Lemme live the way I want

Welcome to this world! This is the era where we all are running behind the sole purpose of selling ourselves. To live is to sell, to love is to sell … and to die is to sell our being. Selling is everywhere, a ‘USP’ is what we strive to live for.

Selling for money, selling for glory.

A renowned percussionist was talking on a television channel last week. He is a classical musician, but has recently turned into a band activist. He was stressing about singing loud on the stage, making animated gestures to the best possible extent … the intent was to make every pair of eyes in the audience notice you, and only you.

You need to sell yourself, artist! … just that only art never sells.

To sell your own self is to make you always aware of – you only. Just think about yourself, and yourself only. Very recently, a lady came for an interview in our office. While I asked if she was comfortable to stretch beyond normal hours occasionally, pat came her reply – ‘Though I have a 2 months-old kid, but my work is the most important. I can stay back any day as you want’.

Reason – self growth, even if that means demeaning a child that has just been brought to this world. I am getting used to such colleagues.

Man has his goals defined, and he is running after it. Women have their aspirations, and they are pursuing it. After a relentless struggle the entire day, there is not much left to pursue. Interesting still, a newly-wed couple in the neighbourhood has the guy leave at five in the evening, and the wife leaves for work at nine in the morning. Both meet after midnight, when the guy returns home and just hops into the bed.

Marital bliss? I suppose it doesn’t matter, since no notes are exchanged for the entire week! The weekend is for rest, so no possessive demands are recorded.

We just possess ourselves, and the rest is all Maya!!

There is no society, no parents, no siblings … no love and nothing else. The entire world is made of just one individual – ME. I just think about my way of living in this world … my visions and my achievements.

At this point of Mother Earth’s heavenly rotation, we have started to think independently. We think about academic courses, based on the passion that we share. The idea is to get into MY dream job.

Parents and elders are mostly eye-witnesses when the citizen of ‘Youngistan’ is making a choice.

An exception to this is being a primitive citizen.

Setting priorities and accomplishing them is a not a group activity anymore. ‘I know what my priorities are, you take care of yours’ is the normal hype. The funnier part is none bothers to get involved in the decision making faculties of their peers or relatives. ‘To each, their own’ is the mantra.

Newer definitions of life has started. Parents are defined as those individuals who are sponsors of ‘my’ education until ‘I’ find some work. Friends are those who share a common business / academic interest with ‘me’.

The spouse and I live together, she is independent of her and so am I. She is free to live her life, so am I. We don’t demand, neither possess nor share. There are no disclaimers, no strings attached to life’s togetherness.

I have started watching this life with interest. There are so many singleton sets, each filled with just one individual. Their Union is unknown, the Intersection undefined.

Sorry for blabbering mathematics, such are the ways of this world that I fall short in English.

P.S: The heading of this blog is a weak translation of a Bangla film song that is getting popular these days as the ‘song of life’.

To my lovely Valentines

They say that life moves on ... or does it? In these troubled days, life just doesn't move. It may rather take the snail's pace to start ... determined never to reach the milestone. I had confessed that love is all that needs a winter to unite. Come February, and I am already gasping in that splurge of no-nonsense heat.

Don't know how do I write even something about the Valentine's day! A few years back, there were people I would discuss my love for writing ... there were moments when a masterstroke of that passion would hit my words. I would encounter a trance, something that would make me devote all my energy to building a virtual relation.

One never knows when the cupid strikes in writing. Every person who wants to write will confess that this four-letter word was all that was needed to accomplish. Almost always, it never strikes ... and even if it does, it is momentary. Sad that love in writing is never treated as romance.

I just responded to a mail that a virtual friend has sent me yesterday.

There's nothing abnormal about it. Just that the last time I mailed her was 2 years back (in June 2009) ... and she responded to that only yesterday. Wasn't that lovely? and she started by writing that she was alive ... how cruel was man's conception of life.

She was almost lost ... among the humdrum of her work, and some other phases in our standard development of life cycle. But then the word 'hellllooooooo' reminded me of her ... the fresh, vibrant and energetic call from among the millions with whom we live, but never get the chance to connect.

Among many instances of loss and grief, the craving of love for the human life emerges nice and fresh. Such lovely relations in virtual space is what I live for. Those messages on the mobile phone, those small chat blurbs ... who said love was lost!

Valentine's Day may be a concept from the west, but valentines are for real ...

Such angels make distances become meaningless. Expressions are real, the urge is ... or to be precise, that age-old passion to hook up with the other. Love is not always a relation to create ... but every creative relation is lovely.

Let me not sound like a maniac though. Love knows no force, no pressure or no compulsion. It's the natural flow ... a passion to be together, just so that there is a confluence of minds to celebrate life and explore creativity. Love never demands, it's just that we humans demand everything out of love.

To those who still love, mera salaam! To those who do not, start feeling the senses around. It is a sensibility that matters, and every person must have that.

We may not dance around the trees in ecstasy, but there are reasons we may feel fresh by sharing a word or two. There are many reasons to stay alive, but there's only one way to feel the aroma of life.

All these days, the love is what I lost. A quest for love that would be spread across the pages that I have created here, and the love that gets carried to me in numerous messages that I get electronically. There is love among the souls who have visited my page, and there's more love in that they have remembered me.

This post is not to reciprocate, but to express my gratitude to those souls who I have grown up with believing that they understand the message of love.

The Call again!

Never thought I had to stay away for so long.

With the advent of winter, this world seemed to be a tiring place. Friends were leaving me, finding solace in their final resting places up above the world. Nothing seemed normal. I lost a few people who were close to me. At least I was close to them, don't know how they felt about me. Can't ask them now, they have already left for their more "heavenly" abode.

But, I keep arguing, isn't that life?

Lifeless bodies are no good for life. Usually unused, they should be either burnt or buried. It does not make a lot of sense to really crave for their beings now that they do not exist.

But the sun and the moon ... change of seasons ... all seem to be very much there.

Just that little loss ... that pain ... it sort of lingers on. Which makes this planet a boring place to live.

Work kept piling on ... and on. There was not much of a space to breathe creativity. My boss is a young guy, having given birth to his first child only a year back. Lots of energy and youth is still in him. So, he likes to work ... real hard. And he kept me working. Until I seemed to have burnt out ... or what he felt.

Got a nice break during the last week of December. Spent the time among the hills of Matheran. These ghats, and they really made me weak in my knees! The more I see these chain of hills, the more I have this feeling that this life is not so freaking boring as I had felt throughout.

That's exactly where I am. Disconnected though, from my virtual friends. Spending a forlorn life being constantly haunted by deadlines and revenue targets.

Now, I hear the call again. Creativity is a passion, just like making love. The last time I was creating, it was a crazy feeling. Like a person who is getting energy after every bout of venting out. It was a feeling that only few can feel.

She said one needs to be idle to start writing ... and I need an idle mind to pile up my thoughts. I know her, she has been a constant inspiration to my writing.

After all, you need a feminine push to spit the masculine energy. Making love again? don't worry, winters are the best time to unite!!