Pennies from Heaven

I have come to realize that I have a hypomanic disposition. It takes
a lot to upset me, but I can be happily excited with a wink! On normal
days I love being so dauntless and self-assured. But then there are days,
like today, when all the confidence and self-worth becomes a little too
much for me to handle and I wish there would be something to make me feel
just a little less agile. There are so many thoughts going through my mind
right now, so many things I want to write about, but they are too disorganised
and too transient for me to take a note of. The ego state of mine that is a
Psychologist would call this 'flight of ideas'. I just like to call it
a patternless canvas with too many colors to distinguish one from another.
But then, I am not complaining. I love it! The only thing that is worrying
me a little right now is that I am not even a bit sleepy and I have a long day
ahead of me, and knowing me, I may not remain in this state long enough to
sustain the whole day tomorrow.

Anyway, that is besides the point right now. In this moment, I am enjoying
Louis Armstrong like I never have before, listening to him with a totally
fresh feeling. This is one of those moments when I am trasported to another
world - a world of intellectual superiority, great aesthetic sense, chivalry
and sophistication. A world where people live by passion and not reason.
A world where there are no conspiracies, no malice, where everyone
is so deeply awed by existence that they don't think of anything other than
making it as beautiful as can be. A world that I have never seen, but experienced
in the darkness of my mind. A world that I have only now begun to share with people,
in the hope that it might be out there somewhere, but a world that I had been
living in for a long time. A world that perhaps is just a fabrication of my mind,
a mental anthology, plagiarised bit by bit from everything that I have read. A world
that perhaps I will always only vicariously experience.
How glorious was that man! He stirred so much in me! He was truly blessed I'd say
to have had a voice like that! And he did complete justice to it! And so he sings -
'Everytime it rains, it rains pennies from heaven! Don't you know each cloud contains
pennies from heaven. You'll find your fortune fall all over the town. Be sure that
your umbrella is upside down!'

Haha.. I can't stop smiling in my mind! I am bordering insanity! Perhaps I am overdoing
everything, but then it makes me ecstatic!

Pointless

This post is going to be completely pointless as I have nothing to say.
I am writing partly out of boredom, partly out of restlessness, and partly
because I just want to write whatever crap comes to my mind.
Well, I lost my cell phone today. Actually, I dropped it down the elevator
shaft. It seemed hilarious at the moment, and I unsuccessfully tried to
feel angry with myself. But it was so funny. It took me a while to feel
some sense of loss. And now, well, I have been made to stay back at home,
as my overprotective mother was apprehensive about letting me travel alone
late in the evening without a cell phone.
I see ahead of me a sleepless, lazy night - haha, and Louis Armstrong is
singing Lazybones to me right now - and a very long day tomorrow. Well, now
that it has come up, let me divulge you on how my ipod/ laptop always happens
to play just the songs that fit my mood at the moment. I sometimes very strongly
feel that your gadgets are not just machines. Over time, once you have spent
enough time with them, they begin to know you, get accustomed to your various
hues, and function to suit your needs. It's almost as if they're real people!
Take for example, my very sturdy former cell phone, which I miss terribly as I
write this. I, the clumsy person that I happen to be, drop my cell phone at least
five times a day. My baby was smart enough to know never to break! He (I am not
too much in favour of referring to valued things as 'it') did not even get scratched,
endured my battering unscathed!! Sigh!! Well, I guess I am too much in grief over my
cell phone right now to be talking any sense. Perhaps, I should just sign out...

To be Single...

In a recent struggle with my enduring and irrevocable singledom,
I picked up a long forgotten book from my mini (and much valued) library -
'Chasing the good life : On being single' edited by Bhaichand Patel. I had
bought this book in the super-feministic-self-sufficient-self-reliant-
egotistic-singleton phase that I went through in my second year as a
Humanities student in an all-girls college, as every girl in my situation
probably does. However, I never actually got around to reading it at the time,
perhaps because I was subconsciously afraid of the severely damaging
reinforcement that the book would prove to be to my feckless self-obsession.
I don't know what invisible force compelled me to pick up the book now, perhaps
the realization that my hopes for a man are only a flicker...

Anyhow, I randomly opened an article in the book and started reading it. It was
a woman's account of the emotions one goes trugh when suddenly found to be alone.
I could not relate to it much, except when in the end she writes-
'Of course, sometimes, not when you're down, but when you're soaring - high on a
phrase of music, or a piece of writing, or the antics of one of your dogs, or
some fragrance on the breeze - you want a partner. But somehow, no actual person
comes to mind - it's just a mental sketch of a composite creature, made up of the
nice bits of all the men that you know. Then the moment passes, and you stretch
luxuriously this way and that, quite smug and snug in your solitude.'
These few lines state my plight very well... those high moments when I read
something extraordinary, or listen to a song that transports me to another world
- and those moments are too many in my life - add to these the times when I look
in the mirror to see a fine looking young girl, and not just a face, but with so
much to say, and no one to talk to. It would be hilarious if it wasn't me!!!

But yes, at the end of the day I still bask in the glory of singledom. Perhaps, I
am not even capable of taking a man, what with all the barbarism that is inherent
to men as a species. In the last three years, I have almost been alienated to men,
and I have begun to enjoy it in a very weird way (no pun intended!). For there is
an unspoken and irreplacable comfort in sisterhood. Perhaps the reason I am still
so single, and most likely will remain for a very long time, is because I demand
the kind of intellectual sophistication, charm and gallantry that was found only
in the times of Jean-Paul Sartre and Frank Sinatra. And perhaps, I have accepted
that!

Living with Perfection...

We spend our lives single-mindedly chasing perfection... 
In disguise of happiness, or rightness, we are taught to chase perfection in
everything that we do. Perfect grades, perfect friends, perfect family, perfect
lovers, perfect jobs... that's all we seem to want. However, the very nature of
this pursuit is such that it defies its own fulfillment.

Perfection requires intense nurturance. It can only be achieved, if at all,
with a lot of effort and patience, and a fair deal of delusiveness, for in itself,
even perfection doesn't have a chance at existence. This quest, being almost
inherent, becomes the very reason for our existence. Hence, years on end are spent
on the betterment of one thing or another. When one commodity saturates with updation,
we look for another, not always out of necessity, but out of habit. Such is the circle
of life. Ironically, we go through it chiding and brooding over all the trouble and the
ostensive sensibility of it all... hoping for some miracle to happen, by the wave of a
magic wand, for eveything to fall into place. But it seldom does.

However, for a lucky few (or not), miracles do happen, life does adorn itself with
perfection. And then comes a whiff of confusion. For perfection had always been
just an idea, distant and surreal. All efforts had been invested in building it,
trying to give this idea a form, to make the surreal real. All the years spent were
spent with a purpose, a destination in mind. And now that the purpose is fulfilled,
and the destination in front of oneself, there is not much else left to do. And so,
one finds oneself aimless. It's nausea... in the face of perfection.

Perhaps that is how the pathology of the soul sustains. When left with happiness,
the soul fabricates reasons to be unhappy... when it achieves perfection, the soul
makes believe that something is wrong... By the time the input produces an effect,
one becomes so deeply accustomed to the state of dishevelment, that it is intrinsically
constructed, when not given to us.

Man, Machine, God - What's the difference??

A few days back, I was watching a show on TV about a group of Neuropsychologists
in the U.K who have induced Near Death Experience (NDE)
in a number of volunteers as a part of research on the subject. Being an aspirant of Psychology myself, I should have been 
thrilled at the news, but

all it did was to make me realize that advancing Science is only taking us farther
and farther away from the essence of being Humans, into a realm of androids.

Near Death Experience, for those who have had it, is a spiritually transforming event.
By making it a purely biological phenomenon, under conditions of high blood
pressure and some sort of chemical proportions gone awry that sometimes subsume 
when a person is critical, researchers are equating it with an illness. 
Before we know it, NDE will be rechristened as a horrifying
disease, like Thenatodelusionophrenia, and people who experience it will be put on 
medication for life, and be advised therapy to prevent any 'undesirable'
consequences of the event, for undesirable is what humanness is becoming to Science and its accomplices. 

Nietzsche said God is dead. We have killed him; you and I. True, we have, a million times. When Dolly was cloned, when test tube babies were 
conceived, when Genetic Engineering was invented, when hybrids were bred, 
when leather was invented, and now when NDE was slacked away as a physical 
phenomenon. 

I am not anti-Science, as it may seem. I regard the fact that Science and Technology
have made life a lot more convenient. However, I do feel that we have
invented all we need to. What we need is equal approachability of what is already 
known to us, 
to one and all. We don't need a couple of richest people in the world buying 
made-to-order babies, while scores of tribes don't even know how a child is
conceived. We don't need an air-conditioned nation, while hundreds of villages in
another part of the world have never seen a bulb glow. We are polarising into 
two extremes, one that is primitive and with every discovery or invention, is 
retracted deeper into deprivation. The other, where Man is becoming 
omniscient, and is fostering a will to control the rest of the world and its workings. 
In short, where Man is becoming God. Sadly, this latter world is the one that is dominant.
Sadly, we are headed to a world where no person will need to talk to another because
we will have invented a way to store every little thing a man needs in a chip. In a way, we are becoming primitive again, primitive among 
machines in lieu of plants. 
Primitive because we are disavowing the conventions of civilization; 
solidarity, compassion, humanity. 
Because we are becoming breathing machines. 

Men in Pink!!!

Our generation is a witness to a reversal in gender roles. Whereas
twenty years back, men were notorious for being chauvanistic,
dominating, yet committment - phobic and inaccessible, today we 
see these very qualities being fervently imbibed by women. Androgyny
seems to be the new thing, for men and women alike. Women today are
breaking away from traditional roles of home-makers, and are at par
with men everywhere. Not only are they more career-minded than ever before, they are seen to be venturing in not-so-traditionally-feminine jobs. Today, women are no longer only teachers or beauty 
consultants or PAs to big shots. Instead they are to be seen everywhere, 
and many a times, far ahead of men.

Howsoever, not matter how ardently a woman might seek this new 
equation between a man and herself, she still wants all the chauvinistic
charms in her man. Not only that, she also wants to be accepted and
respected in her androgynous role. She doesn't want to spend her days
catering to the needs of her man anymore, or rearing and caring for kids. She wants to hold a job, and wants an equal involvement from her 
man. But that is where androgyny stops for a man. A man who is
expressive with his emotions is called a crybaby, one who takes care to groom himself well is called a fag; 
a woman can disavow the painful saarees and chunnis, but a man who 
likes bling is tacky!!

Where does that leave a man? If he gives her woman ample space, she
suspects him of cheating on her. If he dotes on her all the time, she calls
him clingy. If he takes care to look good, she calls her feminine, if he
doesn't he's messy. If he doesn't tell her how much he loves her, he's a ?$%^@&*, and if he does, he's lovesick.
Who is to blame here? Is it man, with a compromised brain and very
confusing demands? Perhaps not!

Perhaps Freud was right when he said, "The great question that has
never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What
does a woman want?”" Perhaps this question will never be answered!!  

Contemplating about contemplation

Today as I woke up, I found myself faced with yet another one of the untimely and unusually generous showers that Delhi has been blessed
with lately. Such weather usually puts me in a contemplative mood, and
today was no different. However, today I wasn't thinking about the 
paranormal, or reductionism, or even ways to convince people to 
make shrines in honor of Nietzsche. Today, I found myself thinking
about thinking. I was Metacognizing!

As I settled myself next to my window, with a steaming cup of coffee, 

and Peggy Lee humming a tune in the background, I found myself trying to fathom the need and importance of thinking to me. My mind has
always been a clock that never stops ticking. I have spent years as an
audience to almost involuntary thoughts that keep screaming in my mind.
Involuntary, that is what contemplation has been for me. But somehow,
during the last few months, it became a calculated task, almost ritualistic. Perhaps it was idleness. Or perhaps a necessity for me, 
considering the path I have chosen in my life. But, amid the transformation 
of contemplation from something intrinsic to me, to something that was
now a survival mechanism, I realized that I had stopped to enjoy it. It 
became work, like everything perhaps does after a point. 

They say Philosophy is either a luxury, or a desperate attempt at
justifying the desolation of life, for those who recognize it. Nietzsche said : "The great majority of people lacks an intellectual 
conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for 
an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated 
cities as if he were in a desert." 
I find myself surrounded by people who go through lives doing everything they
 should when they should do it, leading lives they way they have been told to,
 the right way. I always wonder if these people ever even give a fleeting 
consideration to why they are doing it the way they are. Do they ever sit 
and wonder how life would be if they lived it any differently, or even if there
 is a way for them to do so.
All these people, they seem so happy in their existence, so content with
obeying their parents without questioning their beliefs, so content with
their wives and husbands and children, living up to the conventionalities
that have been fostered for so many years. And then I wonder for myself,
for the need to complicate my life by questioning everything I see, by trying
to tread a path that is all my own. But then, I know there isn't any other way
I would want it. Life isn't about choosing what you want' life is about choosing 
what you don't want. And I believe, I have made an informed choice of not 
wanting a life where I can't question.