Monkeys, Stars and LCDs

Stupid little monkeys on a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. That’s what we are in the grand scheme of things. We are grabbing on to our little treasures and thinking we can hold them. Addicted to the things, people and feelings, we are just dopamine chasing monkeys.

Yeah, I am one nihilistic monkey. You wonder where life will go, you try to control it, you think you can hold on to stuff with your little hands with opposable thumbs. And then it slips out of your hand. You try to find it, maybe the same thing or just similar and hold it tighter. And it slips out too. At some point it becomes a comforting idea that all this holding and slipping is meaningless. It’s nothing.. in the grand scheme of things.

I sit around and wonder, how many things that I yearned and craved for are with me. How they lost their charm once I had them. When I was growing up, I had a CRT Monitor for my computer. The luxury of a thin LCD Screen made me drool. Maybe it’s because of the macroeconomic situation that LCDs became quite cheap , but I do have thin LCD Screens. And they feel nothing special.

Sitting on this blue planet, blankly staring at stars, I wonder if it was the chase. Maybe it was the chase that I loved. Maybe if you and I were together, life wouldn’t be good. Maybe it’s a sweet dream that I hold onto. And I wake up every day hoping that dream will become a reality. But what happens when we hold too tight? It slips out. So maybe life is about yearning for LCDs or staring at the stars and wondering how life would be in the vast probabilities of you and me, together.

Facing yourself

I have been walking for three hours. I wonder if it was a good idea to just walk through Rishikesh from place to place. I wonder if even this trip was a good idea.

The pessimist in me always resisted the idea of solo trips. My perpetually procrastinating mind never let me think about it. It all made sense when a friend suggested I should take a short trip. To spend some time with myself. Away from clutter. Away from the person I was becoming.

Reluctantly, I went ahead. A weekend trip, just me.

I have been wondering. What am I looking for? Can the company of mountains and breeze help me find what I am looking for? It’s hard to fight your own people and harder to fight yourself. How will I do it? Two days and I will be back to the same grind. Same clutter. Same me. I rummage through a thousand thoughts.

I enter the ‘Beatles Ashram‘. Named so because The Beatles studied meditation here for some months in 1968. The walls of the abandoned Ashram quarters are painted with psychedelic graffiti. The main hall has gigantic artwork depicting members of The Beatles.

I take a closer look at the dilapidated walls of the Ashram and they are all filled with text and drawings. Couples and people trying to etch their presence on walls in a little defacing way.

I was fine. I was trying to ensure that I take something good back with me from the trip. I was pausing at moments to think about where I have been in life and is it a good place to be. Trust me, I was trying. And I was fine.

Then I saw something. Written on the wall. It said “You are here in Rishikesh, ? (Question) remains, now what will you do to solve your life?”. I was fine. And then I wasn’t. I didn’t want to bawl in public. I managed to hold the barrage of tears. Eyes moist, I felt the futility of trying.

No one wants to face it, but there it was. The truth, mocking me right in my face. One thinks a change in landscape will help. But I was right here, and I was still the same.

I stood there for moment. Just staring at it. I realized it. It’s never the places that change us. We change ourselves. Places just give us the pause that we need to look into ourselves and make amends.

How long can I long

Tiptoeing through sombre moonlight, these memories hit me again. Relics of past, now my friends of night, they turn up unannounced. I am tired of this fight. What should I even write? thousands of words spent in vain. . Have been set free from you, but vexed with the thought of you. Can’t sit idle and empty, or these memories engulf me, and make my ears ring with our song. Making me wonder how long can I long.

Today the child writes

It’s tougher and tougher to write anything these days. The passion for writing was to bring honesty to paper (or the web). Things that couldn’t be said or bottled up were laid bare on the web for everyone to see.

Growing up, you compromise with your blunt feelings. That’s what growing up is, in a world driven by capitalistic courtesy and niceness. It’s hard being upfront and honest, that’ll make you lose your job or relationships in a jiffy.

I find myself too engrossed and comfortable with the facade of being ‘pleasant’ that it has become uncomfortable to put out honest words for everyone to see. It was easier writing about a broken relationship or a budding romance in past. Now I feel constrained by my own judgements, about age and maturity. I find myself deleting words after words, drafts after drafts, saying “You’re 27, this doesn’t suit you”, “You’re a lawyer, what are you even writing?”

It’s wrong. The part of me that’s still holding on to the impulse and euphoria of writing things and etching them forever on the world wide web knows it’s wrong to suffocate the inner child. That’s why today it has taken command, today the child writes.

You left without a word

So Many words and books,

and lots of laughs and hugs you took,

with you when you left without a word.

Didn’t even tell me your address in heavenly world.

In our own little ways we all coped,

Some sobbed, some sought solace in silence.

Even years later when we all met and joked,

Our laugh was off-key sans your laughter’s cadence.

You never told me how you felt before you made it end,

But can’t question what you did, for you are my friend.

Hope you look down and read these eulogies I send,

Hope you miss me too, ’cause I miss you my friend.

Stole a page from her diary – II

“Dear Diary,

Don’t judge me tonight. I thought I was straight in my head but last few days have proven me so wrong. This stupid mind just wouldn’t stop thinking about him. Everything I do, everywhere I go I find myself thinking about him. It’s embarrassing really. I haven’t conjured up the courage to look in the mirror when I think about him, I am afraid I’ll catch myself blushing.

We haven’t even gone on a date till now. It was just this one time I met him and we exchanged numbers. And there is nothing special about him either, nothing I can point out. Maybe it’s all a rosy picture in my mind and he’s not even that good. But there is something.

There’s something so good about him, like I can’t really point out. Something that just wouldn’t leave my memory. Maybe it’s the smile or the way he says my name idk. His texts don’t really help when I am trying to be a good girl and not think about him.

Yeah, don’t judge me. Look, you are my diary and I can tell you stuff. Others may not get it. Now you’ll ask me about my boyfriend. Yeah, I love him and feel so lucky to have him. There is no issue it’s all perfect. He’s a blessing no doubt. Irreplaceable, I must say.

But Aadil is like my guilty pleasure. I know we are not meant to be. I know we can’t be dating and we have to keep it professional at work. But who has ever controlled this mind? It loves to wander. It’s weird but yes I do feel so attracted to him. How can I deny, it’s right there before my eyes. All the time.

I thought I’d just stop any contact with him. Stop thinking about him. Easier said than done, as they say. I tried to ignore his texts, tried to think it’s wrong and it may even affect my relationship. But what is wrong in just being attracted? Idk it’s very confusing. Every time I tried, I would wander back to his thoughts, waiting for his texts.

I am 25 and I am acting like I am 13. I know I am not acting like an ideal person here but heart wants what it wants and it wants to keep this going for some reason.

I want someone to just shout and tell me stop, but I don’t think I will. I am slipping and I think I am enjoying it.

The pleasures are guilty and I am certainly deep in guilt at this point. But aren’t we all victims of desires? I want to but then I don’t want to let go. It’s just how it is. Good Night! I hope I don’t dream of him again.”

Stole a page from her diary -I

Echo Chambers

I must preface everything by saying I don’t have the benefit of hindsight. I was never 25 years old before so this is based on what I have seen in the quarter century I have been here.

What I can tell you with conviction is that the expression of hate, boundaries, differences and the fault lines in our society have been on the rise since the time I could observe what these things were.

It’s debatable whether the society was always this divided, this fragile, this vile and the advent of social and mass media just laid it bare for all of us to see. A counter point is that media has acted as a medium to spread hate when there wasn’t much. The jury is still out but the crime has already been committed. We are divided.

Everything in public discourse has become black and white, or I may say Left or Right. Everyone is being asked to choose sides. Every side extolling their virtues, their ideology. Exhorting the commoners to join their side. The other side is pure sin, pure evil. It’s not just right or left, it’s everywhere.

What internet has done is to provide a safe haven to people of all kinds, all ideologies, all identities. Yes, sounds good. But not when we realize it has created ‘echo chambers‘ which in effect promote the idea that it’s okay not to change. The fact that you can find and connect with people like you all over the world seems very positive on its surface, but deeper it reinforces the idea that my group or my tribe with a particular thinking is striving so it must be right. The repetition of similar ideas just hardwires people not to accept or examine contrary ideas.

One extreme example is recent news of pedophiles having rebranded themselves as MAP (Minor Attracted Persons). They even have a flag to represent their ‘sexual orientation’. This rebrand of pedophilia into a sexual orientation is side effect of these echo chambers where they see themselves as being victims, being called a criminal for their attraction to minors. You repeat a false idea a thousand times and it starts sounding like the only truth there can be.

The culture of calling out or shaming people is another cause of reinforcement of ideas. Imagine being a kid on the internet and being called out as a misogynist or let’s say sanghi for just putting your jokes or your ideas out there. The kid is not very likely to feel the shame and guilt of being called out and change. That’s not how humans work. He’s probably gonna find groups that are like him and reinforce the idea that yes you were right and people who called you out are wrong, they have an agenda etc etc. Same goes for every kind of group. Hateful propagation does not promote exchange of ideas but just ensures that the walls between different groups get bigger and bigger.

The right, the left, the feminists, the misogynists, the tiktokers, the youtubers, the #JusticeforSSR, the Rhea sympathizers can’t be adjudged in binaries of right or wrong. Everyone has a point from which something can be learnt, some may appeal to you, some may not. Joining a faction makes you associate your pride, ego and personality with it. These things don’t let you accept new ideas howsoever appealing. What is important is we make an effort to listen and not just shout into our safe echo chambers. Listen to what others are saying, correct ourselves when we must and not just double down on our mistakes or negatives just because we are part of an identity.

The negativity on display each day takes away chunks of hope I still have left. The best thing we can teach to a child is be to be objective, fair and empathetic in its world view. The idea of changing oneself when confronted with contrary but verifiable facts is under-taught and under-rated in our society.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

– Rumi

SSDs are insane

Time for some actual weblogging instead of the routine poems and write-ups!

Fed up with 2 hard disk drive (HDD) failures in two months and my painfully slow laptop I finally decided to take the leap and do what everyone seems to be suggesting as the sure-shot way of making your computer magically quicker- use a Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of usual HDD.

First time is always the charm. Computer periphals included. I looked up if my circa 2014 device could hold up an SSD and surprisingly, it could.

Now the tricky part – SSDs are costly. Compared to the good old HDD, SSDs cost from 2x to 4x for the same capacity.

Having been frustrated by constant HDD failures and crashes (I am looking at you Western Digital) I was ready to trade a smaller capacity for the promises of dream performance pitched by tech websites.

The result – Kingston A400 240 GB for around Rs. 2400/- (presently retails for 3400/- idk why). I grabbed the package so I could revive my dead laptop asap. To my surprise, it felt empty. SSDs are insanely light, being basically a semiconductor chip inside the casing. It fit perfectly in the slot for usual HDD and I was good to go and see if they were actually 10x faster than their Hard-er nemesis.

And boy wasn’t that the day I was spoilt forever. Installing windows was a breeze instead of the usual endless waiting time. Clicking actually opened things or applications at command unlike my old HDD times when one would regret opening a wrong folder for the sheer waiting time. Windows booted like you’re coming back from stand-by mode. 5-10 seconds is the usual time it takes to boot windows. Everything feels snappy. Haven’t really had a proper hang-up due to opening a lot of stuff simultaneously since that time.

On the downside, I am spoilt. At the risk of sounding elitist, I must say HDDs feel like a chore now. Recently, I was at my friends house and needed to use his laptop for some work. Fairly new laptop, i5 processor. The load times and waiting for the computer to be responsive again after opening a pdf drove me to nearly pull my hair out (couldn’t, I was wearing my turban).

So, not going too much into the technical side of things, SSDs do make your system go vrooommm! The only compromise is that for similar price points, you may get half or one third of storage compared to HDDs (I maxed my SDD in a month and had to choose what games stay and what games get banished to the HDD hell). Solution is to either install 1 SSD for system and applications and one HDD for storage (if the system has slot for two) or just keep an external drive for storing bulk of data while letting SSD handle the system stuff.

Happy Computing.

The Last Time I Touched You

The guy at the Irani Café we just had tea at. The bus ticket shop owner from across the street. The jaded drivers in cars wriggling along the jammed street. These kids gallivanting back to their houses after tuitions. Everyone is watching. Everyone is watching us.

We are standing under the streetlights. Oblivious to who’s watching us. Oblivious to the fact that your mom doesn’t like us. Oblivious to impending doom, to the bus that’ll take you back to the land of seas in a few minutes.

It’s these tiny raindrops falling on us, reminding us that this is all real. You, me and this moment in streetlights.

You bury your face in my arms and hug me, as if never wanting to let go. I raise your chin to delve in your eyes, to salvage something from them for the last time. There are tears welling up and then there’s this hint of smile. A hint of pride, assuring me that whatever it was, we tried our best before it fell apart.

You bring my face closer and plant your lips on mine. The sounds of this street submerge. The honking, the cackles, the chatter, have all drowned in the moment. Didn’t we just hate PDA? we did with passion, it made everyone around so awkward but then the rules changed when we were at it. That’s what love does, it changes everything.

With our eyes closed, we kiss and pray that time stops. We pray that if apocalypse is a reality then it strikes now so the world ends with us still being ‘us’. We pray that future will be kind to us.

They are still watching for what seems like hours. The bus is long gone, having honked for minutes for us to see. You went on the next bus, to the land of seas and that was the last time I touched you.

 

Before It Gets Better

I was five, I loved my cartoons and my pillow.

Hated milk and when my mom wouldn’t let me leave,

to paddle around the world on a tricycle couloured yellow.

Dreams to scale the moon and the stars never felt distant.

So busy with the bliss, not a moment to grieve,

I had wishes my ma and pa would make true in an instant.

.

I was ten, I loved my shoes and my foot-ball.

Hated teens ’cause they wouldn’t let me play with them,

Couldn’t wait to grow up and scale that huge neighborhood wall.

Lost pencils and damned homework withered my little soul,

No inhibitions on what I say, never stressed on the outcome.

Don’t stop me I’ll trot the globe Ma, I hate that control.

.

I was seventeen, I loved my girl and my little gang.

Hated being asked to grow up and those pimples on my face,

yes I wanted to grow up but maturity? I could never get a hang.

There were chapters and syllabus but my questions missed out,

what would they think? What would they say? Do I belong to this place?

But let’s pretend and study to survive the rat race Ma told me about.

.

I am twenty three, I love my questions and my peace.

I hate the past for being so pleasant, but love it for the lessons,

I am busy with grief, not a moment for bliss.

For me to walk away and scale the world, my Ma wouldn’t resent.

But I prefer to sleep in Ma’s lap in hope for the pain to lessen,

This cycle of present being sour and past being pleasant.