The one about the job.

I love this time of the year, when the air feels like silk over your skin at the start and end of every day. It makes me want to dance to no music. Life had turned brown for so long in between. But right now, every day is new.

So to celebrate, I'm going to eat cake and make a list. Cake makes everything nice. Yesterday, a colleague was leaving our company after 3.8 years. She seems fairly well-liked in the circles (I've only been here for 2 months). Everyone gathered, made speeches and stared at each other for a while, waiting for someone to fold. But nothing that enthralling happened, so I wanted cake.


The new job looks more promising than anything I've done so far, career-wise. My learning so far:

1. I really should be working right now. But the times when I shirk away from work in my first surprisingly pleasant corporate experience, seems to the best times to blog. Nothing seems more inspiring at this point.
2. I just read a mail at work, which referred to Nandini Layout as one of Bangalore's largest slums! I'm highly disturbed by this declaration, and am tempted to send the Corporate Communications department a hearty stinker, complete with disturbing emoticons.
3. Perfectly sensible, grown up people can have the strangest phobias.
4. I have the weirdest office etiquette problems. How do you say 'no' to someone that expects you to accompany them every time they have to pee?
5. I'm not irresponsible to an extent that it is unacceptable. I can really work hard, when I want to. And most of the time, I want to work hard.
6. I'm pretty lucky, sometimes.
7. I'm presently convinced that I'm not likely to die a poor, lonely, embittered old lady who lives with a parrot with a charming disposition.

Upbeat and active again. Ah, I could get used to this!

Restart

It's been a good year so far. A lot has happened personally and professionally, and I can only see things getting better. So I thought this would be a good time to restart the blog. See, I have a pattern. Every time I want to dust off and restart my blog, I get a bright screaming-in-your-face theme for it. Orange, good. Swirly? Good!
It's all-a happy!


I do have things to say again now, but this is a strange Monday morning. And I really don't want to write about death any more.

But then, there's Tom Waits.

What good is 'Typezriter'?

'Typewriter'.
It's apparently the longest word you can type on a single line of any keyboard. But not on my new phone with a keyboard-like keypad. Oh, no!

Next time you're buying a phone with a computer keyboard-like keypad, remember not to buy one from morons who don't get the awesomeness that is Qwerty keypads.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

                        - From 'Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Okay this one's the last, I promise

Misery and love. It all starts there. The two far-famed muse that turn boys and girls into writers, poets and dreamers. There will be a gaping hole in all our heads and hearts if neither did not exist. There is a lot of poetry I have stowed away, and I admit they stemmed for either one or both of the above. But must I subject my readers to such outcomes alone? I think not.

People not blogging regularly only bothers you when you start to blog way more than regularly. When I have nothing else to do, I do the only thing that I know how to. Keep writing. But could there be such a thing as too much blogging? It doesn't matter. Because once I find something to do that is a little more productive than playing with velcrow for two hours, I will disappear once again. I'll get lost in my world of new things, like a child returning from summer break. I'll have all my new stationary and people and responsibilities to play with.
*

I packed light, checked out of his life. No goodbye said. It's not an easy thing to say, when your heart is splashing about somewhere in your stomach. I walked away without a second look; turning back would be impossible.

I was six days and many imaginary miles away from him. A stir in the hard, closed fist behind my ribcage. It pounded like a voodoo drum under my shirt. I sat in silence, as still as I could. Images bounced around in my head, perfumed and prettily framed. He smiled, carving funny faces with his calloused fingertips into my beatific hands. An ominous thud within my insides. I woke up in a ransacked bed, my hair knotted with nostalgia. Running through my mind: an endless silent movie of his hands, his hands, his hands.

Life was good when I didn't care. My birthdays, my skin, my friends, everything was good. It was all there and it was good, but I never gave it a thought. The possibility of anything going wrong didn't even occur to me. And if anything did go wrong, it didn't bother me. Nothing mattered too much. But then comes that fateful time in your life, when you start analysing, reading into things and worst of all, caring. That's when the curse begins. I've never wanted to rewind, but there is a reason people do. Birthdays will just be an excuse to eat a lot of cake, a tiny zit on the tip of your nose could go unnoticed, and relationships could avoid being saddled by unwarranted expectations.

Just as every year, the minutes

leading to midnight were pregnant

with disappointed expectations.

Expectations that carried within them

the knowledge that nothing was going to happen.

“Happy Birthday!”

I knew those words were coming, but

they felt empty -

just like a lame “take care”.

Her intention probably wasn't empty,

but words are like that sometimes.

My “Thank you” was worse,

like a vacuum sucking in the following words,

whatever genuine thing it could've been.

Some thoughts in bed

There is something comforting about complete darkness. It implies a world that is full of possibilities. A world, where different rules apply. Once your eyes get used to the darkness, it is a world where monsters lurk, but so do surprises. The emptiness means peace. You become invisible. You can smell food better and your girlfriend's skin feels more tender than the grass you were lying on. Everything is either good or bad, depending on how you see it. And everyone becomes equal, like in death. You might miss the stars at times, but we could still be so happy. It will be a place where so much is unknown, that we could die exploring what is out there.