You know how everybody keeps saying Hrithik Roshan dances like a dream? Whose dream does he dance like? No no I should really like to know. Who dreams of what is essentially one big human bicep with unnecessarily long appendages, doing what is essentially hectic slithering, whose eleventh finger you keep catching glimpses of, every third frame or so?

We need to rethink our phraseology.

It was lovely, it was awful.

I do not know when or how I turned so nocturnal but the trappings came early. I started pushing 1am long before I was out of school and by the time college came around, 3am had become the norm. Being employed caused a lapse in the sleep pattern but not for long. Currently I am pushing 5am everyday and even then, I have to talk myself to sleep. Waking up late comes with its set of pangs but I feel like I am rarely able to be of much use during the day. It's too bright, it's too noisy, the mind cannot latch onto a single focal point.

At night I'm a better version of myself. I start to look better, the anecdotes seem to assume colour, the punch lines come easier and the cogs suddenly loose and fall out and the wheels begin to whirr with soothing steadyness. At night I always feel closer to the person I imagine I'm trying to be.

And yet the nights are always much too short, the half hours pass feverishly and before I know it daytime has begun to make itself known. In those moments when it begins to get light again, the feeling is strangely calming. To know you're privy to the experience of the night jerkily making its way out as daylight replaces it irreverently. But there is also panic. A sense of futility, the world suddenly seeming like one big inside joke that try as you might, you just can't get. They'll reference purpose and meaning and 5 year plans and discipline with self-congratulatory smiles and all you're thinking is 'Christ, any minute now, the punchline." It doesn't come and you call it a day.

Does it matter?

No.

Enjambment.

There are no neat lines, no end stops, no numbers, no symmetry. Only minutes melting into minutes and sleep into wakefulness into sleep again. Pondering too much by half and feeling too little by half. Forgotten characters coming back to play leading roles in one big mental epic. Fact and horror fiction bearing uncanny resemblance. And new voices subsiding to a distant general buzz.

It's Just a Ride

You know I'm often asked why I'm so apathetic towards my own life. "Why don't you have a bigger reaction?" "I'm sorry, is this not bothering you?" "How could you just let that go?"

And I want to be cool and say I'm laconic because I'm above it all. Not true. Because hey, not having things go the way you picture them in your head, no matter how limited and skewed that picture is, makes anybody smart. I'm no different. To a point. After that point has been reached - it generally takes lots of swallowing to keep the bile down, mental cursing and a quick call to my friend Parge - it passes and then I'm above it. And cool. And laconic.

Because you see, in the bigger scheme of things, it doesn't matter. Because time is more potent than any of this. And over the days, it stretches every memory, every experience like a rubber band till one day that band is so taut, it gives and it's over. When you wake up one morning and realise you've forgotten your ex's phone number. That's time. When you realise 'your song' has gone back to being 'a song'. That's time. When you realise you don't feel bitter the person is happy and you don't feel pleased if the person is sad. That's time right there. And it works like that for everything - divorce, death, getting fired, getting rejected, getting fat - without exception. Isn't that a wonderful constant to have?

So when you have made your peace with the fact that everything, good and bad, passes eventually, you figure why not start being okay sooner? Time's got enough work on hand with all those emotionally-constipated people who just. won't. let. it go.

That said, I know people who read 'Laconic' as 'Pushover'. These people are, and I quote someone I can't remember here, 'mediocre at best and suffused with feelings of entitlement.' This lot is a complete waste of time and space, sullying the gene pool one hyper-sensitive, neurotic second at a time and should be lined up and shot at close range with a BB gun so it hurts like a bitch and they don't even get to die afterwards. Them and those fucking Zoozoos.

And since it turned out to be the weekend of Bill Hicks, I'll let him end this post for me.

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, “Hey - don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…” And we… kill those people. Ha ha “Shut him up.” “We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.

But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you’ve been great.”

Jeezus God!

I'm struggling to not shut down. When the mind is put through these levels of ridiculousness, it just wants to self-preserve and collapse in on itself. I'm trying my best to avoid house-of-card analogies here because cliches must be reserved for more deserving occasions like death. Or the annual family get together. This would be a golden time to do some actual writing if it weren't for these blasted exams that I can't, for the life of me, remember why I'm taking. I write best when I'm fucked up. True story. Misery breeds creativity and wotsits.

At this point the only thing that would make me feel better is a really cruel joke at someone else's expense (Yeah tried Dlisted. No, not cruel enough) or unholy amounts of whiskey and a one way ticket to The Fuck Out of Here.

DoubleYouBee Oodles

So the exam weight is making its presence felt. Everything I managed to get off during the last one month spent travelling to the end of the world in the oppressive heat is ba-hack.

I tried to do the Suryanamaskar today. Alone. In my room. I think the walls laughed at me. Even Luke had to look away, embarrassed. (This is not an exaggeration, btw. He lives in a permanent state of embarassment on our behalf.) I look incredibly foolish doing anything yoga-related.

As for walks, my current earphones make the music sound like it's being carefully filtered through a succession of empty clanging tins. Curses. Will buy a new set at some point.

The one thing that immediately took care of the excess oodles the last time I did it, was dancing. Belly dancing. Yes, I belly danced. And was actually pretty good at it too. Twelve classes and I'd lost 3 inches off the waist and inches off everywhere else. Then I came home and the Mater asked me to give her a demo. I, ofcourse, refused. Then quite expectedly, she emotionally blackmailed me. So I um danced, without music and her looking over her glasses. When I got done she was actually quite nice about it. Told me I was rather more flexible than she'd imagined and would I please never do *that* in front of another human being again? Thankyou.

Now there's the gym option (I'd rather die at this point). So I'm guessing the deafening, soul- rupturing walk it's going to be.

Oh, I'm sorry, there's no point to this post if that's what you're looking for. My bad, I should have mentioned that at the start.




Listen to Polaroid Solution by Faded Paper Figures. Any song that stays relevant for two days on loop is alright by me.

I hope I never get so clever or posh that meaning what I say becomes optional. I have met people like this, whose words are as watery as their eyes.

Logic? I'd rather die.

I think the Biggest Tragedy of all is to begin dreaming sensibly. The day that happens to me, I'll shut shop and prepare to die. That would mark the end of any kind of living for me. It's is my fine-tuned illogic that keeps me afloat on bad days.
As a child I'd lie on the floor with my best friend and we'd stare at her high ceilings and puzzlingly Victorian decor while talking about all the things we'd do, ten years from then. This year is ten years from then and we've both been places we'd never imagined and had experiences that would require a house with much higher ceilings to be contained.
Whenever I feel like I'm in danger of getting real, my mind goes running to retrieve that memory. Cold hard floor. Lying on it, palms folded behind my head, talking crazy. There may have been a Mariah Carey CD playing but then that's what selective memory is for.