is it just me?

Sometimes life just becomes that which you sub-consciously dread. You end up focusing on one area of your life and watch the other parts slip through your open fist like sand running off.

Early mornings, late nights, irate clients, short fuses, deadlines to meet, strategies, counter-strategies, wondering if the ladder is against the right wall. These take up all available space in you. Soon you wonder where is that early morning walk, 5 minutes of sitting down with a cup of tea, not heeding the ping of your smartphone announcing the next 'crisis/most important thing/necessary action'.

There is a certain sense of purity in simply letting go, the brain stilled of thought, the joy on your childs face seeing you after a while, the crispness of the air in the middle of trees, the feeling of making something with your own hands that is just lost in our mad rush assisted by the skates of technology.

Perhaps the answer is still within you, submerged in all the layers you throw upon it. Perhaps the answer is simply that 'this too shall pass'

Lessons from a child

There is something totally innocent about how a child perceives the world. Being able to accept things and move on to the next without thinking about something which is in the past endlessly.

Maybe our mental fibre becomes less elastic as we grow older.

Development

As I look out of the window I see very little greenery around. What is the price of our development? An area couple of miles square is home to atleast 500,000 people who might not ever get to hear the melody of a myna or the chirrup of a sparrow.

Crammed into ever decreasing personal spaces, jostling towards our workstations like salmon heading up stream for some vague purpose wired into the primordial recesses of our minds. Is there something which we are missing in our maddening rush for development?

Every interaction is dissected; every word, a carefully constructed artifice, how do I score a point, put someone in their place, show who is the boss, this is not development. No shared coffee, no laughter from the heart.

Is this development, sometimes I am not so sure of that.

Steps

4 mi run/walk, 20 pushups, 20 sit-ups.

A start?

Float

How often do we simply float through life and not realize what is happening. Days blend into weeks, then into months and then to years. Life becomes a series of small events that flare up briefly like fireflies at dusk and disappear almost as soon. The simple pleasures of existence or the banality of it. I think it depends on which way you look at it.

I struggle to think about what the people trapped in a building on siege a year ago would have felt. Their lives which probably had achieved a lot more held against the whims of a few people who had'nt achieved anything in life. Who even remembers any of the other killers? What would their victims have traded for a mundane future?

Memories are what remain, of shock, disbelief, anger directed at various people - the media who plunged into gory detail often doing more harm than good, the chest thumping fanatics who disappeared when the rubber had to meet the road, the sheer futility of it all...

Life as they say goes on, babies are born, people die, memories remain and we like fireflies flare briefly in the dusk and move along.

What do I have to lose?

15 kilograms of lard to begin with – 33 pounds.

Dragged myself to the gym and had an assessment done. Lots of work and I need to focus on getting it done.

The instructor/physio at the gym was quite cool about the whole thing, the flunking of the various fitness test – is it the marines test of how many sit-ups, pushups and squats you can do in a minute?

Anyhow, I have my work cut out ahead of me.

Frisk me

I find this whole drama pertaining to Shah Rukh Khan being detained in a US airport for an hour of questioning slightly nauseating.

There is definitely a certain amount of profiling which gets done to determine frisking, this can be biased. However, to make such a big ruckus about it seems more self serving publicity than genuine outrage.

As a sovereign nation, the US has a right to dictate what it’s security policy should be and really should not need to apologize for enforcing that.

For all his newly minted doctorate, Shah Rukh Khan is simply an actor (hammy in my opinion, but an entertainer). Delusions of grandeur might be more the case or even clever marketing.

Someone of Abdul Kalam’s stature, which is more than Shah Rukh or most of us can even aspire to become, accepted the frisking as part of his travel.

Its time we grew up.

Knock

He lay on the thin mattress, his back feeling every bump on the uneven floor. His heart pounded in a frenetic rhythm as he tried to clamp down on the uneasiness that spread like a stain from his belly.

This cannot be happening to me, shrieked his brain, sounding like a drawn out wail on a cliff top. The panic grabbed his heart as he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, faster and faster bringing his doom upon him.

He willed the door not to open, half knowing that it was flimsy protection at best. His intuition did not fail him as the door slammed open letting the sunlight flood through.

“Yes” she said.

Peace returned.

Puzzling

Why does one gain weight when working out? I know I am eating healthy, working out in the gym..and I still gain weight. Hmmmm….

What keeps me from totally freaking out is that I feel fitter than I have felt in a long while. The treadmill is my friend.

Why so serious?

His scars itched unbearably, his mirth coming out in maniacal laughter. Only the laughter was in his head, filling the emptiness inside. He craved it, his life existed as a game, a game where there would be only one winner.

The countless hordes milling around had no sense of the injustice about the prison they have trapped themselves in, with their stupid morality and even stupider rules, playing a game that came up with rules faster than they were assimilated, until there was nothing left but rules, dropping out of the sky and into you, like so many dust mites.

He licked his cracked lips, there is so much help they need, they need to know freedom, but they resist. He shrugged, perhaps there is only sport left to be made of these herds. Making their little plans and laying them out in so much array, like children from a forgotten childhood, making sand castles only for him to land on them and scatter them. Sport.

Hmmmm.... the laughter filled him up again as he thought of 'his' latest plan. Play along, play along, a hop, skip and a jump and whoopee!!

The above is a peek into the mind of the Joker as played by Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight. Completely fictional.