Pigments of Imperfection

Some pick their nose, some can’t help but adjust their hair moment they see a mirror or a glass, some have to keep clearing their throat, some can’t live without useless fillers such as ‘infact’ ‘actually’ ‘emmm, Ya, but’ and so on, some can’t resist continuously cleaning and wiping their mobile, wrist-watch or glasses, some can’t help but scratch, fidget or blink. I can’t help but check half a dozen times if the padlock is locked properly.

 

I was supposed to pick up a friend of mine this afternoon and I was late. Rushed out of house and was locking my apartment. I kept my helmet and bike keys aside and was putting the padlock on. Turned the key and pressed the lock. Done. Emmm, not really. Had to check a couple of times before stepping out of complex.

 

I counted One, two, three. “Emm, yeah it is locked.” Take a couple of steps to left and I feel, I should probably check it once more because I’m going to be gone for like a whole day. I repeat the drill. And just as I’m supposed to scoot, my friends calls up to tell me he’ll be late. While on the phone, I manage to catch glimpses of these fellas across the building, sitting on chairs with legs on the railing- literally laughing at me.

 

I didn’t know how to react so I opened the lock again and darted inside. Huhhh….I was probably insanely angry and wanted to shout back at them and in a second I realized, I was the one to blame. It was embarrassing enough to imagine see someone jerk the padlock thrice to see if it was locked or not. I completely understood the reason behind the heart-full laugh those guys just had.

 

I killed half an hour and it was time to leave. I got out of the apartment. I could still see those dear onlookers across the building. Probably, there was an addition of a couple to the total. I had decided, turn the key, press the lock and scoot. Scoot like a thief. I did exactly so. And guess what, as I rushed to get down the staircase, I hear applaud. And just as I turned to get down the stairs, I received a standing ovation.

 

“Cheeky, smart bastards,” is what I must have gritted. But out came an embarrassed awkward grin.

 

Thinking bout it now, am still grinning, probably a lil more comfortably.

 

Well these are imperfections which make us humans. Just like the others, just like the ones across the building, across the road, across the globe. They put us into situations we don’t know how to react or handle. These things embarrass us but more often than not at our cost a dozen people smile, laugh and giggle.

 

I don’t remember my tenth grade marks. I don’t remember my first salary. In few years, I won’t remember how it felt to receive first promotion, but these incidences caused due to the imperfections are the ones that probably most of us are going to remember over a long time.

 

Neo 

What say

What did Pi say to Square root of -1



"Get Real"

How did it get back at Pi???
"Dude, Be Rational"

Drill

Well, these days we have drills and guidebooks for everything. From cracking an exam, impressing women, making million dollars sitting at your home, scamming, and corning to those safety drills and emergency evacuation drills. Our very nature and obsession to control and rehearse everything possible continues to drive me crazy.

Emergency alarm goes out, someone listening to Menson or MegaDeath at full volume also couldn’t have unheard the alarm. Half of them new exact time when the alarm would go out and rest knew anytime in next two hours it would. Half ready to evacuate and quarter of them checking their watches every five minutes and rest either staring at their liquid crystal displays and hitting keystrokes after keystrokes for greater good or because they were just as idle as me.

We run. We evacuate. Some take photographs. Some laugh. Some gossip. Some crib. Some get much awaited chance to strike a conversation. Some chatter on phone. Some watch. Some are still lost. I, I want to go home.

I can’t help but watch people. It is addictive I tell you. It amuses me to see how amongst thousands of people, they slowly start gravitating towards one another or in other words get repelled from some other ones and others. Folks up the food chain seem to settle down in a corner, checking if their latest Van Heusen didn’t catch some grease from the emergency evacuation, if the shoe polish is still ok, if the expensive scarf is still intact. Social butterflies just can’t seem to get enough of action. So excited they need to probably text it to their mates who probably work around the same complex. Disastrously good looking girls, I mean the ones who know that they make heads turn, start drifting to one side of the field. Gossip junkies won’t let a minute go to waste. On the other corner, you see folks desperately waiting for their next nicotine stick, discussing if it would be alright to light one while the guy on the stage explains types of fires and demonstrates how to extinguish fire. You see the working class, the cleaning and maintenance staff hanging by the fence, probably looking at us and smirking, bunch of so called intellectuals dressed as such a real life misfits. Security doing rounds, who has probably worked hardest for this ten minutes evacuation drill. Eternally lost, cynical, sarcastic social misfit like me standing by the side and watching…

Watch as thousand people breathe and sweat and yap in the small front yard. Stare as they laugh or frown.

What they or no one understands is when one of the five elements decides to pull the switch. You are not going to gravitate, you are not going to drift, you won’t have time to laugh or frown. You will run. Crowd won’t have a face. You won’t know whose lips, ears, groin or eyes you’ll be stamping on. You won’t know whose blood you have on your Ritu Kumar or Peter England. When smoke fills up the floor and you can’t see the ones working a few cubicles away, you won’t hear any voices but just the chaos. And the thing about chaos is, it’s fair. It doesn’t have a face, doesn’t leave one behind, just the scars.

At least then we won’t drift socio-economically or pseudo-intellectually.

Now, that’s a drill. We just need a push.

Neo

Crash

It seemed like just an ordinary day. Cousin was leaving to go back to his air-base at Bidar. We had had a nice weekend. We partied a lot, some heart to heart talk took place, blew a bit of money and we were all set to bid good-bye.

I was riding him back to bus stand.

An annoying truck was leaking water from its top and was spitting unbearable black smoke and incidentally we were riding bumper to bumper behind that truck. If you ask me now, I would still say, “I thought I would make it, just in time. Overtake the truck before any vehicle came from the other-side and sail smoothly after that.

I agree I made a dash and what I didn’t account for was, the truck might just shift a bit to its right and the girl in a green top and brown skirt walking close to sidewalk, might just decide to swing her basket right to left and drift towards the road. As we dashed closer, I realized it wasn’t to be, I won’t make it.

I screeched onto my breaks. Emm…we were in moderate speed and there were enough tiny granular particles on the road to skid the bike when I clinched onto breaks.

I don’t know what exactly happened. I fell on my right side, with the bike, sliding a little bit further into the mud towards side-walk. The whole thing came to stand-still for me when my helmet covered head rested on the ground, with my body parallel to fallen bike and nose right opposite to spinning front wheel. That was the moment when I closed my eyes. Exhaled and realized what had happened and then opened them again.

I could see a couple of men running up towards us. I didn’t know yet what had happened to my cousin. I found out later he had a tiny bruise and he was a little luckier, he didn’t fall down. No, my entire life didn’t flash before my eyes. One is too shocked in a situation like this for the whole life to flash by. When you fall down and the shock waves pierce through your tattered clothes, bruised skin, hampered tissue layers and through your bones, up until your senses, you often take a while to realize what has happened. Until the blood from my elbow dripped onto my sandals, I didn’t realize I was bleeding. But when I did, it was time to hit back home asap and clean up.

Well, bleeding didn’t stop, we rushed to hospital. As I walked limping towards Dr. Bevin, he probably knew, there was something up my sleeve. Well, there was, a bleeding wound. I couldn’t even shake hands properly; he just raised his eyebrows and adjusted his specs to have a better look that meant I spill the beans…

He asked me to go to ER and requested a nurse to clean me up and he shall have a look.

Turns out, I’ve a puncture wound. To help me understand, he said “It is like a Gun shot. Just that you went and jumped on the stand-still bullet (foreign body) at the speed of 30-40kmph.”

I’m waiting now, to hear from the Surgeon on further course of action.

As much, I’m worried about bruised knees, tainted black-bluish-reddish shoulder, my puncture wound, worried but angry parents, pending projects at office, solitary confinement in my apartment for coming days, I’m more worried because of the certified rash driver that I’ve become.

Neo

Pact

The word is perfect and spelled correctly but it is incomplete with out the preposition, The Pact. And this can be understood by those who have made the pacts and stood by them and by those who made the pacts when so few owed so much to so many, pacts made with a smile on the face when the other person asked nothing less but simply the world out of someone else and by those who didn’t mistake the meaning of this word for sacrifice.

He understands the word ‘as well.’

Like very few, he left most important things to destiny. Or as they say to the chance… He wasn’t the rounder who would let himself land up in a mess and wait on the river card to be drawn to decide his fate. But he did wait for destiny to play its last hand.

They met by chance and he believed if they were to meet again, they would anyways. At a stage in life we all feel ‘we’ve been there and have done that’ and he didn’t want to fight that feeling but he didn’t mind waiting until the chips fell where they were supposed to. He ran into her again and surprisingly they kicked off just as well. He treasured her smile just as much she loved his presence.

Coming closer to each other is the journey unfortunately each individual has to cover with their own vehicle, driven by their will and fuelled with emotions and commitment. He could see her balancing act of managing her feet on wobbly stones with her hand stretched out. But by then he had already jumped into the lifeboat with just the bare minimum.

Time passed, days gave way to the weeks and weeks to the months. She found her land; her hand was still stretched out but out of obligation. All he had were stormy waters and she now asked for mountains. He didn’t want to lean on until the fall. And he chose not to.

He didn’t utter those three magical words even as he walked her home for the last time. He made a pact that night, never to lean on, never to mention it what he whole heartedly meant, not until she read it and destiny heard it.

Wise people could break the rule and call it an exception and get away with it. However, even today as he heard from her after ages, even a person as insane as him couldn’t be a traitor to break the pact. Could he be?

Neo

Wage your wars but never fight your battles

Hey folks, I’ll be honestly confused as I’ve been all through out my posts. This sentence (Wage your wars but never fight your battles) could be a pseudo-intellectual wisecrack or it could really develop into a write up. It has been doing rounds in my head but somehow couldn’t get too far on paper.

Why don’t you drop me a line or two as comments as to what ripples this line creates in your mind. If it strikes any chords at all, if it means or hints towards anything at all…

Would be really nice…

Waiting to hear from you …

Neo

Strum

Just the sound of that word is elegant enough to remind you of some things.

It is surprising though that you can’t use that word otherwise. You need to strum a string instrument. It is like this, you either drink the water in the glass or you don’t. There is nothing like trying. You either strum or you don’t

And with guitar you can’t help but adjust the body of it on one of your thighs, grip the guitar, move your left hand gently over the frets and sparing bridge your right hand settles near the sound hole and even before you know, you’ve strummed the guitar.

I remember, someone tried to teach me how to play guitar and I also remember someone telling me, if it isn’t in your blood, it just isn’t.

Having seen the cool dudes strum a six string at Barista and have the girl they wanted, I’ve wanted to learn the guitar for various reasons. To impress someone, or to make a point to someone, to prove someone wrong, for being able to play the song someone once played for me or even for the plain kick of knowing how to play at least one instrument. There are so many, I can’t count.

Of all the reasons one that never left me was to be able to communicate my self, to express without any words, to seal smile, depression, anger, hate, pain and love..seal all of them in chords and play it, say it, express it.

I am still stupid enough to think that someday, I’ll put my own rhymes to a tune. I’ll play well enough that I’ll not have to utter a word. Some day, I’ll watch people playing invisible guitar from the stage, some day I’ll learn how to make mere piece of wood n metal strings an extended part of your body, someday I’ll know…

But until then it isn’t like picking up the glass and drinking water. It is a distant dream, perhaps too good to come true, perhaps am just a coward to go after something for the simple fear of failing or feeling like a dog, you know, a dog won’t know what to do if it actually caught the car it was chasing, maybe much better you enjoyed the chase.

Ahhh dam it, what the hell, none in this café has a spare guitar on them.

“Dude, cm’on can’t you get me one? Just for now…”

Neo