'Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is not that witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for
the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown." -Herman Hesse.

There is a thirst in me, unquenchable like a forest fire. The older I grow, the stronger it burns and I don't know how to douse it. Devouring every tree in the forest, it just needs more to grow fiercer. It maybe the longing for permanence and perfection that keeps me thirsty. A sense of permanent dissatisfaction with the chores of mundane life pervades everything I do, and I can't tell what's missing. It's really difficult to satisfy someone when he can't tell what he wants. I can only guess that it's the ultimate goal after achieving which there is nothing left to accomplish. Until the thirst quenches, I will keep running like a mad man, trying to find permanence in the fleeting events of the boring life, where happiness comes to you like a bird and flies away before you could notice how beautiful it was. I don't want to become a Nihilist and I hope there is more to life then running meaningless races until I run out of breath, literally.

As India celebrates it's republic day, I celebrate 1st day of the 27th year of the existence of my body. It has done a good job till now of carrying me around other than going through a little bit of wear and tear. Though, that is expected when you are carrying 1000s of lives of baggage inside you. It has been a successful life so far because I have been able to sit still for 30 mins and feel my body dissolve into the clothes and feel it radiating as it fused into the room. As with all people who earn a living out of thinking, it's difficult to stop thinking, but I try. I hope it didn't happen because the circulation of blood was obstructed in the whole body, as it happens sometimes with my legs.
        For about a year now, I had Van Gogh's starry night on my desktop, I put it up as the wallpaper then because it struck a cord with me. I didn't try to understand the abstraction of the painting then, but today when I looked at it after having felt my body disappear, I saw that the sun, the sky, the moon and the stars in the painting are not distinct. They are all fused together by the invisible hand of the painter which had painted it all. There is a certain boundary and the dark large bush, that separates the houses and the village from the sky, but then isn't that why we are born as humans, to transcend it?
      Of late I have been doing a lot of work for the first time in my life and I have to find time to do some reading to release this stress in addition to the one accumulated by the longing for everything that I don't posses. Eknath's Passage Meditation and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras have been helped me well so far.

"The new-born child does not realise that his body is more a
part of himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his
toes without any feeling that they belong to him more
than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees,
through pain, that he understands the fact of the body.
And experiences of the same kind are necessary for the
individual to become conscious of himself; but here there
is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally
conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism,
everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as
a complete and separate personality. The feeling of
apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is
not always developed to such a degree as to make the
difference between the individual and his fellows
noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little
conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the
lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness:
their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are
only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common; you
will see them on Whit-Monday dancing on Hampstead
Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club
windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is
because of them that man has been called a social animal." --Of human Bondage, Somerset Maugham

If the world doesn't end in 2012, I won't die single, for my parents have decided to find me a girl in 2012 and have me tied to her leash in 2013.
They asked a funny question, what kind of girl do you want? Does anyone want anything less than the best? It's not what you want,  but what you do with whatever you get, that matters. Now what bothers me is thinking about a youth wasted without flings, love, relationships and affair, and the inability to distinguish between them for lack of experience. Still wondering which one of those words would fit best between Gaddafi, the dead dictator playboy and his Amazon guards.  I hope my would be doesn't overwhelm me with her experiences. But even if she does, I won't mind because I know that virtue is not the same as lack of opportunities. But then at the back of my mind I would still get some sadist pleasure if she didn't have opportunities or didn't want them, of course I am not going to know about that till someday we fight and she spews venom.
                                          Like most other festive occasions, this Diwali I have found company of some viruses and I have been generous enough to attend to them by taking sick leaves and laying on my bed throughout the day. Among other things I also went through Kalidasa's Shakuntala, and I can't help but admire his ingenuity at depicting with a imaginary fable the story of a Kind who screwed a forest girl and forgot her until he had no children from his other wives other than his bastard with her whom he desperately needed to pass on the reigns of his kingdom. Kalidas has been able to prove the kind virtuous and praise him in spite of that, I guess he got paid to do that. If there is ever a time I have only bread at my home and no butter, I could go over Shankuntala and eat my bread with delight.
                                        Finally the share market is showing hope and if the experts are to be believed I should be in a position to retire in the next 5-7 years, when the markets would be trading at 2x-3x, but i guess the greed of my wife and children and the lack of plan B that I find motivated enough to follow, won't allow me.
                                       And yes now I remember, I would like a girl with big, guileless eyes like that of a deer that I can read like a book, because I am not used to spoken words.

I have been reflecting on my life lately, it has turned more or less like that of the people plugged into the matrix , while they are being used to produce energy for the machines. The world they live in is just to keep them entertained while they get exploited. I guess that's the feeling all purpose less people get, when they are smart enough to see through the veil of entertainment being framed for them. And the ones with a purpose are too busy to think about all these things.
                                                              I get plugged into virtual entertainment more than real, but it's a veil nonetheless, just that it's easier to see through than the real one. Sometimes people advise me to go into the real world and not be hooked to the computer all the time, I wish I could point out to them that they don't see they are hooked on to the world through their senses. But I don't, who wants to be called insane.
                                                              There are two times I get hooked into the matrix virtually, once in the office where I produce code for the machines, and once at home where the internet entertains me to get ready for the next day at office. In between there are other times where I am hooked into reality through my body, by the beautiful sights, voices, tastes and   tactile contacts. And then there are times when I unhook my mind of everything and go into sleep, because after a long day you get overwhelmed with so much of farce. Sometimes this unhooking happens when I am awake, and leads to rants like this one, where you are forced to reflect on existential questions. Today's rant probably is provoked by the death of Steve jobs. "An achiever and visionary like the world has never seen"  quoted the newspapers, in eulogies for a successful toymaker to entertain the people  trapped in the matrix.
                                                            Of course there have been millions who have come and gone thinking the same things, compiling their findings and answers in the scriptures, but when you cant actualize any of it and can't get out of trap, even they looks like a farce. What was god thinking when he decided to send so many men into earth again and again, he must be playing a big joke. But it's worth giving a try to see what it feels like to be that all powerful creator, and I guess that's why we keep on living and create our own worlds in our own tiny minds.

                                                               

I don't understand how people numb themselves watching some sports that are so dumb that they can't even keep a 5 year old entertained. If I were to list the the three most wasting of these sports, where people are spending painfully exorbitant amounts of valuable time and money, they would be these:
1) F1 races:  The cars go round and round,  it's like a video game, and nothing eventful really happens unless all of them are at the finish line at the same time, or a major accident with smoke and fire happens. If you are in a stadium watching this, all you hear and see is the drone of the cars passing by you at a lightning speed for 1sec or in a lap of 10 mins.
2) Golf: I never could understand the point of putting a ball in a hole you can't see, but any ways rich men like it. Perhaps because they are tired of putting their balls in holes they can see. There is absolutely nothing to watch if you are seeing it on a TV, other than the lush green gardens where they play it.
3)Cricket: This one is a gay man's game. 50% of the time through the game the camera's focus is on the baller rubbing the ball on his groin.
25% it is at the faces of fielders and batsmen. Most of the time the batsmen just adjusts his groin guard. Then there is 15% of time spent on the audience, where you see some hot chicks, you would want to have. The 10% is the actual game where the ball is thrown and the good shots played. This could of course be covered in the 30-40 mins of highlights.The country is mad about it and you are an out caste if you are not,so you got to follow the game.

A nation corrupt to it's core,
sold by it's leaders like a whore,
It's people divided in two:
The few who can buy,
and the rest who may die.
Consumed by consumerism,
drugged with hopes of pleasure,
as greed tries to buy itself out
and grows, it's men are blind
to the suffering of the fellow countrymen
who live like animals in a ravaged farm.
Scrounging for food and shelter,
raging in violent fury out of frustration,
they are annihilated as internal threats.
But the nation grows tall over corpses,
driven by the bewitched middle classes.
Then the fest of elections comes,
false promises and cash galore.
The hungry get food for a month,
and sell their votes to the pimps,
who come back in power
to sell the nation like a whore.

The earth has scorched for a summer long,
fields dry and people forlorn.
Now that the rains have come,
the countryside rejoices in celebration.

Drops of rain fall like little gems from heaven,
as the evening sun shines on them.
Sometimes pelting hard in atonement,
for having made us wait so long.

Dead leaves of summer make way,
for the seedlings new.
And the desolate bare tree trunks,
with new born leaves dance and sway.

Sometimes god is in a mood for fun,
and he drizzles tiny snow like drops,
it's like sitting in a barber shop,
waiting for your hair to be cut.

Sometimes in his fury  he sends tempest,
he floods the rivers and causes unrest,
people made homeless and helpless,
he inflicts penance for our collective sins.

Good or bad the Monsoons end,
and comes the splendid Autumn.
Year after year the monsoons depart and arrive,
but we live lives like it's all ends as we take leave.

There was lightning in her blink,  as she coyly looked down
and her black eyelids crossed the whites of her eye,
There was a glow on her cheek of healthy pink,
and the lips were half closed like a red rose ready to bloom.
There was innocence in her words like sweet lime.
A smile of content satisfaction told all about her happy life.

Tresses  black and long swayed with her behind,
as she walked with the gait of a deer in the wild.
Her curves buxom like clouds in the sky,
ripe with rain about to come down.
A skin golden like the evening moon.
She was beauty to be cherished  till doom.