Of Kings and Paupers

Why do they want me to go away from your life now ?
After two years of [friendship] why are there people who think it important to interject and say this guy must go.  Ever met people like these who hate you to be happy, content and calm as the summer sea because their own life is all warped.  Happiness is a state of mind - cannot be generated, it is the sum of all your life experiences.  When I was 32, brash bold and outgoing 'read rich, I was happy because people looked up to me and couldn't tell me on my face what they thought of me, they had to like me.  Had made my first million around this time.  And then things turned and turned and kept turning till they had me on my knees.  I could have gone down like all the rest of them but I [chose to fight].  With very little finances 'read money I took to the streets, living the pre-medieval way, out every day and scavenging for food in whatever I had.  As the gods may have it, I still had an aging car, the maruti suzuki zen petrol edition which I could ride.  There was no one who would touch me, they just left me on my own and I was left unhappily wondering and ruminating on where I had gone wrong.  I hated the thought of being [alone].  Hadn't I always had people with me.  Now there was no one.  Fought my mind into doing something, into remembering the skills I had, called a million people on my own, all cold calls trying to get my finances going.  Nothing worked. No one helped.  Forget him, he never existed in our lives, replaced by somebody else who walked the in line. That is what really kills a man - no money, and it is really a different ball game then suddenly balancing no money with your self respect and esteem.  So what would you do ?

I have stolen big time to keep myself alive and not let go of my ego, to not beg and crawl infront of people I hated at that time.  I guess it is ones own decision or rather there is no decision, these are things that god takes care for you, when you have hit the absolute abyss in your life HE tells you what to do.  Thank him for the people you meet who show you the path.  With no one to help you, no life going - there is no right or wrong, only the will to survive and not let your soul down.  " I will not [crawl and beg]".  It took no time for the pretty young things to disappear, in no time all my well wishing relatives were gone.  The realities of life hit you hard and then comes the dampner.  Was it really me who earned all that money ? .. I am a survivor, money has never been top of my priorities.  Give me a budget to manage my life and do just that.  I have seen life like none of my peers or even juniors will ever will, atleast I hope they never will.  Mostly this charade of strength is all fake till you become the fall guy.  I don't want any one amongst my friends and well wishers of today to ever be where I had been for atleast 7 years.  Came out of the desolate swamp of loneliness and desireless living some time back and came out of it like a rocket, with more direction and focus than I have ever had my living life.
"I am OK ......"

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ALL IS WELL

Remember Three Idiots the movie, and what people thought of it as movie.  Everyone thought it was remarkable and I thought well, its remarkable alright because the whole movie is about "miracles do happen".  If you are an Indian then miracles happen almost everyday.  Remember that visit to the hospital when so many people came to visit the doctor, and you were like wondering where did all these people come from.  Well my dear friend, they came because they wanted to know if you were all OK.  Imagine a person in a hospital read overglorified five stars if nobody is around when you are ill.  People team around you like worker bees around a queen bee because they want to know if "All is Well".  I always remember the old hindi song " Jo bhi pyar sey milla, hum ussey key ho liye".  After all life is too short to search for old friends.  So whoever you meet with love is a friend, my dear friend.  I have turned a cynic towards the late half of my life.  Turned 40 two years back, and started to wonder if anyone even takes critical, cynical people too seriously.  A dreamer they love, somebody who gives them positivity and dreams to take back home.  The dream merchants are all there, where they churn out dreams after dreams, all so real, or should I say "reel".

I confess I am not much of a dreamer nowadays, I only dream while I am awake.  Logic would dictate that, that means I am sleeping soundly most of the times.  Another song that comes to my mind "Days are Passing quickly now, Nights are seldom long", does the signify another milestone in my life.  It turned when I got married at 22, then it turned again at 32 when I was certified a misfit and again at 42 it takes a turn, don't know for what, except the only thing I realise is "that my best days are yet to come".  Do you realise how intrinsic songs are in our life.  Absolute mood busters, you wanna feel good take the ones that play on local FM channels everyday and on the other hand if you want to bust your good mood look up some old classics on youtube.  Beatles played an enormous part in bringing up my generation, you can well imagine all boys and girls in large sized goggles and sporting wide hemmed bell bottoms and tight fitting T-shirts jiving to "She loves me Yea Yea Yea".  Can you believe it, I formed a part of this group too.  I laugh my head of when I realise that I could have been carried away by such things as attitude and thoughts of who wore what and talked what before I made friends.  Imagine, if you didn't have a cool set of sneakers I wouldn't be seen with you.  What a joke matey !! .. ain't it ?  I believe that we are ignorant when we are young and even more ignorant as we grow older .. best left unsaid what I feel about myself today except that if there is a way to change then that is the way we must choose.

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Its My Life

Have you ever had the experience of being told what to do by the absolutely most ignorant of people.  I don't want to sound judgemental yet that's what I felt when I was told how to manage my love life by somebody who was divorced, not connected with his kins and family and as few friends that I could count on my fingers.  There will be a lot of occasions when I have done exactly what I shouldn't have, despite knowing the suspicious antecedents of the people advising me I have gone ahead and followed their advice and nothing has accrued, I have only lost money, friends or face.  Take the instance of calling up people that I have had a falling with, why do I persist in thinking or calling them, they have played no significant role in my life yet I call them knowing fully well that either the call will not be picked up or there will be a another fight around the corner.  This is such a duh thing to do, and I think I am a reasonable intelligent person with enough intelligence to understand where I am not wanted.  Isn't it simple to understand, go where you are wanted !!

For so many years I have been following what people have wanted me to, their dreams, their desires, their advise and believe me even on what I should be wearing and eating.  You might say what "even eating and wearing" .. no ! I haven't done that ever.  Well, do you remember the gift that somebody gave you and you wore it so that the person wouldn't feel bad about it or the ill fitting clothes that I wore when I was a kid simply because there was no money for new branded clothing.  So clothes were inherited according to the sizes of the people who wanted to wear them.  My maternal uncles clothes were passed on to me in legacy.  Fabulous ain't it, imagine if my father hadn't told me about the incredible "softy ice cream" I might have grown up to eating home made "Ras Malai" and loving it.  Cultures are imbibed into us by our parents and family even teachers.  They make us into what we are and who we are as kids, and if we continue to live listening to their advise then that's who we are exactly, our parents/family/teachers. 

However if on the other hand we choose to cut off from them and choose to live our life on our terms then we surely are ourselves.  That of course is assuming that you will not be the first and you will not be the last in any endeavour.

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Love me or Hate me

Dear Friend, Last I met you there was a buzz in the air, the birds, the bees, the flowers everything was humming with energy divine.  The coffee was just the right shade of bitterness, the croisants were crisp yet soft and crunched against the teeth and then melted in the mouth.  I still remember the sinfully delicious chocolate brownie we shared.  Friend I miss the moments of peace and happiness that we share, of oneness with our true self.  Look forward to such moments which are but a flash of light against the darkness of life.  Its been a long time I got on to chat, I used to love it, the feeling of anonymity till the light descended and it was revealed who was who. I have admired the courage that my online friends have had in dealing with life. i know how hard you struggled to figure out a job or even studies.  Remember the difference between light and darkness.  Your honesty has been a lesson divine for me, the understanding that dawned on me even more amazing.  In a lot of ways this post has been inspired by the honesty and truthfulness as well as the hardwork done by you.  I remember the nights I spent listening to music and surfing the internet.  Some say "you become what you think" and truly I have become the person I wanted to be because of you.  There was time I surfed the net listening to "Song Sung Blue, Everybody Knows One" and met you my dear friend.  The other night I was playing "Tum Ho Toh, Gaata Hai Dil" and I met you again my friend, and then wasn't it just yesterday when "Jaaney Woh Kaisey Log The Jinko Pyar Sey Pyar Milla" and touche' ..........

The Truth must prevail, I believe in you stranger more than I believe people I have know since my birth into this world.  What is it about relations that make them stronger when you accept instead of judge.  I come to believe like you have always told me that I must make choices now, choose now and forgot what is not important for my soul.  The soul must be happy and it is happy listening to you.  So sing on Soldier because our lives are nothing but music, a fusion of different sounds that are pleasing to the mind.  YOU are what I believe in and so I must carry on wandering till I reach what you have sought for me.  Money is but ephemeral, but life is eternal if I find one friend who believes in me.
I believe in you, as you believe in me.

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Its a Trap

I am very much a morning person.  Every morning nature wakes me up early to show me its way and how much it loves me.  There is so much peace and beauty that abounds early in the morning.  The chirping birds, the green sylvan swaying trees, the absolute bliss that one gets out of sheer [aloofness] and no contact with other human beings.  This feeling of "man and the wild" is blissful and heavenly like no other feeling I have encountered my entire living life.  Every morning I wake up and carry out my daily routine and to my surprise just as I am having a bath my minds kicks into overdrive thinking thoughts, of work, of people and other such activities that I might perform during the day.  Unimaginable but true that human beings cause their own [realities] and with each touch with other human beings or their thoughts our lives change.

This morning I woke up 5:47 and thats atleast 13 minutes earlier than I normally do.  As I write this I am wondering what caused my body clock to skip before time.  Did I sleep early by thirteen minutes or did the medicine that I have cause so much bliss that my life has thirteen minutes of supreme escape.  As I slipped into the bath my mind was rubbishing all such thoughts, and as I tied the towel around my waist and walked into my room it was still alright, till I realised somebody had hung a shirt I had thrown away 2 days back in my wardrobe.  This shirt was a few sizes smaller so why would somebody do the mischief of bringing it back and hanging it.  My mind went a few minutes back when I had felt the toilet seat wet because of spilt water and then as I had brushed, my toothbrush seemed wet as well like somebody had used it.  There was something going on and I wanted to know what and why ?  Its this imperfectness that causes me to [lose my cool] and I almost lost it, taking my temper out on the wardrobe door.   I had had [friends] come over last night so could somebody from amongst them, or was it just my imagination.  Last afternoon I had spotted that somebody had peed and left without flushing the toilet.  I should have been livid then but had just quietly left it at that.

Yesterday !!! .. oh how it affects my tomorrow or errr today as you may put it.   Yesterday, I had managed to somehow retrieve the situation with a very dear [friend of mine].  Thank God ! I didn't have to fight with her.  Under normal circumstances I may have got angry with her but then these aren't normal circumstances, every morning I have to get up and fight all the way with life.  I feel scared sometimes and lonely other times, I might be the only one who feels this way amongst this teaming civilisation.  I do love my friends and I hope that I have been [faithful] to them and continue to be true to them.
This life makes me lie and be deceitful.

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Is HE for real ?

The travails of [aloofness] follow me everywhere I go.  Is this world for real ? I search for him everywhere and can't find him.  Is HE for real ? I mean does this guy even know what he means to me, he vanishes at the drop of a pin, says that I affect him in ways that keep him disturbed for days.  I can't help it if I love him so much or can I ?  My life, well it has been an ordeal with [death] for as long as I know.  From the day I was born I have struggled to keep afloat me and my family - a bunch of derelicts who can't take care of themselves forget about me, my father had to be taken care of the last couple of years of his life, he passed away when my life was just budding to aspire.  He breathed his last and I have died a million deaths since then.  When I was young he was the one person who took care of my needs, emotional and financial, I looked up to him like a follower of some saintly peer.  I have always loved him and still miss him a lot.  I have not been well eversince, some affliction or the other has bothered me for the past 5 years.  Its painful and draining.  God ! why is HE doing this to me now ?

[Death] is the cause of all relationships going sour.  I was unemployed in 2003 when I jumped the twin towers of [RP-II], needed to feel strong, need to know that there was something in me that I could admire and love.  It did work, I became strong and grew stronger, my dependence on medicine became less and less.  My darling daughter helped, she was the only one who could keep this volatile man calm and peaceful.  She found it in herself to reserve a special space in her heart that no one ever could trample upon, and when I say no one I mean no one.  The space distinctly said .. KEEP OUT, NO TRESPASSING !!!! God helps those who help themselves and ofcourse have a few people who help them.  I moved on to start a computer sales and repair business, which didn't do too well but it kept me busy for 3 years, running an office and a house.  The office space was owned by my father, but there were people staying in the house of two stories above.  I would dive into the basement where my office was, sit in my cabin trying out different equipment and networking fundamentals that I had only read about till then.  I wanted to do MCSE and CISCO which I did later on.  But I was here to sell computers, laptops and printers and provide a service outlet for the products I sold.  Experimented with everything during this time, I had time and the inclination till I realised why fate had pushed me to this business, but thats another story, of BPOs and the economy of the country.

In any case, as I would get up every morning and reach my workplace I hired two guys, one a local handyman and the other a marketing person.  I still remember the day the marketing executive arranged a meeting between me and a gentleman from Toshiba who wanted to sell his laptops through my agency.  Basvaraj was hired and trained by me, he would look upto me as his mentor, a sharp brain as you would expect of a marketing man however you always do not get what you expect.  The Toshiba guy arrived with a few demo laptop machines and our meeting went on for an hour before Basvaraj pointed out that unless he left his laptops with us to show to our clients we weren't in a position to solve his problems.  I don't know what prompted the Toshiba guy to actually leave his two laptops with us, we were total strangers but he trusted us.  Our life changed after that, we would run to every client of ours with the laptops giving demos and arranging business meetings.  Toshiba did a huge amount of business through us.  Changed us and I think changed them too to an extent. That was Basvaraj, a keen sense and intuitiveness surrounded his every action.   Oh yes, and there was another guy who was a contractor with me, Rajesh, a young guy with a bike who would run everyday to the press of the buttons on my mobile.  Hardwork had got him to where he had a bought a bike with his own money or was it a bajaj scooter, my memory fades here, but I do remember Akaash as well.  Akaash was part of my sourcing team, he was employed with a showroom but sub-contracted with me whenever it suited him, selling me stuff from his showroom.  We sold atleast 10 machines that first month through him, a strong handsome guy who wore spectacles around his ears almost signifying the only weakness on his manly well built frame.  Akaash had a very strong sense of business and was a crook at heart.  He knew how to manipulate people, and therefore stood out as very different from the 6-7 other people I was employing at that time.  As time passed I grew to dislike Akaash for his cunningness and guile.  Trickery followed each deal with him now.  Once when I sold large quantity of memory sticks to the French Consulate, Akaash sold me a dummy and almost ruined the deal.  That was my first lesson, that in business there is us and them.  To be a part of us means to relate on all crucial aspects called as values.  Otherwise it meant letting lose a serpent into a paradise.  An inside job as you would say.  Business is in my blood now.
Well nothing ventured nothing gained.

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Crazy as a Bee

AFTER DEATH 2012
If only there was a synonym for craziness, hard to say if bees are crazy, but I must have been crazy to be born to a house with people who were recluses.  Their aloofness got them to a stage where they neither desired nor asked for anything more than my time whenever they were home.  I remember as a kid I slept, most of times atleast, wake up for my milk and bread or whatever was being served.  I liked the food that my folks ate more than the food that was prepared for me.  Their food had flavour and taste or was it just the fact that I got used to, maybe, too used to my food.  I m told that our hair is a tribute to the kind of food that we eat and my hair was long and silky.  I didn't smell of anything except my own natural smell.  Mamma was the one who gave me my sophistication and Papa my adventurous trait.  I would run around the house for hours around papa and he would pamper me endlessly.

Don't remember too much of my childhood but unlike most young ones, I had papa as my mother and father when I was small.  He would take care of my food and upbringing, even potty training was his introduction.  Later when I grew older he would take me places in his car, even remember once in a park how while playing I nearly ran him down.  I could run at top speed, loved grass and loved even more having a bath on my own in cold running waters.  Summers made me sweat and cold running water was a treat I looked forward to every evening with Papa.  It all depended on how was mamma's scheduled, she was busy, and to make up for lost time she would get great chicken and mutton treats whenever she was late.  I missed my childhood as I grew up, and then one fine day they left me for almost a year.  Mamma was gone longer and Papa came back earlier.  They had both changed, but their love for me had grown immensely.  Always Papa's buddy I could now look forward to long walks where we ruminated about life, sit and think.

I remember the day when papa saved me from this big stud who thought it was his moral right to bully anyone who came his way, bully, "my god!, he would have killed me had it not been for papa".  This happened 5 am early in the morning when we went for a customary walks, this brute tried to manhandle me for no apparent reason and thats when papa took things into his own hand and shouting abuses controlled the ogre.  I had never seen papa raging and fuming like that ever before in 9 years and it made my chest rise with pride.  It was wonderful sight, papa screaming and blowing hot air through his nose with his face all red.  Sight to behold indeed and these memories are etched in my mind, he really was my dream man.  Somebody who could be gentle and ferocious at the same time.  Ferocious if that threshold of patience was breached.  It seemed to never happen in my presence until this day when I actually saw him fuming like a bull with his feet scraping the ground and spewing dust all ready to take charge and blow anyone, who thought otherwise, out of sight. Shiver me timbers.

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The Pall Bearer of Gloom

[Jamaica] died december of 2011.  I knew she would, we had been escaping death for far too long.  I know I will too, soon, there is precious little to do here and nothing that permeates my mind so totally that I dedicate myself to it.  No cause and I am lost without her, I must admit.  She died a real painful death, renal failure, I wonder if it was because of the crap we ate while we were on the road or the streets that we roamed that had dirty, filthy, infected drinking water.  Afterall why would I make her drink distilled water, she was only a d*g.  I miss her, soon my dear baby I shall be with you.  I know I killed you and I must repent and pay for it.  My days are numbered here, thats why I am not allowed to think of her, only happy thoughts are fed to me, my folks have been real nice to me for the last 6 months that she has been gone.  I am allowed to take my medicine to ease the depression, EASE be damned, actually it makes my face look and my body feel cherubic happy.  Once the effect wears off then there is a feeling of nothingness, the emptiness is the cause of the restlessness I feel, I know that.  Not that I particularly want a solution for it, with no more feelings left, the vacuum if I wanted could be filled - I don't want to, I am alrite the way I am.  Is death dark and brooding ? .. I can feel the darkness within me, like a swamp slowly pulling me to the inexorable end.  Its dark and muggy, I am sweating and can't see anything, I feel weak not able to walk straight and HE asks me, do you want to come with me to which I reply "Yes".  Who can deny Satan, he comes for me the fourth, nah, the fifth time and I just don't have it in me to deny him.  Why ? where is the now famous quote of mine " My strength is my asset" ? Don't I even have the strength to say NO to the pall bearer.  No No No I scream but he just says "Hmmmmmm".

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Rise and Fall from Grace

Back .. the study on [ renewables and energy ] took its toll.  I felt ill and tired for a day, but I am back here with renewed energy and a new focus.  Been wondering so much about [death], you might think its the only thing on my mind.  But I have other things on my mind - like peace and loving [ RIP ].  Crimes, I did commit, oh and not normal ones, we are not talking about crimes of the carnal variety or love of mammon.  Come to think all this talk I try to weave on this post is all about getting to the point that is so hard to reach as it is the point of no return.  Its like getting stuck between a rock and a hard place, so if I get free I hope there is a pool of water at the bottom to fall into.  Saving grace is that I do really so want to write about it.

It all started when I was young and doing well in the city of Mysore, a lovely haven in the south of India.  Till then I had a sheltered life, living in the city of Delhi with my mom, dad and sis.  Mysore changed some things about me for sure, one I began to be counted amongst the educated elite of the country and two I picked up this habit Kleptomania.  I flicked 25 books from a shop here and shipped them to a woman in my life in Delhi as her birthday present.  How did I do it ?  Well, when a disease takes over your body, the mind is also affected.  I moved to Bangalore, another metropolis in the south, and again books were on my mind, what was it about them and this time it was Tom Peters "In Search of Excellence" that I jacked in my denim jacket to begin with.  Loved the book but I think my soul had lost the essence of its ability to read and assimilate.  I didn't know then but I was seriously ill because my ability to rationale what was right and wrong had been affected.  I just went to bookshops and picked whatever book I liked and walked out without paying for it.  What was I doing, was there a purpose, who for godsake was controlling my mind, I needed help then and now when I think of it there was no help at hand because I was looked upon as somebody who was a leader - a handsome fella with brains is always placed on a pedestal by a lot of folks.  By I needed help then as I needed help when I came back to Delhi and started this thing of stealing stuff from my own family, my cousins, from their houses - "God!! , where have you led me to and what am I doing".  The thought that occurs to me only now when I think about and repent.  Who would have thought that this tall strapping lad had such a mean streak in him.  He needed to be punished, to be brought back to his senses and how is probably another story that I will write in time. 

Suffice to say that I believe whatever crime we commit we pay for in this lifetime.  There is no afterlife only ONE LIFE TO LIVE.

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Renewables - Calling Earth, Anybody Home

AL Gore stated a long time back :

You look at the river,
The flowers and the bees,
the water as it flows along the banks
the wet grass and all of a sudden you feel
"Oh yeah I forgot about this"

I have been trying to get this message across to people for a long time, but I have failed everytime I have tried to do that.  I just didn't have the words to say what I have wanted to say.  My whole life just flashes by when I think "Oh yeah I forgot about this".  Nothing you would say, well, I have loved the rivers, green grass and trees, even the mud has made me happy slipping on it and getting dirty but what have I done to retain these things in the form I like them.  Nothing.  I was expecting them to remain the same year after year but they don't.  It gets hotter and hotter, muggier and muggier each year.  The dust and particulate matter in the air has gone up year after year.  So what happened ?

This post is about what I think happened and what must be done to prevent any more harm from coming to the earths environment.  See, the first point that caused most of the harm was the assumption which is still prevalent amongst people in power, read scientific advisors, that the earth is so big that we can't possibly have a lasting impact on it.  However the thing to remember is that one of the important things comprising the earths environment is the earths atmosphere.  The earth's atmosphere is so thin that we infact are capable of changing its composition and thus affecting the earths environment.  The suns radiation comes onto the earth in form of light waves most of which get absorbed by the earth and that heats up the earth.  Then some of the radiation that is absorbed is re-radiated back into space in the form of infrared rays and some of the outgoing infrared radiation is trapped by this layer of earths atmosphere and is held inside the atmosphere and that is what makes the earth livable.  Now heres where the problem sets in, if the layer of atmosphere gets thicker as it does with various pollutants that our emitted by us into the air then more and more of the infrared radiation gets trapped in the atmosphere causing the atmosphere to heat up called Global Warming.  The main culprit being the greenhouse gases.

Professor Roger Revelle was the first person in 1958 to start measuring the carbon dioxide in the Earths atmosphere and he did it for decades by sending up balloons from the middle of the pacific, collecting hard facts in the form of data with the help of his assistant. While this data kept showing that the carbon content was going up and up and up in the earths atmosphere, and I believe this data was available to the decision makers of the world, it was only in 1997 that the Kyoto protocol was ratified.  So many years of neglect had caused huge amount of damage to the earths atmosphere.

All this talk suddenly made me drowsy, dizzy with a back pain.  I m gonna take a break from writing and maybe discuss this more later on.

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The Urban Jungle

Many, many, many, many years back maybe about 10 of them,  when I wallowed in filth and roamed around like a vagabond in search of something I [fathom] now as attainable, I came across these towers of RP-II.  Though I still remember my favourite security guard at NIIT premises in IIT, Delhi was an old veteran named R.P. Singh sentimentally called R.P., the RP-II referred to here was Regency Park - II a famous residential location in Delhi NCR for residents with NRI antecedents.  People who had Salad and Garlic bread for breakfast and Snickers for lunch, cursed the ordinary Indians for not knowing how to drive in lanes and was immune to the castes and creed culture in India.  Little did I realise that in years to come I would join this angry band of causeless crusaders after my visits to London - read "Fun and more Fun" on this blog.

Any hows RP-II had these lovely towers shaped like a star with eight sprawling flats on each of its 14 floors except for the top floor that was a Double Decker penthouse.  I think I must have been a mad hatter for I roamed the floors of this partially inhabited tower with my baby Jamaica.  She was to be on leash as per the rules made by the royalty that ran the Residential Welfare Association but I think she was as "Crazy as a Bee" herself, hated the leash and would run on her four legs wagging her tail at everyone.  In many ways she was much more like the other residents of the apartment complex than I was, you see she too didn't understand castes and creeds.  She thrived on love, gave and took with gay abandon.  She made her friends and through her I came to know other owners at RP - II.   Though I don't think I owned Jamaica, she thought she owned me.  I would run up and down the lift to various floors hoping to find people who were as carefree as we were. 

Then something changed one night.  She made a curious sniffle to wake me up, licked me and when I opened my eyes inquiringly, told you she thought she owned me, she nudged me to the exit.  We took the lift to the 14th floor where there was an empty penthouse with a broken window next to door that allowed the door to be opened from the inside.  Seemed like somebody had already been through the routine of testing the locks of this penthouse and had been successful at that too.  I went in behind Jamaica to a ram shackled first floor.  The sitting room had clutter that the previous owners had been negligent about and a door that led to a room on one side and to the east was the door to an equally empty derelict kitchen.  When I tried to push open the door opposite to the kitchen it wouldn't budge.  It was locked from the inside. I am a 6 feet strong able bodied human being but the door just withstood everything I gave it.  Not used to failures, at least not during that phase in my life and after all I wouldn't wanna lose face in front of Jamaica who waited expectantly to sniff her way into a new territory, I looked at the window that opened to gaping fall of 14 floors to the ground floor.  If I could open it and climb up the narrow ledge with a very tight crumbling grip for my hands and tiptoe about 4 feet over thin deadly air, remember the free fall of 14 floors,I would be at the window to the locked room.  My mind was only thinking about the logic of it all when Jamaica virtually pushed me to the window.  I quickly climbed up the window looked out into the gap and froze.  The breeze was blowing up, it was a hot summer night and hot air rises and it ruffled my summer shirt.  Just weeks before a girl had jumped off her balcony in RP-II and it hadn't been a pretty sight.  Before my mind stopped working I quickly gripped the upper ledge with my two hands and stepped onto the narrow ledge beneath my feet and turned my back to "death" behind me.  Scrambled the 4 feet in the quickest of time that seemed the longest, what was I thinking then, well practically nothing just a need to get over to the other window on to stable ground of the locked room.  I think once you take the decision howsoever risky it might be you forget fear and get around to surmounting the seeming impossible.  I thanked God that I was wearing shoes, as I quickly jumped into the locked room through the open window.  I was trembling and panting and it had been the scariest four feet of my life.  Like a proud father I opened the door to the room from the inside and Jamaica rushed in almost knocking me off my feet.  As we traced our steps back to our flat on the ninth floor I would distinctly remember this momentous event all the rest of my life knowing now as I know that Death Doesn't Like to be Cheated.

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The Art of Aloofness

Its been a while since I have written anything here.  Life has ever since moved on.  The realms are all real, the unwanted advice of people still around somewhere me, I am still surrounded by the mundane and the pretentious - boring pepple doing their THING.  Yet I have discovered happiness.  I have learnt that everything has an answer.

I discovered today why my religion, which incidently I was thinking of losing till yesterday, is so critical of Hinduism - the majority thought process in my country.  That isn't so bad afterall, don't they say that good things come from the brink of disaster, if you don't lose your battle against it. 

Death never likes being cheated.  I defied it 8 years back, jumped across two buildings on the 15th floor a distance of some 6 ft with gravity pulling you down.  And ofcourse haven't told anyone about this to anyone either. Still shiver when I think of what I did back then even as I write it now.  Afterall I didn't do my death defying stunt for some personal gain, I did it because I thought it needed to be done, I needed to feel strong within myself.  Do you realise that it is probably more important to feel strong than be strong, though I don't deny that I d take both if I could.  Gone from strength to strength since then, but death has followed each activity that I have done ever since. 

Do I not relate to anyone or is it just Death that pulls me away from everyone - personal relationship, job, everything, except for one relation that transcends it all.  I know I am lonely in the conventional sense yet I am happy.  I have foresaken all my friends and even my blood relations.  Either sought their forgiveness for my transgressions or have forgiven everyone in my life.  Hope all of them move on now away from me.  Forgive me for even assuming that I had any right on them.  I am but a traveller finding more happiness in my journey than my destination.

I am Happy in my remoteness.

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