Shifting Blame

The day starts as blank as this. You could make it anything. Or you could just push it off to tomorrow. The next moment, the next day, the next time. These are really our undoing. If this were it, if this were the only one, we'd certainly make something of it. But then the uncertainty of the next is also the certainty of being able to do something in it. So pushing off is all we do now. And that is something, if nothing. Because tomorrow will come, there will be us doing something worthwhile init. If it doesn't, then who could blame us for doing nothing now, for we never knew it would never come as promised. It is tomorrow's failure, not ours.

A little something

It would be good to spend your entire life making whisky in your backyard that you later share with your friends. Or rearing exotic fish that you either sell off or pass around as gifts. You could make it a life by just collecting honey in tiny pots from your own bee-culture that your neighbours would come and ask for. Or maybe just hand-crafting bicycles out of pieces bought from the market. Of course there’s no money in it. You won’t be doing it for the money but just for the kick you got out of it. Nothing fancy like playing guitar with the local rock-band or writing novels. But enough to keep you working elsewhere without worrying about your job once you are out of office. There will always be this small thing you come home to; or even find excuses to skip work if the fish aren’t doing too well or if it is the honey-gathering season or the whiskies are coming of age. And for fame, you will be this strange fella who lives on that side of the road and does this strange thing. But your friends will love you for the honey or the whisky that can’t be bought off the shelves. But the fame is not the point; or maybe it is. But only just. The point is, here’s something simple, small and totally personal that you could keep doing without worrying about the times when your joints will begin to groan or your face would be full of wrinkles. Out of a whole world-ful of possibilities, you are doing this really small, tiny bit but you are doing it oh so well and without really looking around to see if others are doing it better or getting paid more for it. You would just continue doing it and call it a life.

mind over time

My mind is full of suspended snowflakes against a quiet, dull grey sky; full of long walks to school to quick lifts back home behind strangers’ scooters thumbed down; of staring at that old, broken down building in the distance at night; of stealing my brother’s candies and of so much more that I am afraid of the future that is just waiting to notch up more memories. I am scared that the new ones will overwrite those of my childhood, maybe make them look trivial and small compared to the ones closer and fresher. I don’t want to go back to looking at snowfall as a new experience, to the road to my school as a hike that I will want to record in a camera. I want to go back and see them as photographs I have always had, as a movie I keep running again and again in my mind, as a friend who’s house I always pass by and only now and then bump into, but knowing he was always there to call whenever I wanted. Does the future hold memories that will change all this?

one word too many

The more words people add to their vocabulary, the less they start making sense. Words are picked up not to make things clear, but to obscure them. It’s like a weapon that was supposed to protect but turned into a killer. In conference halls around offices, in schools and in politicians’ speeches, in court room orders and bureaucrats’ notices, in doctors’ diagnosis and in our conversations, words are being employed very effectively to say anything but what really is. The need to be untruthful may have been the single most driving factor behind a vocabulary’s development. We were doing fine as 2-year olds. Saying yes and no. Asking for this or that, telling what we liked and what we disliked in plain and simple words. And then as we grew up we discovered we could presume, we could hazard a guess and put things mildly. We cloaked simple affirmatives and negatives under layers of words. We say a lot when we want to mean the least. Like now, when all one is trying to say is to keep things short, simple and true to their meaning.

For A Second

The present is a cross between a rear-view mirror and a crystal ball. Something’s led us this far and this is what will lead us on to whatever we end at. Today is a result and today is raw material. Today is what is and it is what will be. It was formed out of all moments to this moment and it is just a moment in a pile that will be the next. It’s forming, it’s breaking, it’s adding, it’s dropping in on several other moments and forming a shape but only for a moment. And the very next moment it will be part of an unformed picture. It is the present and it is just there for this long and it will then move on, carrying us with it.

Try This

It’s very demoralising the way people keep referring to things that make them sound well-travelled and well-read but only because you dare not ask for a detailed note fearing you might thought of as the exact opposite. Now and then one such person would look at you say: “Ah! You are beginning to sound like Burnes straight out the Milwaukee trap”. Or, that there is a shade of the McGeorgian in the way you’ve written something. And you’d smile slightly, not knowing if it was a compliment or an insult. If it’s been said in front of a group, the rest would fidget around too. Each would act like they knew what exactly was being said here, making it even worse for the others to ask. I have my doubts if those who say such things have the foggiest either. They probably invented the words and names as they were talking. But asking for explanations would mean making it common knowledge that when it comes to intellectual wealth, you are the last person the tax-man will ever call up. So you play along. Now here’s the trick. The next time someone drops one of these on you, you can hit back with one of your own. Say, “You are making it sound like Persephone was a Norwegian nightmare.” Or just a “Cicero’s dilemma, you mean?” And watch them rush back to their Googles and their Wikipedias. To make things even more interesting, bring up a joke when the gang is really rolling around with laughter. Start with an obvious line: “What did the jackal say to the Eskimo in the sinking ship?” Allow a couple of minutes for the vision of the lead characters and the setting to form in the mind of your audience. Allow them to crane their necks and jostle their way closer to you, expectantly, because this they’ve never heard before. Then end it with a, “He said, you’d give Rudolph’s dragon the Nanopythiasis!” And when they burst out laughing, you can do the same. At least you would have got the joke.

What's That Word

What if I feel something they haven’t invented words for? Or even a combination of words or phrase won’t help me express it? I should be saying what I am feeling, and not feeling only what I can say. That’s how it should be. Are my feelings slaves to some vocabulary? Is a dictionary or a language the frame within which I must feel, or express? Can’t I feel like no man has ever felt before? I don’t think it’s right for my individuality or good for my ego to be told that I am only feeling what countless souls have felt before me. I can be feeling blue, elated, ecstatic, happy, turned on, or whatever you can think of. Point is, if you can add to this list, I have made my point.