reach the place and take the car in, and the guy who we were looking for was right there, and I tell him what’s up with the car—that it’s making this, brrrrrrrr sound, and he laughs and says let’s take a look—so he starts up the car, or at least tries to, but he can’t even get it to. So he switches it off, and says, okay, let’s just take a look and see what the problem is… and he pops the hood and peers over the engine and can’t really see anything, so he says, we’ll wait for the staff to come in and he’ll ask them to have a look (doesn’t want to dirty his hands early in the morning).

So when his boys show up for work and open the bonnet again, they find that the spark plugs have become all wet, and so they go and show it to him, and he says, yeah, well, these need to be replaced—check the coolant too, if the oil’s mixed in with that—and it had, so he looked at me and said, well, looks like you’re going to have to leave it here till tomorrow, and then he walked over to my father and he told him that it’s a good thing that you brought it in when you did, or it would’ve died on you and we would’ve had to push it all the way here.

So after leaving the car there, we walked over to the auto stand, where we boarded a Bombay-to-Goa auto not full of people that are dressed as the Monkey God Hanuman, like these guys here, but one which has a fixed distance to cover (((a few kilometers/miles))) going back and forth, and they charge about a fixed amount for this, which is like a third of what you’d have to pay a regular auto.

But I like these guys; you always get to see all the different types of people, of different shapes, sizes and colour, getting into this small space and being driven to where-ever they want to go on the route… this service is actually right outside my house (among other places), right in front of the Bakery that I like to go and sit in, and see everything that’s happening around me, and this by far is the most enjoyable… unless of course a fight brakes out, which it rarely does, but if it does—then it’s game on, dude—for the two guys getting into it at least, lol. (((fight club anyone: caution, not for the faint of heart—hey, he almost ends up losing his face, okay)))

So, anyway, we’re the first two to get into the first one we see, and after waiting there for a few moments ((in which the guy was actually decent enough to tell the girls standing in the middle of the intersection, thumbing a lift at whichever bike was passing them, to go and stand away from all the traffic (they must’ve been 7/8 year olds, no more), but then girls here (((people in general I guess))) have seen more life than I or you have in our entire lives… I’m just glad to have escaped the EMERALD CITY and discovered what Life’s really like sometimes, if not most of the times.

So when he wasn’t getting any more people to board his auto, the guy was about to start when a very nice girl started to walk towards us… at first, she was going to get in from my father’s side ((which I thought was so sweet of her to be doing)) and sit next to him, but there’s a railing like thing that some auto’s have (for safety) that don’t allow you to get in, so she came around to my side and got in… I moved in as much as I could, without making it look too obvious that this was something new for me (to actually be sitting next to a woman, and having her touch me; last time I remember that happening was when I was in my Ninth class, when I first came here, and all of the girls ended up tying this piece of string to my hand that was called a rakhi that you tie on a specific day called raksha bandhan—when you become the protector of the girl who’s tying it to you—ummm, just one question that I had when all of this was going on… but who’s going to be protecting me if I’m protecting all of you :)

So anyway, the girl got in, sat next to me, and probably didn’t think that I was too much of a weirdo cos she didn’t flinch or anything, surprisingly… and made herself as comfortable as she could, to the extent that she didn’t even seem to mind when our bodies touched—my arm against hers—skin to skin, and you know something, I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m making it out to be vulgar in anyway, but I really liked that, I really liked the fact that I was making contact with another human being, especially one of the opposite sex… I have no idea how she looked of course, since she was wearing what most girls over here usually wear, most of them do, if not all, or they wear the burqa if they’re muslim, but women—Hindu, Muslim or Christian—they’re all wearing this veil kind of a thing on their heads these days, which covers their faces, and their torsos, and I would always wonder why, and someone was finally able to answer it for me when she said… “they do it because of the pollution Daanish” and all this time I was thinking it had some kind of a religious connotation to it… lol.

Anyway, a couple of meters ahead and the guy stopped and asked me something, but I’m on the phone with mom so I tell her to hold on and ask him what, and he says, “Come in front, Laides ko bethna hain (the lady has to sit)” and there’s another pretty woman walking towards us, with her hijab like veil on, and you know what my favourite part is… when the guys living in the 19th century would remove their formal Jackets, and put it over a puddle of water, so that the lady could go across it with ease… and this would always, always kinda remind me of that. So chivalrous, no? And even though she was wearing a head scarf as well—I knew I was riding with two beautiful women in the back of that auto—why, because they didn’t seem to mind riding with me, and that made me feel nice… :)

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

I’d come across her by pure chance, I don’t even recall what I was skimming through at the time, but it was something about Justin Bieber, of all the abominations you can think of—don’t ask me why—when you’re manic, and you’re in the zone, there’s a shit load of stuff running through your head that you’ve got to get through, and I think this idiot was one of them… I wanted to know what the hell was it about this guy that people really liked (((and by people I mean girls))) cos they were just happy to drool themselves all over this numskull.

What was wrong with them, was it the hair, yuck… please, sometimes (and I can clearly recall this once when one of my teachers was yelling at one of the boy’s in my class, and warning him that if he didn’t get his haircut today, she’d be doing it for him tomorrow—right there in front of the entire class, and I had no idea at the time what the big deal was, but now) I just want to take a pair of scissors and start snipping away at this guy (sic), I mean, seriously.

And it was during that time that something caught my eye… I don’t know why, I think it was the way she looked; she had these teeth that were kind of different, kind of big and maybe a bit uneven, but did she care—hell no, cos she was up there posting her youtube videos making fun of the Bibette, and not really giving a damn about what others had to say when they would come across her vids… and boy did they come, herds of ‘em—all crying foul by actually making fun of her teeth, the sycophants.

But that made me like her even more, especially when I saw her video and realized how talented she was, and considering the fact that [I] wet my pants at even the thought of being criticized… I mean, it was just her in front of the camera with a few friends, but the words that were coming out of her mouth were priceless, and then I found out that one of the “friends” in her video was actually her sister, twin that too, but fraternal and not identical. So it must be something in their genes, cos she’s just as talented as her sister, only difference is hers lies in literature (she likes reading Bukowski, among other things), and her sister’s inclined towards making film—I think she’s in film school right now.

Oh, and she’s from… no, not India, but… Toronto, where else. :/ And I have absolutely zero chance of ever meeting her, but I thought, what the hell—you have a computer, and she’s on youtube, so why not shoot her a mail and tell her how much you enjoyed her video… yeah, well, that mail turned out to be a three page essay that I ended up sending her, and a couple of days later, when she hadn’t replied—I thought I was being such a jerk, and totally forgot about the whole thing, regretting the fact that I’d actually mailed her (a total stranger) for god’s sake…

But then, only a few days later, when I’d come back from my trip to Mumbai, I thought I’d check up on my mail, and then I go to my youtube page to play a few tunes, and ohmygod—someone’s replied—and it’s her! It’s just a couple of sentences—her explaining to me that she’s sorry for the late reply, but she hardly ever uses the site to communicate with people, and that she was curious about what I had to say and where I was from, and that was all I needed to hear, by god, cos that ended up igniting such a fire under my ass that I was off to the races again, and I think that this (mis)adventure lasted me a couple of months at least… she replied again, once, but that was it…

And me, sending her reams and reams of my mails, with maybe a couple of lines of hers, was definitely sending her the wrong vibes… alarm bells going off really. (((No, this guy is definite trouble, stay away from him))) Haha, I’m surprised she didn’t end up blocking me or something, so I can really appreciate her for that, but it was only a couple of weeks later that I had a similar altercation with a good friend of mine… it was funny, cos just a few weeks ago when I’d told her about Madelyn (she was the only one I’d told it to, until now) she told me that the best advice she could offer was that, in her opinion, long distance relationships rarely last, especially if it’s between countries, and you had two whole continents to cover over here, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

I told you she was a nice friend! At the time I actually thought that Mad was going to reply, sooner or later, so took what my friend had to say with buckets of salt… of course, how was I supposed to know that she was going to be SO right, and me, totally wrong. (If I do end up going to Canada some day, you know, when I’m rich and famous—Toronto is going to be at the top of my list, and I’ll definitely have to meet her and tell her I was the idiot bothering her from India, and then she’ll probably call the cops on me. :)) But what was even more surprising was to know that this is exactly how my friend and I would be parting ways… well, my friend really, and me pushing her to it with my incessant manic depression.

I miss her… as a friend of course. She’s almost engaged to be married now; she’s a couple of years elder to me (not that that matters); and I love just about everything about her… which is a lot, really, and I have no problem revealing that, but I might end up disclosing her identity if I did. (((Metachat, do you think I should maybe try and make contact with her again, and if so—how?))) My birthday’s coming up in a few days, and I’d really like to hear her voice again—which, surprisingly, I never have—but I don’t know why I feel as if I have, since all we’ve done is write back and forth… but the convos, oh god, the conversations… good, bad and Ugly—they were unforgettable, and I miss that. (((I miss her.))) She was like my elder sister; I wish she was my elder sister.

And I just thought I’d post one of Justin’s songs here to make my case (and check out whether he is as bad as I thought he was, and even though this is a fast-forwarding of one of his numbers) it’s almost a replica of the hilarity that’s to ensue if you were to watch him singing at regular speed… and something for my friend; she liked the songs that I’d listened to in my youth, and would remember watching them as well, so we had that in common at least… this one’s for her. (((And these as well)))

FOR ONCE I WAS BLIND, NOW I CAN SEE… “the Pharisees”.

Something new: I used to listen to it and love it, especially because of the fact that my name is Daanish (and my mom calls me danny ((boy)) for short sometimes) and they use it in the lyrics, and it’s like its being sung just for me, and I love that. This as well…

I’m very passionate about movies, of course, you know that right—and no, not any of that shitty tripe that they try to pass of as cinema nowadays, but the spectacular stuff that makes you glad to be alive… and I’m not talking about only the masterpiece kind of theater either, but just your regular out-of-this-world stuff as well, like the movie that had this line which was the whole soul of the film I felt: “Why do we fall Bruce… so we can learn to pick ourselves up again.” Ahhh, the brilliance—who knew Christopher Nolan could be so poetic… at least I think Nolan was the author of that script.

Right, so what was it this time, sigh (((are you as tired of this as I am by now, and you’ve just heard/read a measly post or two of mine every couple of times it happens, and me—yeah, I had the pleasure of diving into this feces relentlessly for ages, face-first that too)))… I think it was the post that I had made about me being taken advantage of by that Saudi guy that did it this time. I thought everyone was feeling sorry for me now, at first, and then laughing at me for admitting to something like this. And then feeling sorry for me for admitting to something as laughable as this. That really started to put a rain on my parade… and as if that wasn’t enough, we were hitting a few bumps in the road to getting our new place.

And then, to make matters even more worse, [I] started to feel sorry for myself, so ended up replying to everyone the next day from Metachat who had bothered giving me their words on my posts about something or the other that I’d posted after the whole Saudi debacle… and I felt like a shit for having done what I’d done by sending out those mails. I hate the world sometimes; if you love something that someone’s done for you, then you’re going to have to think a hundred times before you actually come right out and say it, if you don’t know that person… and even then, you won’t be able to, not the way you would’ve liked to. (Friends of Metachat, hi, I really appreciated what you had to tell me, so thanks a lot for being so gracious, it meant a lot to me). Instead of acting like a total weirdo and creeping everybody out, damn, I’m sorry—I don’t mean to be so insane sometimes, at least not intentionally, and whenever I’m doing it—I never stop to realize that that is exactly what I’m doing.

So that was strike one and two right there, and then, she came into the picture. God, where are you when I need you, why can’t you ever be there for me??? And here I am doing all of this for you… sure, I guess I’m doing it for me too, and then my mom and dad of course, but if the idea of walking into you someday wasn’t at the top of my head every waking moment of my life, I don’t think I could’ve had the motivation to do what I do. I need you, I love you, I want you… and it’s not like I haven’t been working on getting better myself. Because, I’m back down to a turn-around rate of 5 to 6 days now; that’s how many days I was down for this time, give or take another day or two, and was up for the rest of the month (2 in fact this time) so I’m definitely making progress.

Also, there was this car parked outside my gate today, right in front of it when I’d come back from the mall, and I couldn’t really turn into my driveway because of it, so I had to put it in reverse and position it in such a way that it was now facing the gate and I could drive in, and as I’m about to take the car in, I notice that there’s someone sitting in the car, and he’s getting out of the driver’s seat, and he’s acting like he hasn’t done anything wrong… and usually that would’ve started to make my blood boil, because when I first came here, I was such an innocent fool that I’d do EVERYTHING according to the rules, and still be taken advantage of left, right and center—and so after suffering years of this torture, I started to overcompensate with the idiots of the road at least, not counting the ass who hit me with the car—but you know something, this time I decided to take a different approach and stay cool, and just told the guy: Hello, do you know that your car’s blocking my gate, to which he said “oh no, I just came, and madam will be out in a few minutes” to which I said, okay, that’s fine, you can park the car here if you want, but just move it a couple of inches forward so that I can at least get my car inside, and since I’ve already turned the car around, you don’t need to move your car now, but remember it for next time. And he said sure, and it was great; I felt great.

And you know what it reminded me of—that scene from Blue Valentine—have you guys seen that yet… please, please do, if you haven’t. I love Ryan Gosling. I think he’s the best actor of my age that’s out there right now (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget Drive anytime soon, and will probably have to dedicate an entire post to it sooner or later). There’s a scene in Blue V., like every other scene in the movie, which was so memorable to me (for obvious reasons) because it reminded me of not only my own manic sides, that Ryan goes through in the film back and forth (sometimes he’s the romantic lead trying to court Michelle) and then he’s a monster who just doesn’t give a damn in the second half of the film, when he and Michelle decide to get married for the sake of the unborn baby Williams’ is carrying… ((quick question, is the baby Ryan’s, because I saw both of them fooling around, but then she did end up having sex with that other guy before him, so I thought Ryan was being a real gentleman on that front)).

No doubt he was behaving like a real asshole on all the others though, I’ll give you that, but to see how much of love there is between him and the girl (that’s just about the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen on screen till date… not counting Maddie, my own niece Zara, and I’m sure ThePinkSuperhero is going to surprise us all pretty soon…) I can’t help but feel that they might, just might be able to make it—I hope. (((I have so much more to write, and I don’t know if and when I’ll be putting it up here ((I’d told a friend of mine that I wouldn’t be posting on fb any more just yesterday, and then after sending her the message I saw Brigitte’s post and it had you know who on it, so how could I resist… and then there was another post of another friend of mine, and she has the most beautiful baby daughter too, and she was looking fantastic as well, so I had to reply to her too, and then there was Victoria of course—the apple of my eye, heart, the only woman who kisses me—lol.)) So, until next time…)))

The Burqa

Why do women wear it… let me be more explicit here, why do “muslim women” wear it… Let me try and be even more specific—why do [Some] muslim women wear it… ? Okay, first things first… how many of you know what a burqa is: of course you do, right, I mean, who wouldn’t… after what the “clash of civilizations” crazed media’s done with it—with no dearth of help from the Bushites and the rest of his clique… and let’s not forget Osama and his henchmen… how could you have missed it???

But in case you have, or maybe you were too smart to not get jettisoned into the maddening frenzy that you were being tossed into… this is what most of the world thought of us back then (as in the men who unleash such torment on the women of their race/religion). It’s not a pretty picture, is it? But is that what Islam says—to incarcerate a woman in her clothes… ? Or is it something that helps a woman overcome the obstacles that she might be faced with, and not overburden herself with even more.

Of course, there are many women who wear it (another form of the veil that is called the Niqab) because that is what they feel secure in (it’s like a burqa, only your eyes are visible) and they do it of their own free will, and not because it’s something that some “man” has told them to… I would like to provide links here, but wouldn’t want to run the risk of ramming my ideas down anybody’s throat, so please—search and find. And this is what some women wear in the Middle East by the way, where they do reveal their faces.

I have a whole slew of these youtube links, and what I’ve come to realize is that the poor helpless souls that I assumed these people to be ((like the ones in Afghanistan)) are anything but… these are strong, independent women who live in countries like Britain, and France, and Germany… and yes, even the good old US of A.

Except over there in the US, what they wear is a slight variation of the dress and is called a Hijab (head covering) which covers their hair basically, but the one thing that is common to all of these forms of clothing, is that they are used to give women the upper-hand, so to say… but do they, do they really… yes and no, I think; it depends on the type of society she’s lucky enough to live in, where she’s free to express her own feelings—about whether she’s comfortable wearing one, and if it is something that enriches her life in anyway? Because I’ve heard from women born over there, women who’re not only muslims by birth, but choose to be because they are satisfied with what it offers them—an escape from the rigmarole of unbridled consumerism that the world is obsessed with nowadays, where women are used for nothing more than to sell the latest product.

But it’s not all like this, it’s not all doom and gloom, because I’ve been able to see the other side as well… my sisters for example, my aunts, my cousins, even my own mom—none of them wear it, but does that make them any less than those who do… no. And what about those women who are of a different faith, who may dress more casually than you do—what about them… here's what I know, I showed up here, at Mecha a couple of years ago, and met some of the most welcoming and giving women I'd ever come into contact with, and not once did they misjudge me, or mistreat me, or made me feel anything less than… now if we can just extend that to more people around the world—maybe we can start creating the change we want.

(((Maha’s new post, enjoy!)))

Hyderabad Confidential…

Was everyone like this in the beginning??? Just caught the last hour of LA Confidential, and was really pining the fact that I had missed out on the first half of it… 1997, hmmm, been a long time since I’ve seen it again. I think it was my first encounter with Russell Crowe; I don’t think I’d even seen him in that Sharon Stone western yet, that’d come out before, although I’d heard of Basic (Stone) Instinct of course.

But it’s worrisome the kind of corruption that your cops had back then. Do you guys still though, probably not, at least not the way it’s been depicted in this film… because that IS exactly the way it probably is over here… from what you get to read about in the papers, or hear about from people, people who’ve lived here their whole lives and know the place much better than you do.

Extortion, Abuse, Beatings, Extrajudicial killings—it’s all here… sometimes, it’s like I’m living in the wild-wild west all of a sudden. And they’ve coined up such a nice nick-name for it—Extra Judicial Killings—now become “encounter killings”—whenever the police are supposedly attacked by [armed assailants, like these] they are then FORCED to fire back at them—hey, he was asking for it, after all.

I of course have no personal knowledge of how bad it is, since the only time when I had an altercation with the cops was when I’d actually been taken to the police station when a guy who’d jumped the signal had run into me and crashed my bike while trying to catch the bus in front. So I grabbed a hold of the guy, and told him that he’d now have to explain to my Father that the money he’d just spent buying me the damn thing, was doing on the ground, lying on the asphalt all busted up.

The mistake that I made over here was that I’d caught the guy using a trick that one of my cousins had shown me… to hold a person by the back of his pants—then he can’t go anywhere, cos if you use the shirt, he might be tempted to get that off and run away… now, this happened to be the same technique that the police used, and there was a guy (a hawaldar you call him here: a non commissioned officer) watching me do this, and he just went over to the guy and whispered into his ear: just agree to whatever I’m saying ((my cousin translated that to me from the telegu, the local dialect here, that he was speaking in))

Well, my dad and my cousin had already arrived there by that time, and just wanted to take me home; they could care less about the bike, but the hawaldar, duty bound cop that he was, insisted that we go to the police station first which was just a stones throw away… now, I don’t know how many of you have been Unlucky enough to see the inside of an Indian Jail, or any jail for that matter, but it was my first time actually stepping into one…

The place was dark and dank, my god, and the cell area was pitch black… I was only 16/17 at the time, and this was my first time being in prison, and they had the guy who’d run into me and made me crash my bike file a report against me—to which the inspector who was there said I’d have to be kept for the night in lock-up for now—to which my father just exploded, and went over to the inspector’s desk and slammed his fist onto his register as hard as he could, and demanded that he let me out. So the guy just ended up by taking my name down and releasing me.

My cousin, on the way back home later told me that it must’ve been the first time that the cop ever saw someone slam his desk like that, or if he had seen it then the guy doing it must’ve had some serious political clout, which my father didn’t, so we were just lucky to get out of there in one piece.

SHE IS WOMAN

I’ve been searching for this person for years now… ever since I was a kid, really—I still remember my first crush (do you?) and all at five years of age… what’s up with that??? I’d tell you who she was, but I’m saving all that stuff up for my book, which may or may not happen by the looks of it; I always say I’m going to do it now, now I’m really going to do it, and something or the other ends up coming in the way. And we’re back to square one… the only good thing is, it’s always there with me when I manage to come back, and never goes away—so I know what it is that I want to write; I’ve just got to hunker down and write it, that’s all.

Yeah, so about this girl… I don’t know who she is, or what she looks like—or which faith she belongs to, but all I know is that she’s going to have been made just for me, and I’m going to love her to death… well, after all these years (I said since I was five, remember) I hardly think you can blame me… yeah, I also said it doesn’t matter what faith she belongs to—I’m thinking if she’s within the Christo-Islamic-Judeo belt then we might have a good chance of working it out… I just hope I find her soon though, cos I’m really tired of having waited for so long… just waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and…

My only fear is that I still won’t be able to find her, for god’s sake… it’s not fair, I tell you… I mean, at first I’d try and justify my being alone as a test of some kind, but then I’d see almost anyone and everyone having someone; even idiots having idiots, by god, and that would hurt, and make me kind of confused. But I’d still soldier on, in the belief that all good things come to those who wait… and boy have I waited. So you see, after you’ve waited for so long, for something without having any kind of expectations for it (okay, I have to admit, there’s only one: she’s got to be someone I’m compatible with—intellectually, and psychologically, that’s it… I know, that’s a pretty big “it”) you’re just thankful for whatever you’ve gotten, but yeah, if she can be someone who inspires you—that would be heaven right there.

And as if that wasn’t enough, having to deal with the passage of time, I now have to deal with my wonderful Bipolarity issues… “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”! But you know something, I’m actually making some progress. I think it’s been one and a half months now since I went under, or over… and that’s huge for a guy who could hardly hold it together either way for 2 weeks at a stretch, for maybe 6 months now… and before that, it was there but not in such strong doses, so if I can manage to not go into lala land again, I think I’ll be alright.

It’s so funny, but for all this time I thought I was like [this] guy, and that everything in this world was made just for me; I just had to learn to convince people to give it to me, and if they didn’t want to, fine—who cares, heck, it’s not like I wanted it anyway—or them… but as a good friend would point out later, it’s not the world that has to change, but you—if you want to survive that is, and if you want to thrive, how in the hell are you going to manage that? Well, she was bang on target, as usual, and I couldn’t’ve been more wrong: of course, it took me a couple of months to realize that. (this song defined me to a T back then)

Actually, there’s another person who I wanted to thank, and I would’ve mailed this to her but she’s excommunicated me from her Facebook page, so I’ve not been able to speak with her for a couple of months now… I don’t think she ever understood how Abnormal bipolars can be. Of course, I thought SHE was being the “difficult” one (((my dear little sisters have so much knowledge of this))) by asking me to change, wtf, when all I wanted was for her to let me be… well, it looks like I did have to change, but the thing I’m most sorry about is for it to have been at her expense; she was a good friend, one of the best I’ve had so far.

McDonald's

…I was having a hard couple of days for the last few weeks—no, no, it’s not what you think—I wasn’t hopelessly depressed, or helplessly in love, or any of that shit… my mom and dad and I have been on the lookout for a good place to settle down in after we vacate our current place of residence, so it’s usually my mom and I on the weekdays, taking the car out, and hunting down all the people who she’s marked off in the paper to go and see for the day… and on Sunday’s it’s my trip with dad, where I have to take him to his best friend’s place, where he, his brother, my father and I go to some places which he’s marked out for the week…

So between the both of them, who’re pretty bushed by the end of the day, it’s just me… and it wouldn’t be that bad, but my god do we have a blazing hot summer this year in Hyderabad… just read it in the paper the other day how the temperature was soaring close to the 50’s in the city (that’s degree centigrade by the way, my god) and after the first few houses, grunt. I give up, my body just says no, and it’s mom’s purse I run to for shade, taking some money and getting a bottle of coke or pepsi, anything that’s in a 600 ml container at least.

But lately, mom’s started filling up this huge thermos that we have with really cold water and then adding as many ice-cubes in it as can fit, and wow—is it just what the doctor ordered, because these carbonated drinks are for shit compared to a glass of ice cold H2O… and that’s what we’d both be having for the last few days… mom’s in Mumbai right now, she went there to visit her mother and sisters, and a few cousins (((hi Javid Bhai))).

So today was a Friday, my day to go to the mosque, otherwise I usually just end up praying at home… and after my dad and I’d come back home from the mosque I told him I’d be going and having my lunch out today, and he said fine… I thought I’d go to Subways (they’d be having their Roasted Chicken on Friday’s I think, or Chicken Sheekh, both equally good) but then at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to go to McDonald’s. It’s not that I have anything against Subways, love their sandwiches, but going to Subways is like going to your Grandma’s house… at least that’s how I feel, and I’m not all that right in the head so don’t take my word for it…

So McD was the next choice, it was a couple of feet away anyways, and the chain that I was going to is in a mall so you have the added benefit of doing some window shopping while you’re there as well… but I was there for the food, so yeah, that’s what I ended up zeroing in on… Ajaaz was a nice guy, pretty helpful, but you could guess this was his first day or something, so I asked him “you look like you’re new here” and he showed me his Under Training card, and I said you’re doing a good job so far. I then took my meal and turned around and saw that the entire ground floor of the place was full, so started climbing up the stairs to the first floor and found a good two seater in the corner right next to the windows from where I could see the autos and cars whizzing by underneath.

A couple of minutes later this group of girls, probably college friends came up behind me and finally decided to sit at the only table that was empty from the sounds of it, but it didn’t have enough chairs in it so one of the girls asked me if she could take one of mine, and I said sure, and then another one of them came up to me and picked up a chair and started taking it back to her table and then saw me and asked if she could take the seat, and I said “oh, I thought you weren’t going to ask, please” and I just sat there, peacefully, and had my Spicy Mc Chicken and left.

Nicky, if you read this by any chance, I found out about Donna Summer last night… man, what a shocker—I had no idea she was fighting Cancer… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hear her sing “she works hard for the money” the same way ever again.

JACOB’S LADDER

I’d first seen this film way back in 1993, I think, when I’d just moved here from the Gulf… or no, wait—it was 1994/95, after The Shawshank Redemption had been released and I’d seen this beautifully directed movie (by a guy who didn’t even get nominated for his direction, even though it was his first movie ever I think, and there were a host of other people who did—but nobody ended up winning, sadly). Anyway, so the two guys were Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, and they both did a wonderful job. Morgan actually got nominated for a Best Actor for this, and Tim, well, even though he didn’t get a nomination, you really identified with him—at least I did—he was like the sort of guy who was a fish out of water, and boy did I know how that felt.

The movie’s pretty good, so I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but the one line that I can never forget from the movie is “demons are like angels, who’re just punishing you so that you can overcome whatever it is that’s holding you back, and move on to heaven”. And it’s this that the title Jacob’s Ladder refers to; it’s mentioned not only in Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam… and that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about… last month, a girl had gotten in touch with me expressing her fondness for the pictures that I had taken on Flickr, and asked me if I’d mind getting in touch with her? Now, this was last month, when I’d just come out of my depressive episode (must’ve been around the 20th of April) and I hadn’t logged on in a fortnight or so, which is when she’d sent me the mail so I had no idea it was even there… at first, I didn’t even notice it, but the second time I noticed a different name in my Inbox, and I wondered who this was?

She was very courteous, she told me who she was and where she was studying, and asked me if I could help her with a project that she has to submit for her Graphics Design Class… she said she was interested in the photos of the house—everything that I could take basically, of things that are used every day, and maybe mail it to her… to which I said, sure—hey, it’s not like I had anything else to do. And besides, she liked my photographs, and I was glad to take some more for her. And then, the funniest thing happened—we parted ways, and that’s it. Oh, I’ll write to her again in a couple of days (it’s been twelve days already I think) and ask her how the project’s going (has she submitted it yet, gotten a grade—if it’s complete, can I see it) and send her some more photographs that I told her I would, and ask her if she needs any more… but, you know what, it was alright… and what was even better was that I did it on my own; I didn’t need the help of anyone who I thought would magically transform me into something special. I realized that I could do it by myself.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, the women who I’d thought had hurt me the most, by giving me this pain which I thought I would never be able to overcome—weren’t the demons that I was making them out to be. Yes, they were hurting me, but that was only because I was maybe holding onto something that I had to let go off, and I did… which is also what that girl from Israel had helped me with… she was from Tel Aviv, and we just spoke to each other like two human beings—two mature, civilized, adults… no problems; we were just two people, who had come together to appreciate art, and that’s exactly what we did. I wish a friend of mine could see this; I think she would’ve been proud, I hope… I have survived an encounter with a talented, beautiful, and gifted woman (she actually taught me how to “send” my photographs on Google, lol; she works part time as a computer tech or something) and it’s been more than ten days now, and not once have I been hopelessly infatuated with her; I don’t feel afraid anymore. I might not find that special someone to share the rest of my life with, but I now know that even if I don’t—I’ll survive.

(this month, I’ve managed not to go to either of my extremes amazingly, AND not to have perilously fallen in love)… right now, I like me just the way I am!!!

NORMALCY

How… okay is it to be… normal?

Wait, let me just go and check the “textbook” definition of that word before I use it… yup, just what I was afraid of, this is what it says in the OXFORD DICTIONARY: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
And I just hate those words, but this is what it also goes on to say, and this is what I’m looking for: (of a person) free from physical or mental disorders.
That’s it right there “free from Physical or Mental disorders”… that’s what I want. And that’s what I’m searching for…

It’s been something like 15 days since I’d been on my last bend, and I’ve had no tumultuous highs during that time, or exhausting lows, which is rather surprising for me… or I at least would’ve been in one high or another by now… the ups would’ve come first, until they would’ve overpowered me completely, and then I would’ve hit rock bottom and stayed there for a couple of days.

But this time, I just thought I’d hold back, just this once, just once, and see what would happen to me… I think I’d just had a conversation about this with Victoria the day before, and she was giving me her advice as she’s always kind enough to do, no matter how hard headed I can be sometimes (I don’t know how she can do it though, honestly I can’t, considering how deluded I can get sometimes) but there are a very few people who are able to weather the storm like that… and I’m grateful.

So there I was, sitting in McDonalds that day, with those funny, exuberant Iranians right next to me, and Oh did I want to start talking with them, but I held back and just managed a polite question or too, and tried not to go all ballistic and eat their heads… of course, when it was all over and they had left, I felt kind of hollow inside, like I’d missed out on a great opportunity… maybe I should’ve let myself go and acted all crazy on them, like I would’ve done before.

But you know what, maybe this is the part of the change I want—maybe there is a place where I can go where I’m not a complete fool (((was that how Richard Gere was behaving when he just steps up to that woman arguing with her boyfriend on the street and he kisses her, and then starts running from the man who’s chasing after him now… I thought that was so cool))) and yet not someone who’s afraid to assimilate himself with others and the surroundings around him, within reason that is.

I made another friend recently and I asked her if she ever regretted the fact that she wasn’t Manic anymore, and you know what she said—she said, she misses the highs, sure (only a manic will ever know what she’s talking about here) but then there are the lows which she is more than happy to have gotten rid off. And she said, to miss that phase of her life, would be very selfish of her, to have to put her husband through it, and her children, and herself… so I think I just have to find some sort of an equilibrium that I can live with, along with all the others in my life.

THE SLEEP OF THE INNOCENT

So, my mom and I left for the train station at 9 am the day before, and I was certain we weren’t going to get the ticket for my mom so that she could go and visit her mother and sister in Mumbai, and one of her favourite Nephew’s who was flying down from New York to visit his dad, so who knows when she would be getting a chance like this again… so, we enter the train station, and I ask my mom if I should go and get the form that you need to fill in saying where you’re headed, and from where, and when, and all that… only thing is, this time, I told my mom I’d do it, instead of just handing the piece of paper to her, because I’m not sure how steady my arm would be. Well, it was, and it wasn’t—but I managed, and we soon went and stood in line. And you know what, the seat was available, and a couple of weeks from now—my mom will be in Bombay with my Grandmother. :)

Feeling great at having over come my fears and accomplished something I had been avoiding since I’d been discharged from the Hospital, I was in a cheerful mood, so we soldiered onto this place where my mother had some work… and wouldn’t you know it—just as we had parked the car, and were walking up to it, the guy was opening the shutters—we told him what we wanted, and he said the guy who handled that department wasn’t there yet, but if we were to check back in after an hour’s time, he’d be there… mom didn’t want to wait, I mean—she could’ve, but she probably thought that I couldn’t’ve, so I told her not to worry—we’ll just take a nice, long stroll, and before you know it, the hour will be up.

Well, the nice long stroll lasted for a good long walk (((this was the same place which we’d come to 10 years ago to hunt down a good tailor to stitch my sister’s wedding dress))) and by the time we’d gotten back to the car with some chips and a dew, I was really upset with myself for not having brought my camera along with me: a good photographer Always has his lens on him at all times, or so I’ve heard… I saw some great scenery that day: a really professional under 18 team playing cricket ((I asked them if they’d be there tomorrow, thinking that I’d come back here again and see if I could get some shots, but he said he had no idea)) and then there was the tree, giving root to another plant from in it, which sort of reminded me of a woman—giving life to another life from it ((and some really great old-fashioned houses, like the ones which existed a hundred years ago… I liked those. They looked so original compared to all the modern structures coming up all around them.

And then we reached the place again, and the guy who was supposed to arrive was there, but needed something which we didn’t have on us, so we said we’d come tomorrow and get it done, and as promised, the next morning—we were there, and I didn’t forget my camera, but I wasn’t able to walk the great distance that I was able to yesterday, so only managed the tree—which I was more than happy with. Mom had finished her work, and we went and got my Pepsi, and then went home. But not before we stopped to find out if Mr Jones would be available anywhere… and the one place that was nearest to the house didn’t have it, so I thought I’d check out a couple of other places in the afternoon, when I had to take my dad out for some work.

Wasn’t there either, heck, they’d gotten rid of their English titles two years back, who knew??? So I was left with checking out a couple of malls closer by to home, but no luck there either, except this one guy at the other end of the city who’d placed an order for the film a couple of days ago so might be getting it in a week or two… let’s see. Anyway, Mcdonalds just happened to be next door, and it was 8, so I thought I might as well have something and go home now… and you know what. You know who I ran into at the place having their burgers and fries and cokes, and then waiting for their cones—these group of people (20/30 something Year olds) and they were talking with a funny accent—I couldn’t quite place it—it wasn’t Arabic, I knew that for sure, and it didn’t seem like any other EUROPEAN country that I could think of, but what—Hebrew? I don’t know?? Turkish, could be… so I turned to the guy sitting next to me, there were 6 in the group, two girls and four guys, and I asked him where he was from… and he said, Oh, IRAN. :)

So, I was just sitting there, trying not to go all “daanish” on this guy’s ass, but I just couldn’t help myself from asking him one last question… I asked him if that was Farsi that he was speaking, and he smiled, and said yes. (((There are usually so many things that come to my mind at moments like this, like starting a conversation with the person and just going on and on and on, but maybe Vicky’s right—I have to start respecting other people’s boundaries; just because I don’t have any, that doesn’t mean that they don’t either… and then they’d gotten up and left, and when I’d gotten up to get my own cone and step outside into the evening air to just gaze out at all the traffic as it was winding down now, I saw them standing on the footpath, enjoying themselves, laughing, and talking… they looked so nice, and it felt nice, and about a half an hour later, I was home. And I was finally able to got to sleep that night, after something like 10/12 days)))

The Newspaper Magnate (((well, almost)))

10 years ago was the first time I’d met him, maybe a year or two here or there—I think it was just him and his elder brother then… these two guys who’d come from out of nowhere and set up this tiny, tiny stall in one of the lanes that lead to my house… they started out with selling just the bare minimum—really obscure stuff, but gradually, as time went by and they established a customer base—they branched out to the daily’s and the Nationals, and even Magazines like Allure, Elle and Vogue…

Now these guys were really hard workers; I’d see them bright and early at that stall of theirs since dawn waiting for the papers to be dropped, or going out and collecting the magazines, and even renewing the subscriptions to their customers who wanted what they did, delivered to their doorsteps, which is what they would be more than happy to do if it got them more clients… so they were good for a couple of years, until the uncle who had given them the money to start up their venture passed away. I think that was the only time I’d ever seen any other emotion on that boy’s face (who must’ve been my age) other than happiness; he looked completely devastated.

A few days later, the two brothers got the help they needed; their parents were now moving to the city to start working with them. The mother would sit at the stalls in the evenings, with the son (the younger one who was around my age) sitting at it in the mornings and afternoons, with the other son who had now started his own business ferrying people to and fro their offices in the cars that he would rent out for such services… and the Father, well, he would be there all day, making sure everything was going as smoothly as it could, and he would take care of all the flowers which would be sold to the people and used in their daily prayers and rituals, sometimes even their festivities.

Yesterday was the second time I saw another kind of an emotion on that boy’s face… no, not loss or fear or sadness, but it was a kind of remorse—he looked, well, defeated in a way… his dad who was standing beside him, he was the one with the tears running down his cheeks, and his mother was trying to have her voice heard in all of the commotion that was taking place to make sure that everyone knew how wrong this was what was happening to them. (((A few minutes ago, the cops had just arrived and bulldozed all the illegal structures that they could find, to the ground, and there was nothing anybody could do or say to stop them)))

The Bakery that I’ve been sitting at for the past 10 years, started out as not as popular as it has gotten now, and I’ve become quite close to the brothers who own it… so much so that I’ve been introduced to the third one recently who runs his own business but has now joined his other two brothers to help them out whenever he can. I went over to him and I asked him if I could sit down, and then asked him if he remembered once when he’d asked me why I’d come there and just sit at a table and watch out at nothing, and pointed him to the man, and told him—that’s why… I think I’ve been seeing that guy for 10 years now, and this is what ends up happening to him. That’s why I come here, to see what this life we live is really about.

[[[HAPPY ENDING: The man looked at me and laughed, and said—oh, don’t worry—he’ll be back on his feet in no time. He has 2-3,000 people depending on him every day. You think this is the first time his stalls gotten demolished… and the next day, as foretold, he was standing right there, doing what he used to, with his son. There’s something to be said about the HUMAN SPIRIT here, but I don’t want to ruin it by trying to put it into words. So just make your own assumptions. G’night.]]]

MATHILDA

I think I’ve written about my love for this film before, maybe a couple of times more than I should have, but it was the film that first introduced me to Natalie Portman for the first time, way back when I was a 14/15 year old, and Nat was not much younger than me… and aside from loving this film so much, and the performance that she gave in it, even though it happened to be her debut and she was only 12/13 years old at the time… I was in awe of her.

And then, years later, something unexpected happened when I was able to log on to the internet for the first time, and look up stuff that I always wanted to see… and she was there, she did exist after all (and mattered as much to a lot of other people as she did to me) and we were all there, all these great guys and girls who had come together to form this community where we could talk about almost everything under the sun, including-obviously, the beautiful Miss Hershlag…

What brought on this sudden burst of emotion you might ask: well, they just released this “special edition” of LEON: The Professional and I just finished seeing it today, and all the memories started flooding back to me… I mean, sure, there were always going to be movies like Heat and Good Will Hunting that would introduce me to actors like Matt and Al, but Natalie could really hold her own with any one of them… okay, maybe not Marlon from On the Waterfront, but then who can—right.

Anyway, I just finished seeing it right now, and you wanna know something—not two days ago did a guy who I knew from there (like almost 10 years ago) get in touch with me, and boy did that bring back a lot of feelings. We had fun, all of us over there, and I guess I’ll always have Nat to thank for that. (((I still think she should’ve won her Oscar for Leon, dammit, and not that other film in which all I saw her doing was ballet-ing all over the place… good Ballet, but, come on—just a best supporting actress Oscar for Leon would’ve been nice, or even a nomination—at least)))

THE MEDICINE MAN

My daily cocktail. For the next 5 years, at least, at least if I’m lucky…

TREND XR, INTALITH—My vitamin Supplements.

A TO Z—For stabilizing my Mood; otherwise I tend to get a little heated, rather quick.

ZOLFRESH 5 MG—For my sleep Disorder; I’m averaging maybe an hour or two of sleep a night, when I’m Manic.

NOOTROPIL ((Stops my saliva from excreting excessively—ever since my accident, a part of my brain got damaged which deals with this function, so along with taking the pills, I have to make sure that my throat is as dry as possible and everything stays inside—which used to be a real pain before, but now I’ve sort of gotten used to it.))

BETACAP ((Stops my tremors which trouble me when I stop taking the medication, which I have to every time it’s performed it’s function, and I don’t need it anymore, but when I can feel my arms starting to shake again when I’m eating, or drinking a glass of water, that’s when I’ve got to start taking it.))

Life’s a pain, and a gift, sigh.

Funny Story

Yesterday night, I’d planned to take another dose of my "super sleeping pills" as usual; they’d given me a sound three hours of sleep the night before, and when you’re only able to get a comfortable shut eye for an hour max (maybe two if you’re very lucky, for not only the entire day, but two consecutive ones) I was in Seventh Heaven…

So, I thought I’d do the smart thing today, and take the tablet again, except—instead of the two pill dosage ((they’re like really tiny ones)) I had the other day, I’d take just one today to see what’d happen, expecting it to knock me out cold within a couple of minutes as it had the day before...

Only problem was I’d totally forgotten what a powerful drug this was, because last night, along with all the swaying and sliding and loss of balance—I was hallucinating… getting these funny images in my head that the letters I was typing on the screen in front of me, on the computer, were sliding all of a sudden, and now starting to move from left to right… lol.

Well, I thought I’d figured that problem out by taking the pill only after I’d switched off from the computer and gone to bed last night, and, just after I’d done my wadhu and said my prayer for the evening… you know what, the swaying and motioning had started again, AFTER I thought I’d go to the toilet for my no. 1 just in case I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night… and that’s where the fun begins.

Cos Oh my God, no sooner had I sat down on the toilet bowl (((that’s how you’re supposed to do it, if you’re muslim, although not every muslim does it I’m sure—not me, I never used to, being raised on American culture so much, or Western I should say where you just stand up and pee… but it can get a little messy sometimes if you’re not careful, so in order to avoid any mishaps, you’re taught to sit “down” on the toilet bowl or seat and do it, like the ladies—which I thought was too EFFIMINATE for some reason, but yeah, I’d totally forgotten about it being the better/cleaner/safer option of the two—so that's how I do it now))) and I ended up dozing off right there on the seat, like totally and utterly, and I had no idea what time it was when I’d woken up…

The power had gone-off yesterday night, at about 11 pm, and it’d been coming and going and coming and going for the next hour or so, every few minutes, until it finally said goodbye and left me in the dark for the next hour or four… of course, we have a three phase connection at my house, so sometimes when the current goes in one phase, I have another phase which can be used—so can sit on the computer again after having connected it from somewhere else. Which is what I did and went on to upload a few of my photographs on Flickr. I then shut off the system, went downstairs to have my dinner and take my pill, and then came up to say my prayer and then go to the toilet.

And then the drama started, as a friend of mine would say; I suddenly woke up to see everything pitch black dark in front of me, oh my god, and I had totally forgotten that it had been like this for a few hours now… but shit, where was I? What alien world was I trapped in, where I couldn’t even see anything in front of me, or behind… and then I moved to my left, and THWACK—wall, and then I moved to my right, THWACK—another wall. And this is what I went on doing for god knows how long, going round and round bumping into walls and trying to feel my way out of this maze I was in, Jesus. Was I lost in some other dimension; was anybody ever going to find me again???

And then “I” found me, lol, and I realized where I was, for cripes sakes—only in the toilet just adjacent to the bedroom… what the hell was I so worried about. Whew, that was a close call, cos I’d given up all hope of ever being found again!!! ;)

THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR:

Thanks to Steven Green for posting the LINK to his wall and introducing me to the hypnotizing music and the wondrous images displayed… ART—may you be Muslim, Jewish or Christian—“it will always conquer all”, no doubt about it… so all you have to decide is which side you’ll be on?


(((I've been having a bad day (week or two more like it) for the past fortnight or so, and there are some people who I need to thank ((aside from the obvious, my mom and dad, and my sisters of course)) so I hope you others know who you are.)))

♥♥♥

MY LIFE!

I have this friend of mine, or had I should say, whose stopped talking to me for the second time now (it’s my fault, I assume, since my being Bipolar, I can’t really say for sure, at least not with any certainty, so out of a fifty-fifty even split, I’d have to give her the benefit of the doubt with a seventy-five percent share, because the way my mind works sometimes, I’d be surprised if I even ended up getting a twenty-five). We had, or rather, I had gotten into another argument with her, sort of, about something (it doesn’t really matter what) of which I was convinced I was right, and she was wrong to have changed my mind, as she had done so a few weeks ago.

Later, she said that she was sorry if I were to take this the wrong way, as I was taking everything else, but she was going to be taking a break from talking to me for awhile; she found it to be too exhausting for her, and that she’d rather spend the time doing something else.

Now, if it was anybody else, I wouldn’t have bothered about it as much as I did, but there are a very, very few people I can talk to as I could talk to with her. You see, this woman who I had discovered and who had chosen to be friends with me, was someone who was very close to her father, who also had Bipolar Disorder, but a milder version of the disease; his last relapse being two years ago. So, unlike me, who’s in a Rapid Cycling phase right now, my friend was of course not privy to such mood swings of mine, and probably didn’t know how turbulent a time I was having, which ended up aggravating me to no end to think that she might be ignoring my feelings in some way.

And it gets worse. From once every three months when I would end up going under (which would last for a couple of days, not more than five, if that many) I’m now down to once a month, where my high phase will last me about a week or so, and then the down will come and wash away everything for the next 20 days… and the dreams that will plague me during this time; they’re ferocious… she’ll come at me with everything she’s got, all her words and wisdom, and I won’t stand a chance, until I get out of my slumber, and then, she better be on guard, because I’ll be coming at her with everything I’ve got, all my reasoning and logic, and common sense, and I’ll annihilate her.

But you know what, there were these guys (and girls) who I was reading about yesterday, who’d have to endure this kind of trauma from the manics in their lives, and I think that’s exactly where I’m headed; I think my fairytale dream of getting married to someone who I could live out the rest of my life with, will just be that—a fairytale, because I don’t think anyone in their right mind would want to marry a person with “damaged goods” tattooed to their forehead. And even if they were, I’d rather do the honourable thing and bow out than take the chance of subjugating TWO lives to this hailstorm.

Which is what leaves me with the only option I have—my friends, or so called friends; don’t worry—it’s only a matter of time before I end up alienating them as well. Anyway, why I was so glad to have found her, the lady in question, was because: she’s in a committed relationship with the man she hopes to marry soon, so I have absolutely nothing to worry about as far as developing any sort of a romantic inclination towards her, which I am hopelessly renown for; she tries to take care of her father as best she can, whenever she can, and he happens to have bipolar disorder as well (like I do, which gives me hope that maybe there is this one person who can possibly understand what I’m going through, but I doubt that will ever come to fruition after what I’ve done); and she’s great to talk to, because in spite of being an American, she knows about this side of the world as well, and I really like that about her.

I know I’ve made mistakes, but it’s not easy coming here in the middle of all of you and trying to adjust myself to your ways of thinking, and acting, but I try. I do my best, hell, I’ve been doing it my whole life, and now when I get the chance to put it into action, sure, I’ll make a few mistakes, but can you not see the mountains I’ve had to traverse to get here? Can you not give me a little space, just a little bit, some room until I get a strong enough footing so as to start making my descent.

Look into my eyes.

o_O

I had taken my mother to the eye clinic today, or rather, what I should be saying is my Mother and I went to see the eye doctor yesterday to keep the appointment which we had made the day before (and I had promised her I would keep, no matter what, depression or none—I would surely be taking her there). And so I was up within a second of my mom waking me, even though I’d gotten a two hour sleep, brushed my teeth/changed my clothes/and out the door by a quarter to ten. The consultation was for ten o’ clock.

I think I’d already written this down somewhere, here, or maybe on my Facebook page, but the clinic’s pretty close by to my house—maybe a ten minute drive, and so by the time we’d gotten there, parked the car and gone inside—it was ten o’ clock, and the place was deserted, except for the guy in reception who took us in and noted down mom’s name and asked her to take a seat: the doctor would be with her in a couple of minutes… so, what started off as a wait of maybe half an hour, tops, turned out to be a wait of almost one and a half; the doctor was busy with a surgery inside, and by the time we’d gotten in—it was a half past 11.

But it was an enjoyable enough wait; the doctor has some nice posters put up on his walls, one of which was a description of every religion (like Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and one on swami Vivekanada) on his wall… I was getting a bit restless, like I always do, so told my mother that I’d go across the road to the bakery here and have a coke… the mechanic who we come to is just next door, and so I’ve become pretty accustomed to the local geography of the place by now.

But you know what the good news was, upon returning, my mother was called in and had her eyes checked, and ended up getting a clean bill of health; she didn’t need to get anything done for the next two years at least. Except take good care of her eyes, which I thought we would be doing for her, going in for the operation to remove her Cataract, but she didn’t seem to have any for the time being at least. I think I was worried more about someone being allowed to poke into her eyes than she was, because of these other pictures on the wall that the good doctor had up which showed how you’d see if you had any one of the misalignment’s… Cataract, Myopia, Hyperopia, and a host of others…