Life and the three matchsticks.

I've a loud mouth, everyone knows that. But I shut up a lot too. About things I dont like to talk about. And there are a few of those. I do not like to talk about pedophiles, they scare me. I despise discussion about "So what are you going to do in life? " and "What is your favourite _________?".

I remember as a child my grandfather spoke to me about the three matchsticks. God gave man three matchsticks that will never burn out. And can be relit over and over again. They are: The match that burns the bad inside you,the match that lights your imagination and the match that lights the lamp of hope.

Trust me, then I thought he was nuts, but lately they seem to be making sense.

The Symphony of Change

Changes, both internal and external are driven by motivation to alter the self. Consciously or unconsciously. I've set out on a mission, to change the way the world functioned. To give innocence a chance to uproot hypocrisy, to give way to life in perfection.

Conceptually this seems like a noble mission, ideally it seems obnoxious.

Acceptable societal behavior, acceptable norms,customs and attitudes are decided by masses or micro-masses. Communities that function both together and loosely connected by ideas that are popular to the whole or to the micro-societies. Then of course, there are those who operate on conviction and self engineered value systems that are wholly/mostly uninfluenced by anyone but themselves. So these people who live on their own terms, would ideally be driven by themselves and unchanged by the acceptance or rejection by society. That is,anyone's admiration/hatred for the way you live would not make a difference to you because that is how you choose to function and that is who you choose to be.

Ironically, I could never teach my children to create a set of their own values. But I could lead them on the path to realise the importance of the same. Which brings you to the question, can I be that person myself? Can I be the one who does not care whether the world loves her or hates her. Can I be the person who lives solely for the gratification of the moment and not the future. For the self and noone else.

Romanticism is again one thing that drives me into these loopy subjects. There is perfection in the most divinely disturbing things. There is art even in the most grimiest of pictures, and love in the most scandalous of affairs. I've struggled over and again to understand the way the world functions, the way I function. But there isn't any point trying to analyse, to dig out a truth that doesn't exist in absolutes. For truth is an edgy subject.

The hardest admission is that perspectives of the same object often differ in great measures even amongst the most similar people. That there is no superlative. That nearly everything beautiful is ugly, everything sincere is dishonest, that everything perfect is dented.

But yet, that nagging feeling. That even boats with holes sail, that hope is for tomorrow, that faith is a liar. that life is a lot simpler one moment at a time.

Yet it is hard not to dream about a tomorrow.

Cheers,
Sne

Saarang writing thing.

There are a dozen rules. Centered on ten lines, one conjunction per line, one apostrophe colon comma hyphen blah. So here's the prompt : when there is nothing left to burn, You have to burn yourself.

And need likes on my comment for me to win on their post, if you like the comment go ahead and like.. the entry iss a comment on the thread check it out...

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=167241760040621&id=151072411657556¬if_t=like

She wouldn’t come, her heart was too cold and her will too strong.
I yelled at her, begged her to look but she wouldn’t.
I screamed her name, threw things at her and taunted her but she didn’t.
I cursed, laughed like a lunatic and danced like a child.
I ripped my coat and pulled at my hair.
The world as spinning and the rain had stopped.
I grabbed the canister spraying wildly and threatened her, she stopped - she didn’t turn.
I lit a match, there was a loud sound and she turned.
Through the haze as my skin seared I saw her looking at me.
She asked -”Who is that guy?”, she saw me but she never saw me.

Chauvinists.

Beating up chauvinists is one of my favourite pastimes, almost always is sound entertainment. Have you ever noticed how men believe that if a woman calls them an asshole for being a chauvinist she becomes a feminist –they simply cannot comprehend the idea that the reason they’re being verbally abused is because they actually-are-assholes!

I have never been and possibly never will be a feminist. It takes too much effort, patience and tolerance to watch these fools make even bigger fools of themselves. But on odd days, when nothing eventful has happened I lend these losers my ears. And then laugh ofcourse.

Mostly it’s about reservation, you see in India everything is about reservation. Noone can get over it. It has turned into the Marilyn Monroe of social problems, pity it’s never going to actually die. Anyhoo.

Girls get thirty percent of all seats. Oh no. The world is going to crash and burn.
There really is no point in me pointing out the scientific statistical reasoning behind such moves. There is no point in holding up figures (pun intended) about how many women graduate every year at schools and how many apply to colleges. How probability of their not receiving an education outshines the possibility of them entering IIT. But these people are biologically enabled to not comprehend any of this, it’s like god fitted a helmet within their crania that could deflect such reasoning.

Discrimination is the basis of society. Yes, I am known for such epithets that make no sense until actually explained. Therefore. Social stratification is based on money and power. There is always some means to differentiate between two seemingly similar people. Starting with our fifth grade examinations differentiation has always been of prime importance. So, even when there are no differences in practice, we’ll find them. However small insignificant and crude these differences may be.
Faultfinding is also another important part of being from this sub-continent.
Then there are those assholes, who cannot stand the fact that a woman can have guts. It’s not possible. This probably arises from watching too many Indian movies, like all our social problems. You see verbal abuse is like a kitchen knife. Anyone can use it, it doesn’t mean that the girl is polluted (*oh no*).

Have you ever noticed how nearly all abuses insinuate women and not men? That’s really messed up. Nearly all abuses seem to classify being a women as lowly. Sick creepy stuff. When I asked a friend about this she said calmly – that’s cause guys made them all up. And yeah, probably they did. So I’ve given up swearing cause that insults women. Only. Even if your swearing at a guy you’ll actually be swearing at his mom or something like that. Pointless.

Also some guys think that you can break a girl with verbal abuse, it only shows how weak you are. :) Doesn’t prove squat. There are those traditional people who believe that by abusing a girl,the girl is degraded. Frankly, the guy should be ashamed of himself. Verbal and sexual abuses are the same if they are intended to denigrate a woman’s dignity. Therefore watching a guy mouth off nonsense to a girl is the same as you watching him molest her. Yes it’s a stretch of an analogy, because he hasn’t touched her. But the effect is just different levels of the same emotion, shame for no fault of their own.

Basically, stop insulting women cause they don’t respect you. You want respect? Earn it.

Drinking and smoking are general bad habits, just like peeing on walls and spitting on the streets.So please stop posting and reposting pictures of some poor college girl with a photoshopped bindhi smoking up, no one really cares. Not even Abdul Kalam, no.

Girls can swear. And they probably would. If you claim ignorance about guys who grab women in buses, then shut up and deal with this too. If you don’t, then if that’s allowed,so is this.

Yeah so there was this Russian chick who raped a couple of guys and she became global news. Yay, +1 for feminism some idiot said. So what about the hundreds of women who get raped everyday? Err erm, and they deflect. Somehow rape and torture are taboo discussion topics in our society, a society where they are highly popular.
Chauvinists are of several types. And I have one sentence for all of them.

See basically, if you are going to blame all the women in the world for a girl who dumped you – Yousuck.

Yawn.

Straight Arrows

Everybody's twisted. Everybody's crazy. Everybody's right. Everybody's wrong.

I'm only writing this because there's a lot of things swimming around in my mind that I want to put on paper so I can figure out what exactly I want to yell about. Things I cannot quantify, when I hit the keys, the harsh click-clack of the keyboard calms my rough nerves.

I'm not a cruel person, I am very caring, to those who care. I am judgmental. I am not very diplomatic. I'm very selfish about those I love, possessive isn't the right word.. Why I'm telling you all this before you continue to read is because, it's very hard to understand what I'm saying unless you try to see it through my eyes. Oh and I'm good with words.

I'm not an elitist.

I do not like people who believe they are better than the rest solely because of which city/school they come from.

Now. Let's try to get to the point. Hazy as it may be. This is only a rant.

A few weeks ago someone asked if I was a misanthrope, and I've always wondered if I were. And then proceeded to conclude that we all were. But there is something special about me. I'm very protective of myself. If you do manage to hurt me, it's because you caught me off guard, I really like you and you were being a bitch, or I trusted you. And I trust a lot, not entirely, just some people with some things. And the thing with people is, everybody's an asshole. If you seem a little tough, they'll take you for a ride.

I'm not a cheerless friendless person I assure you. I love a bunch of people with all my heart, rain or shine I will stand by them. Whoever it is I've to protect them from, I will. Whatever it is I've to take I will. And I will never let go of them. All this cheese apart, even these people can be morons, and I never tell them they were being assholes unless they ask me to.

I shrug everything off in life, a motley of losers two years ago tried to ruin my peace. It did disturb me yes, but I never let them see it. I'm cold to those I don't know, I'm cold to those who hurt me. I'm cold to those who leave me behind.

Oh and I cannot take bullshit.

Don't tell me you care unless you do.
Don't push me around cause I let you.
Don't tell me I'm immature cause I'm not pretentious.

I do not love with cause.
I cannot act like I love.

I've said and made the decisions I have so far cause I've believed in them. I'm not perfect. I never asked for your support.

I'm only angry cause I have every right to be.

The Relationship Riddle

Long pauses seem characteristic of lazy bloggers like me. Anyway, I've had a lot of questions about pretty much everything and if you've read any of my posts, you would've noticed them.

Lots of people choose to believe that I'm not a romantic, this is not true. So untrue, that it offends me. Romanticism is the sheer reason for existence. Every cheesy thing from early morning dew to little children with cotton candy makes my heart weak yes. But relationships make my knees very strong and send me running in the opposite direction.

I've never understood relationships. Really.

Ever since I was a little child, my family harbored the typical south indian virtues about louwe,lust and sex. When there was a kissing scene, or the lead roles were getting it on on HBO, my parents would diligently switch to another channel. Ofcourse, this didn't hamper my understanding of any of the three, but it didn't help either. Soon, as we grew up, people began going out. On dates that didn't even make sense. Coffee Days and Pizza Huts became places to fall in love. And geeky boys still recovering from dental fillings became Ken replacements.

I've always been of the opinion that we never grew up. We're still kids, who want cliques to fit into, fancy costumes to wear and play the roles of people we are not.

Somehow noone listens to me.

Recently, a list of developments have made me ponder over the how and why of relationships.

And I've arrived at a conclusion - that the ones in relationships don't want to be in them and the ones that aren't in them are dying to be in them.

All this hormone fueled confusion can be attributed to the scores of fairy tales with mysterious happy endings and movies with people riding off into the sunset without once telling us what happened after the screens went down.

Did Snow White and Prince charming have any kids? Or did they not agree upon the speed of the relationship and thus broke up in due course? How did they maintain the relationship forever? were there any magical potions that could subvert the arguments ? What about the extra-marital affairs? Did they fight over football and fashion? My head whizzes with questions.

And as we grew up and graduated from cartoons to movies, the latter was not much help either, always telling us that love was the sole aim of life. First we lapped it up with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and DDLJ, then it sorta just didn't make sense.
Just imagine what we would have perceived of relationships then?
A girl would look at a guy and wait for some song to start playing in your head. If that happened you were in love. Little did we know that our hormones were responsible. Once you were in love, you would humiliate yourself in public by singing horrible excuses for music and expect reciprocation, once that also followed you'd pick up two carnations and play mock duel with them.

But! We grew up. And, we learned that relationships aren't any of the cheesy things written above - They are about sitting across from your girlfriend at a cafe and staring at her for hours hoping that she would consent to make out with you soon.

In my opinion relationships go through phases.

Phase 0 : This is the "just dating" phase, people in this phase have it good. they don't do anything. Which is why it is good.

Phase A : The Flowery Phase. This is the phase where people really,truly,madly believe in the existence and the possibility of magical louwe. Even if they said yes cause they had nothing better to do. :D

Phase B: The Serious Phase
During this phase the real strength of a relationship can be judged, if you're just dating you aren't even in a relationship and this post has nothing to do with you after this point and you may stop reading (because the ones that will continue reading hate you and might just kill you). This is the phase where you have to keep saying "I love you". Where you have to ensure you don't forget an anniversary even if it's the 4 week anniversary or the anniversary of the first time you ate Gobi Manchurian together. If you are a friend of people in this phase you should change numbers or addresses during this period if you don't want constant reminders about the first time people ate kachoris.

Also this phase is where couples start bickering and fighting and friends have to take sides. My sincere advice to the friends, keep your mouth shut. Especially when the fight is about pointless bullshit like their matching t-shirts or who looked at who.

Phase C: The Facebook Phase
This is the most dreadful phase. This is where people start making bedroom comments on social networking sites, people in the relationship should carefully edge around this phase, if you refuse to participate you would be the recipient of "Are you ashamed of me ?", if you're too eager to participate then "This is moving too fast".

In either case you should realise there is this thing called privacy settings that should be set to only the two of you so people like me don't find you and claw your faces off.

Phase F:
The Break up Phase.
I've skipped the intermediary phases cause those are subject to if and when your spouse/girl/boyfriend will sleep with you, so you can figure that out on your own.
The break up phase is self explanatory and generally starts out as a reaction to all the fights that would have happened during the course of the relationship. In my opinion, the break up phase is probably the easiest phase. You actually see life returning to some of these poor guys at the end of it.


People fight about everything. When you're friends you just assume that the other person is a jerk about those matters and deftly avoid any drama, but in relationships people always struggle reconciling the perfect dream world that Walt Disney and Bollywood dreamed up with the rugged realities of modern day relationships.

Your boy/girlfriend is not perfect. They will fart, they will eat more and pay less, they will never be on time, they will always have a problem with your place no matter how it looks and they will always never approve of what you wear or how you look. Deal with it.


And speaking for the fraternity of single friends who have to listen to their friends in relationships - most of us don't care, the ones that do don't have the patience and the rest just need you to fix them up with someone, so quit telling us about how he/she treats you, and get a move on.

But in the end, there are couples that survive and seem to have an ounce of sense. They already know that I respect them, the ones I don't I've made it obvious to now.

What about me?

Ha :D

Punjabis and Prawns.

For some reason, I'm inclined to being apologetic about the spate of pretty somber posts. Anyway,this post is little closer to home. To be honest, it is at home. It is about the most entertaining team of people you could ever meet- My family.

Please don't get me wrong. I love my family, and ergo I love their antics. So much so that, if I ever have the money and degree of mental instability to make a sitcom about them I wouldn't hesitate.

Before, you get ahead of yourselves and label us as sambar-eating-south indian-blondes, what makes my folks tick is their natural inclination to comic timing. Be it the occasional one liner, embarrassing public episode or flamboyant miscommunication - it's always comical :D

My family's one of the most amusing entities that was ever created. We're your average south Indian family with average south Indian values. But what is most striking about us is our inherent ability to amuse without realising it.

I'll narrate one of the epic instances that illustrate my point.

One vague summer, which I spent diligently slogging for an exam that supposedly would determine my whole future, we decided to have dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant called "Mandarin". Needless to say, it was manned by Mizorami waiters with a fairly tapori accent, but the head chef was Chinese alright.

We got there pretty late, fairly around 9, which is quite late for "conservative" families. It all began with which table to pick. While my uber-cool "bro" loves the seats that are in the darker, shadier regions of the restaurant, my parents love the well lit squat-in-the-center-of-the-room-where-noone-can-miss-you sorta spots.

After careful examinations,altercations,compromises and embarrassing scrutiny, my folks picked a spot next to solo punjabi gentleman and a rather too quiet party of four.

And this is what happened.

(Lady from neighbouring table pinches a dinner plate from our table)

Brother: Apparently 3 plates at a Chinese restaurant isn't enough for somebody who seriously needs to look at gym memberships.

Mother - Glaring at brother, thinking the hint was at her.

B: Not you. Her. You've got some time left for that.

Dad is oblivious to all of the above.

He beckons the waiter with the same hand gesture most people would use to swat a fly.

Dad:Are you Chinese?

Waiter: I'm Bengali.

Brother: You know what? My stomach's not so great let's go to Shanthi Sagar!*

I get up to leave, only too eagerly.

Dad:No no this authentic Chinese food, very hard to get sit down.

So begrudgingly we do sit. and the neighbour's kid stomps all over my lap and my brother screams in a fit of fright.

Dad(to waiter, pointing at the yin-yang symbol on the menu): What is this?

Brother(to me): Let's leave. I'll pay you.

In the meantime, my mother's phone begins to vibrate and she fiddles with it unsuccessfully trying to get it off vibrate for a few seconds jabbing at it with her thumbs before finally taking it, and then paying heed to the newly acquired corporate table manners she walks out of the restaurant, and seats herself on the comfy cushions outside to take the call.

Little does she realise that above her head hung a board that declared "Smoker's Corner", guy next to her offers her a light,she says " che thu " and reenters and high pitchedly narrates the story.

By this time, my brother had hypothetically committed suicide several times.

So we want to order,my dad's converted to vegetarianism and I love prawn. :D
But since the night was quite fun I ask for lobster, but the guy says it'll be steamed therefore I go with prawn. My Dad however was confronted with the daunting task of picking out veg dishes.While wonton appears wanton to him,he ordered an unpronounceable dish which I shall call Teilamuisomeshit Mushroom rice while my mum orders Golden baby corn.The brother and i settle on Malaysian spicy noodles and some chicken noodles and prawn ofcourse.
:P :D
Now my dad is all confident about the order :P The waiter soon brings us the corn first. And my Mom gets hardly one piece, but soon the teilawtvshit appears and looks like someone ingested boiling rice and regurgitated it along with fresh vegetables.
Understandably, my mom freaks out,and brother starts laughing while my dad eyes it like it were about to jump at him from the plate.

Soon he starts eating and admits that it has no spice or taste.. and then goes"...mmm
it's nice". My mom starts to quietly protest and bicker, keeping with corporate manners, while my dad begins to proclaim his love for the dish and how hard it is to dislike it.

While my mum is so revolted she takes the plate and places it on the far end of the table and now my dad can't reach it and they have a silent where should I keep the dish fight.

By this time snake man and I have no breath left from giggling and then our platter arrives,you should've seen their eyes following it! :P Almost all of the dishes were non veg and they couldn't even touch it with a pole.

While my mom takes every opportunity to remind us to "pack it pack it pack it" my brother ensures her with "I want to eat it eat it eat it"

I was so caught up in this circus, that I hardly noticed that I dropped my ring
and the punjabi on the neighbouring table gets on all fours to look and embarrassed I join him on two :P

With my brother too.

Soon, Bengali chinki appears with an emergency lamp big enough to light up all of Afghanistan to look for a ring that I could've gone without and we find it snuggled up against my dad's shoe!

To dissipate the awkwardness, my Dad looks at the lantern and attempts a joke.
The lantern had arbit chinese looking alphabets on it and my dear father looked at the lantern and read -"Man Dar eeen". Mandarin. And we gave him a blank stare

Punjabi Gentleman(@ my dad): Gahahhahhahahhha!

Dad: *meek smile*.

Mom: Probably a terrorist.

Brother: wrong kind of turban.

A 15yr old snake freak, a 49 year old test pilot, middle school art teacher and a disoriented me make the phamily :P

I love. My family :D