Am I a good person?

Not really. Not at all infact. Quite the opposite.

I lie. I am angry.
I sigh. I am manipulative.
I cry. I am negative.
I can be many things not considered right in this world.

But...

I am happy. I try.
I will make sure you are happy if you are my friend.
I will eat with you and make you laugh.
"I do not not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." (Evelyn Beatrice Hall)

And no, in difficult times, I cant promise I will be there for you. I may be fighting my private battles which are bigger than yours in my head. My mindspace is quite limited.

I will apologize from the bottom of my heart for this. And pretty much it.

I am still bad. Dont come too close. You see, I can vanish.

Brush of the water

The haunting tune was beckoning him. He walked along the shores of his favourite beach. A deserted one. All he could see was the horizon and no distraction to his vision and sight. His sight told him there was nothing to see during his slow walk. But his vision showed him another track next to his foot prints. Slowly and steadily his gait picked up speed.

A small smile started creeping on his intensely hard face. The foot steps next to his, they dint look too bad you see... They had a track of their own. They had a min of their own. For a few moments, he thought maybe his reverie was disturbed. No sooner had that thought crept into his mind, the foot steps vanished along side his. They took a sharp left into the water. and the steps did not make sense anymore.

A strange sense of emptiness filled him. He looked at them almost wistfully and continued his walk.  Only this time the solitude did not feel right. It almost resembled lonliness. The long walk suddenly felt tiresome.

His sight still told him there is nothing to see. His vision told him he probably made a mistake.

He stopped for a minute. A long minute that felt short enough. He took a deep breath and after a contemplating moment, took a turn left into the water. His mind told him, his sight might not have seen it. But his vision surely did. 

The time of the month

When the blood just leaks, making your body tired and weak...
Oh the waste blood in me, why do you also make me meek?
If you dont take care of the peak, beware of the havoc it can wreak.

My pathetic attempt at poetry. :-) We had a fun conversation between the women folk today. I wrote it once on my blog before, and I will write it again. Women are hormonal. We cant help. You know what?? Fk, we dont even want to try doing it anymore- helping ourselves I mean. It only adds to the stress. I am a woman and I have to atleast respect myself for who I am and what I possess.

Fk it is true we have them periods. And it is also true that we PMS. Well most of us do. So men might as well get used to this fact. That not just wives, but also women colleagues have all the womanly problems. :-)

So next time I am pms-ing, I am going to tell my team not to bother me because I am PMS-ing. It doesnt mean we will work any lesser. You duffers, it means just be a little more sensitive to your surroundings.

Male clan- you dont need to protect us anymore. We moved on. Yes we love it when you care for us, but please dont be too intrusive when we dont need it. :-) We have our moments. Respect them.

Yes, I am PMS-ing. There. I said it. :-)

The Penultimate Judgment

These are never more than a second away. How do bullies thrive in this world? They are not too many. But the few around make their presence felt.

If you are bullied whose mistake is it? Yours? or the bully's? Well, the answer is quite simple. If someone raped you, whose mistake is it? Of course the one who got raped. Why even think so much?? You see the person never stood up for themselves at the time of need.

Does it sound right? From a neutral aspect it sounds right to me. Sometimes the one fight is necessary. But sometimes the one fight is never enough. Infact it is but counter productive. Because you showed strength, he may not only rape you, but also kill you. Well life is precious for me.

I'd rather get raped and live and than get raped and killed. Yes, that makes me passive aggressive. Yes, that makes me an angry person forever. Yes, that makes me bitter. Yes that shows me that I am not assertive.

But hell, I still am alive. Every moment of my life. Only fking difference is my ego and pride have taken so much of place in me that I dont have any more left.

Yes- pretty much today I admit to myself that perhaps, corporate life is not for me. Today is probably the day that I will admit that I was always a misfit. Today I am just some more dead. With the nature of humanity. The weird idiosyncrasies of life.

The beginning of an ending- Yet another one

Ultimate death (if not accidental) comes when body wants to die in my view. As you grow older, some portions of you start dying. Your beliefs, trust, some habits, faith, some views, opinions, some soul, spirit, some health and wealth too. Paradoxically, you also re-build your system based on all the new changes.

I dont know if this is good or bad. But this is just a fact. I may want to buy a house now. 10 years later, I would probably want to buy a bigger house. Or based on the metamorphosis I have gone through, I may sell the existing house and move to the smaller one. Take rest of the cash and travel. Or indulge in charity. It could be many things. But accepting that your body, mind and soul will go through these changes is important.

I am not the same as I was at 20. But sometimes, amusingly enough, I feel I was like this at 10. I dont know if this is cyclic. Meaning at 40, I may end up like 20. Or not. But unfortunately enough, I cant even predict it anymore. What causes turbulence in life is that we are never enough prepared for these changes. The not-so-logical endings and weird and bizarre beginnings mostly because the body is never prepared for it.

The roles are not so clear anymore. The grey areas are only widening in life. Life is no more running on the basis of SOP made on the categories of caste, age, creed, race, economics or place. Its just a void in the grey. The more prepared we are to assume the unexpected, the better we are able to cope. And hope.

Life is crazy, but heck I signed up to be living it. To experience it to the fullest. To live each moment to the fullest. The day I dont feel like it, is the day I am dead anyway.

Here is to another ending. And new beginnings. 

Destruction of construction

I wonder at times what drives people to be destructive? Look at the recent killings- Syria, Paris, and Malay. I deeply wonder how the motive is so strong. Like imagine you are angry with someone or something. To the extent that you really want to murder them. The moment I get this feeling in my head, I have already killed the person. I would probably even look at myself as a murderer. I may even feel guilty sometimes for thinking like that. But after a day or two, the intensity decreases. The mids space is used up by something else. So basically, the motive weakens in my case. That maybe because I am not considering the event itself not important after a period of time. Thats the assumption I like to live in else I wont be able to move on.

For a person like me, seeing Hampi destroyed little hope that I had in human beings. To be fair, it was killed long time ago. a life time ago. But life teaches you some stuff and you start believing in goodness again that maybe, maybe there is something good. Only to be knocked off by events like this.

Hampi is only ruins. Lots of art that was destroyed. I am a fan of Sri Krishnadevaraya even before my visit to Hampi. In his rule, fine arts and culture flourished. What threw me off about this in a good way was he really ruled only for 20 years. In 20 years he brought so much to history that after so many centuries we still remember the 20 year old rule. I digress though.

Everything that I saw, the fort, the relics, the temples, the courts, you name it, everything has a mark of destruction on it. Elephant figurines where trunks are chopped, tails are chopped, the statues where Lakshmi is chopped off from the lap of Narasimha.

I see it and I cringed inside. That someone wanted to destroy it so maliciously and violently disturbs me. That we have people like them still around us disturbs me. That I worry rape, murder, theft, and corruption is still rampant and shows no signs of reduction. Violence is always on the increase.

I dont even have the right to crib or write about this because I have not really contributed in reducing anything. I am a scared fool who will not be able to ever stand up against any of this and take a strong stand. This means I will never have the right really to crib about it. There goes another piece of me to death.

The Hampi diaries

If you know me, you would know that I will immediately raise my hand for a road trip. As long as I even remotely know the person I am going out with is safe, I am ok. As long as I know silence is on the agenda during a road trip, I am game. The trips make me think. Lots of things. Randomness.

Parents, brother, husband and the kid. The car and yours truly. All of us started off from Hyd to Hampi at around 7.30 AM. Late by my dad's standards. :-) We should have hit the road around an hour earlier, left to him. But heck, how would you predict the potty time of the kiddo? On empty stomachs and slightly sleep laden eyes, we zipped along the first 50 Km driver by my dad. You should know him. He is a smooth driver. He is safe and he is also stylish (well- he is my dad, d-uh!). We took the first stop for breakfast at a nice drive in on the highway. Bangalore highway is beautiful. Wide and smooth roads. We hit the road again to reach catch the Mahboobnagar- Raichur road.

After a few kilometres off the highway was a 2 lane road. Basically single on one side so we started trudging along slowly, yet steadily. The drive to Hospet took us around 7 hours with no lunch break. We booked into Royal Orchid and had a light lunch/snack. The family that we are, we usually do a patel trip. So we touched upon Tunga bhadra dam. Little K was thrilled beyond limits when she saw the musical fountain. She almost started dancing to the fountains. :-)

The next day an entire day, we dedicated it to Hampi ruins. How I felt about Hampi is another blog post altogether. We saw destruction. We saw ruins. We had lunch at a place called Mango tree. Supposedly the best restaurant in town. Unfortunately it's horrible. To my standards, its bad. And you can easily miss lunch.

We went back to the hotel around 6 ish. I am not someone who likes souvenirs. It carries a lot of emotions and I hate living in emotional clutter. It makes me attached to a place. That drags my life. My office desk for example is not personalized. My house is not. No photos. But for the first time in my life I liked some stone statue kind of things. I bought them. And gifted all of them. But I liked the process of buying them. :-)

On the way back, we chose another road. We went through Bellary. And touched Mantralayam. To be honest, I was'nt too interested in the mutt. If you are devotional or know Raghavendra Swamy's stories, you may find some solace in the place. So after my parents grabbed quick lunch in the mutt there (I cant eat in places like that- the snob in me can starve but eat in a place where I am not comfy in), we found our way back to Kurnool. Around 70 Km from Matralayam. It took us 3 hours. No kidding. It was absolutely horrible. Single lane roads which were muddy and were under construction and extremely bumpy. The moment we touched Kurnool and saw that 6 lane highway, all of us breathed a sigh of relief.

Kurnool Hyd is 220 Km. It took us 2.5 hours to reach Hyd. Easy peasy. It was beautiful and exciting. With my bro on the wheel, you should expect it. He is a master on the highway. Hitting the home mile was a much awaited event for all of us. You see it took us 12 hours on the road for us that day.

Road trips are interesting. Infact fun, when it's with the right people. I dont like to go on them if I know the agenda is bonding with someone. I would rather get off and walk. I dont like talking during trips. Maybe few times when I feel like it. Not empty chatter.

Here is to one more experience in my life.

The snob and I

I am snobbish. I had the access to some of the best hotels and clubs (hell yeah, the memberships were exclusive) when I was growing up. We were not rich. But most of my family had powers of office. I have seen them never misusing it. Infact I have not seen them even use it to the fullest.

I consider myself a hard worker. More than that, I bring my all to the stuff I choose to do. Thats an advantage I grew up with. I had choices and I made sure that I exercised them thru out to the fullest.

Today. I made a choice that perhaps was not right. It bothers me immensely that I did not pause. Makes me personally feel like a dork. Maybe I am a certified A grade snob. Today I know my hunch about me is true.

I promised to myself I will not tread into waters I have no business to sail in. Its not profitable. 

Manasarovar

One of my friends made it there last year. Said it is excruciatingly painful to do the trip. You need to train for it and you need to be mentally fit to take this up. It's not a challenge on your physical self. But you need to be prepared for eventualities and casualities like death too. Yes, death is a casualty out there.

So.. I pondered over it for a few days now. Yes or no? The problem with me is if someone throws a gauntlet, I will pick it up. I have to pick it up. But sometimes I wonder if that's foolish. I wondered and thought about this. I decided not to do it. Atleast not the next year.

I decided not to put my body through undue pressure. I did put it under the bus this year. It takes a bit of time to get over the tiredness. To be fair, my repair is still not done completely.

Hence... 2017? Maybe. Tough luck!

Today is yet another day

Another marathon. Imagine a work day where you are able to actually take 2 hours off from a busy working day to just go to the beach? Catch a meal with your very interesting company... Like a dream right?

I work at making them come true. I will. Life is fun.

Well not really fun, but alright. You know what I mean? It's a private secret, but indulging yourself every now and then have benefits. Next time you are there steaming your ears out, relax. Sit back. Think. Dream. And then run to make it true. It works every bloody single time.

Who doesnt have problems in life? Meh??- Nah! :-)

Here's to another marathon. Another day. Oh, and some more pride. Because today is a day well accomplished. I not only fked someone's happiness, I raped it too. There. I said it. In my view bullying is mental abuse. So... are you empowered enough to overcome it?

Princess DN- XIV

Yes. In real life, I dont have a title really. Didnt matter ever before. You see real princesses dont need one. They rule the world in general and their surroundings in particular.

I rule my life. I am a princess. Today a king from the other kingdom asked me why a commoner like me was questioning his rules.

Today the lack of title pinched me. All that I said earlier and they said earlier about these titles being overrated is wrong. Dont believe. No title, no respect. You just have to soak in all the rudeness that is possible because you are just a commoner. You are almost deserving this treatment for the lack of this title.

Oh my might might king, I am your dirty dirty pig. What can I do for you today?