I am back!

I am back to blogging again after a gap of an embarrassingly long time.  What had I been doing in the interim?  Just watching life go by without trying to pull the reins of self-control.  My natural state of being is of a nondoer, observer.  I am naturally inclined to just let circumstances of life carry me around and I am happy simply to be carried along, observing, arriving at philosophical insights but never actually trying to steer the course of flow.  That's what I am naturally good at and that's exactly what I have been doing.

I got married on February 23, 2012.  In the midst of all the ups and downs of a normal married life, I managed to read some books, take up more work as a transcriptionist, visit a few places, and also, of all things, become a father.  Vedayan was born on June 17, 2014.  Ranga passed away on July 7, 2013.  I missed him dearly for months after his death.  He's more a memory now, but I still do miss his presence.

Quit gym as usual, but this time I quit after continuing for 1 whole year, something I had never done before.  Then joined again after a gap of 6 months.  Again, something I had never done before.  Started running recently.  I have done it just two times in the last week or so, and only for 10-minute stretches, but this is also something I haven't done in years.  I have been more conscious of what I eat and been trying to eat healthy.  Things are changing.  I am not going to sit back and observe life go by like I have done for most of my life.  That's not what I am meant to do.  I have the potential for greatness.  I have to shed these layers of conditioning, both bodily and mental, that have been weighing me down, forcing me to be a mere observer.

I want to be a doer.  I am a doer.  Now.

Disillusionment

We are all selfish dear, u r selfish and i m also selfish.......i
m selfish coz i want to get married and have children and experience a
married life.......u r selfish coz u want ur needs to be loved and
cared for and attention fulfilled through me....we all have our
personal needs and we only think about them.....and its normal.....

Yes, i had loved u....i had fallen in love with an illusion and one
day when that illusion broke, i was so much in love and used to u that
instead of breaking all ties with u, i decided to continue with the
relationship even though i knew its not going to be right......love is
blind and i just kept on.......i was weak, i cudnt resist u, i cudnt
think of wat life cud be without you, this person that i have
become so used to......so i forgave u and decided to love u and care
for u and pay attention to u......i was selfish......i wanted the
illusion to continue coz i enjoyed it so much.......i wanted the
pleasure to continue coz i was selfish.....i never realized that one
day when i have to separate from u, its going to hurt u so much....i
never thought abt wat will happen that day......i just preferred to
live in the illusion that u and i had created together.....and then
things got more and more intimate....i cudnt resist and neither cud
u.....i wanted the illusion to go on and on......becos i was
selfish....even though i knew its not the same thing, i wanted this
dream to continue.....

then things began to happen in my life.....my family began to start
thinking abt my marriage and i also started thinking abt it.......but
still i continued with u coz i was selfish.....i wanted my dream to go
on.....and at the same time, i was afraid to break ur dream, ur
desires, ur wishes.....i was scared to hurt u by doing so.....so i
continued.....that was my biggest mistake.....i was not being honest
with myself and with u....

life is getting frustrating......u were becoming dependent on me for
the fulfillment of ur own needs, ur need to be loved and cared
for....and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to give it
to u........coz i was torn between the desire to give u wat u wanted
and the desire to move on and have a normal life like my friends were
having......like my family wanted me to have....then things started
getting ugly...

i started becoming rude towards u, i started behaving harshly with
u....out of my own frustration at having carried a dream too far and
also coz ur demands for care and attention were disturbing me very
much......i was thinking i m such a bad person that i loved u and now
i dont have the courage to marry u and again i felt i loved someone
else not u and i loved u just coz my love continued from that illusion
to u......i torn between these thoughts.....i was thinking wat shud i
do.....is it my responsibility to continue with u coz i gave u so much
attention and now i want to take it away or is it my responsibility to
pay attention to my family and their happiness.....

then i decided to do the selfish thing dear.....i decided to bring
happiness to my mom, sister and others and marry a person instead of
focusing my energies on u......coz like all normal guys i also had the
desire to marry, have children, live a family life.....

but i was tense coz i was feeling i have wronged u that i gave u so
much and now i m doing this..........but i realized that i had fallen
in love with an illusion and i was so weak that even when the illusion
wasnt there, i wanted the illusion to continue and so i continued with
it and fell in love with u again....even after i knew that its not
possible to continue this love......i was selfish dear, very very
selfish :( but i was helpless and weak.......love makes us like
this......it makes us want to have more and more of it.......when u
were X, i was so addicted to u that even when the illusion broke
and u were no longer X....i cudnt give up my addiction......i
wanted it to continue.............i was weak and selfish...but it
cudnt continue....it had to stop sometime and the time has cum......so
i m trying to stop it now....

and u r going thru the same process that i went thru at that
time......i was weak and selfish just like u r now.......u want it to
continue....the love and attention.....u cant give it up......u r
addicted just like i was addicted to X and cudnt give up.....but
it has to stop dear for both of us to have normal lives......it
has to stop.....we have both been weak and selfish at one point in our
lives......but we cant let it happen again and again....

u say na u dont want anything from me....u never say wat u want
dear........but ur feelings r so strong and loud that u dont need
to say it.......it shouts at me "give me the love and care and
attention that u were giving me earlier".......it shouts at me
everytime u meet me and call me and chat with me and do smething for
me.........ur desires and ur needs shout at me........"give me wat u
gave me...i cant live without u......i cant handle the fact that u
cant give it to me now".......its so loud that u dont need to say it
in words....u want ur personal needs fulfilled through me
dear.....even though u always say i want nothing from u....

i know dear just like i got so attached to u, now u have become
attached to me.....but this attachment will lead us nowhere......u
have nothing to lose.....u have already lived ur life, u married, had
children, raised them up, now they r grown up.......but look at
me.....i m going to start my life.....i have lots to do.....my
attachment to u will never allow me to start a family life properly
and that is the only reason i m trying to get rid of this
attachment....my own selfish needs.........and u want me to remain
attached to u and care for u and love u......ur own selfish needs..

now i dunno whose needs to fulfill and whose needs to disregard......i
finally decided to fulfill my own needs to which my family's needs r
also attached......

u know wat dear, even in a mother-child relationship, sometimes
the mother becomes irritated with the child for crying and wanting to
suck milk everytime...even though the mother knows that the child is
dependent on her and wants her love and attention, but still she gets
irritated sometimes......its natural..its difficult to attend to
another person's needs all the time.......then imagine if a mother can
get irritated at the child's demands for attention....who m i not to
get irritated at ur demands for attention? thats why i got
irritated.......

dont keep saying i hate u now and all that.......its nonsense....i
dont hate u and neither will i ever hate u.....i was just overburdened
with ur demands and wanted a break.....but u r so blind to my needs
that u kept thinking wats wrong, why m i behaving like this, why cant
i love u and care for u........u kept thinking only and only abt ur
needs.....just like i kept thinking abt my needs when u revealed u r
someone else.......but haan, i also thought abt ur needs at that time and so
i decided to keep my friendship with u.......but i was wrong, i never
realized that one day i have to separate and its gonna hurt u.....i
was immature...i didnt think so much.....but we have to go thru this
pain of separation.....

we cant remain attached like this forever.......i will never hate u.....

i know when u read this mail and if u reply u will say many things
from ur point of view, u will try to defend ur behavior, ur actions,
ur demands....i will read them and again i will feel i m being so
selfish and mean to be doing this.........again i will think abt it,
and again i will come up with more points to defend my own views and
this will go on......

we r all selfish and we will always try to defend our needs........i
will defend mine and u will defend urs...........the point is that i
have decided that i cant keep up with the relationship with
u.......for u, this might be the meanest decision i have taken....for
u this might be the cruelest decision i have taken.........but for me,
this is the correct decision and the best one.......

i will come back to u one day.......just lemme handle everything here
together.....just lemme hold all my thoughts, plans, goals together
and manage them for the time being....

i will return to u as a friend......lemme be free of this attachment for....

i will pray for u everyday......


God bless u forever......

the feeling of being in love

Love, when it lasts, has a profound effect on us.  It makes us lose our rationale selves.  It makes us do illogical things we would not have ever imagined doing when sober.  Yes, sober.  Because love is intoxicating.  It brings out the best in us and also the worst.  Why does it have such a contrasting effect on us?  When does it bring out the best and when does it bring out the worst?

When love is conditional, it always has the potential to turn us irrational and violent, both in our thoughts and deeds.  It has the potential to bring out the worst part of ourselves to the fore.  This is not always the case though, but the potentiality exists of this happening.  We ordinary human beings cannot love unconditionally without rising to a level of consciousness which is beyond the ordinary.  It is impossible to love another human being unconditionally, except in the case of a mother’s love for her baby.  However, this unconditional love ceases as the baby begins to form an identity separate from its mother, as it begins to wean from breast milk as its primary source of food.

For us, unconditional love is only possible for the divine.  We can love the divine unconditionally, nothing else.  Yes, I know I am talking in very absolute terms and though a part of my mind says there are no absolutes in this universe, everything is relative, I still would use absolute terms, because that is my state of mind right now.  A little agitated.  Yes, agitated because of love.  Conditional love.  I have set so many conditions for love to exist that even a slight absence of one of them jeopardizes the whole situation.  It agitates me.  This is just a lack of emotional maturity, I know that, but the emotions are so overwhelming that no amount of rationalization can set my nerves to rest.

Time is the biggest healer.  And I hope it will heal my frayed nerves and emotional indigestion.  Amen.

Romantic liaisons

Just recently I came to know a few truths about a girl I had been becoming fond of.  They were revealed to me by somebody she claimed to be her friend.  This guy confided in me that he had been in a relationship with her and she had been in a relationship with his friend prior to him coming into her life.  She had even slept with that other guy (after a few months of speaking to him on the phone).

Naturally, I was quite hurt by this revelation, not because she had been involved with the other guys but because she had hidden these facts from me even though I had asked her about it.  I felt that was a breach of trust.  I felt that was a breach of expectations.  She had been a blatant liar.  I called her up today and gave her a piece of my mind.  I was rude for the first time in years to a girl, blatantly rude.  It’s not that I am a saint and she’s the sinner, but I think my offensiveness was due to the fact that she had been a liar.  I felt bad later.  The guy who had revealed everything to me about her called me up to justify her silence, to defend her innocence.  I felt how people could play games with their own minds, keep themselves in self-imposed illusions.  I don’t want to be rude to people, but neither can I be pleasant at all times.  There are times when rudeness is justified.

Well, I just formed a theory of human sexual behavior of my own after all that I have experienced in 28 years of my life.  I think adultery is hardwired into us because:

a.  The sex drive is as strong as the other basic biological drives.

b.  The desire to have a sexual partner is very strong.

c.  We humans are mostly attracted to qualities present in our mates and not to our mates themselves.

Let me explain (primarily for my own satisfaction):

a.  The sex drive:  It is one of the most primal instincts present in us.  The desire to have an orgasm.  It is as strong as the survival instinct, the instinct to give more priority to our own lives more than to that of others.  There are exceptions like the people who put their own lives at risk to save others, cases of extreme altruism.  However, these are exceptions.  There are exceptions to the priority of sex drive too like monks who vow to remain celibate for life.  However, for the majority of us ordinary men and women, the sex drive is irresistible when nature calls.  Our body takes control and leaves us with guilt and incomprehension at times.  We don’t know why we did it sometimes, but as always, the mind wants to stay in a state of harmony with the body and therefore devises ways of justifying our instinctive behavior.  Nevertheless, as long as the body is capable of engaging in sexual acts, it will.

b.  Sexual partner:  The desire to have a sexual partner is as strong as the sex drive itself.  It makes us see potential mates in every person of the opposite sex we come across (I will speak in heterosexual terms as I am heterosexual myself) and with whom it is socially acceptable.  However, sometimes the desire for sexual partner extends to persons who might not be socially acceptable but the desire is so great that we tend to seek gratification at any cost, even though we might know that it might not be a very socially acceptable decision.  We are all seeking sexual partners at all times, primarily people who still do not have a stable partner to gratify the sex drive.

c.  Attractive qualities:  Finally, we humans tend to fall in love with primarily the qualities present in our sexual partners and not with the partners themselves.  The partners might change, but we always seek the same qualities we are attracted to in different partners.  The bodies change, the characteristics that give the bodies an identify remain the same.  Therefore, we might get attracted to one person today and the very next day fall for another because we see the qualities that we find attractive in that other person.  Sometimes, we rise above this basic biological programming by being faithful to one partner in spite of having others around us with better representations of the qualities we seek, but that is mainly due to the need for stability.  We do not like change or chaos in our lives.  We seek stability and hence the need to have stable partners, but sometimes the desire to seek better representations of the qualities we seek make us unfaithful and our mind again comes up with ways to justify our actions because it wants a maintain state of harmony within itself.

Therefore, in conclusion, I have realized that unfaithfulness is a basic human quality which is mostly unavoidable.  Virginity is not a matter of choice in most cases but of circumstances.   Lastly, conceit is resorted to at times to get sexual partners and it is justified by the mind by its own strange logic.  Perfection is an illusion.  Expectations are bound to be shattered.

For a happy state of mind, have low expectations, do not seek perfection, and be in a state of acceptance.

JBL

the crimson moon

It had been Holi today,

The festival of colors,

And strangely as I walked past the dark shades

Of the Krishnachura trees on the deserted road,

I saw the moon, painted an eerie red,

High up in the sky, burning bright

With a strange crimson light.

Seemed like the moon had been playing Holi too

And the red gulal had been smeared on it.

I came back to my thoughts and felt why everybody

Had a mind with twists and turns like that of a jalebi.

That includes myself.

Why did I think the moon had played Holi?

It was a nice thought though.

Evolving mind

Of late, after having known Shoma now for a few months, I have begun to realize that people are more similar than different.  Basically, they are all the same if we peel away the layers of conditioning and prejudices that envelope us.  In trying to understand Shoma, as I usually try to do with all people I come in contact with, I have realized that what we all project is a result of our conditioning and nurture more than our instincts or nature.  These are some concepts which even I find difficulty putting down on to paper but I have the realization.  I feel inadequate when I am unable to explain it more lucidly. 

I think it is a result of my mind evolving.  New realizations are presented to me very now and then; they just dawn upon me.  Sometimes I don’t take notice of them and sometimes I do.  Sometimes I think deeply about them for sometime and then let them by as a passing thought, sometimes they affect me to the extent that I devote more of my thoughts to them.  I feel inadequate to think deeply.  I am a thinker as are most people, but a scattered thinker with no thought staying in my consciousness for more detailed and deep thinking, most of them being pushed into the subconscious.  Most people have a similar thought process.  They cannot hold a thought.  It is more like a random filmstrip with random images being presented to our consciousness.  I wish I was capable of more deeper thought; sometimes I want to do that.  Is this also something that we can teach ourselves like most of the things in life?

I have to learn to say NO.  It is one of the most important virtues to inculcate in myself now.  Say NO to all the less important things in my life that occupy so much of my waking time.  I need to say NO to them and spend time on the things I really would like to do.

This blog has begun to look more like a self-improvement guidebook.  Well, if it helps me bring the best out of myself, I won’t regret it.  I don’t want a readership for my blog.  I am content to write for myself and see if it helps me somehow.  I may start one for public readership soon.  Amen.

Hi 2010!

 

It’s been a few months now since my last post here.  My blog is crying for attention.  I won’t say I have been busy; that would be a very lame excuse.  I just haven’t had the inclination to write of late.  I have been more interested in reading.  One of my resolutions at the beginning of last year was to read some of the books that had been lying with me unread for quite sometime.  Yes, I just got through some of them and bought a few new ones and finished them up as well.  I finished reading Amitav Ghosh’s A Sea of Poppies.  It’s an outstanding piece of work by him, I couldn’t put it down until I had read the last page.  I finished 300 odd pages in about a week.  He is one of the best Indian writers in English I believe.  He has a terrific command of the English language and his prose is flawless, his characters interesting, and his story uncannily coherent and informative.  I loved reading the book and I eagerly await the release of his next book in the series.

I finished Robin Cook’s fast paced medical mystery.  Slumdog Millionaire a.k.a. Q&A by Vikas Swaroop.  Excellent reads, both of them.  I tried to finish the P.G. Wodehouse I had invested so much money in, but unfortunately, I couldn’t, I lost interest midway.  I found it too seeped in early 20th Century English culture which I found a bit difficult to follow, though I enjoyed his style of writing.  Read Chetan Bhagat’s Three Mistakes of My Life – fast paced and very enjoyable.  He’s a good storyteller.  He keeps it simple.  I like his style too.

Currently, I have a Jeffrey Archer to finish.  Again, finding it a bit difficult to understand the context as it belongs to early 20th Century English society, but I will read along and see how much interest I can generate.

P.G. Wodehouse and Ayn Rand will have to wait.  Atlas Shrugged needs to be finished, but not right now.

Well, coming back to how I welcomed New Year this time, I think I couldn’t have done better.  I worked, night shift.  Although that sounds very boring, I think it was a constructive way to step into a new year.  I had the mandatory party on the 3rd of January with the pada guys.  Alcohol and fags as usual.  One of my resolutions this year was to quit fags.  I have partially succeeded up until now.  I have managed to keep my intake to the minimum.  I am looking forward to cutting back on my tobacco intake.  It’s stickier than Fevicol for sure.  I am a veteran now of making resolutions and failing to live up to them.  I am not alone.

I had joined the gym last year in September but couldn’t keep up the routine and there has a gap of two months since the last time I attended gym.  I am planning to get back into shape (like I have been planning for years!).

Work has been shaping up quite well except for night shifts.  One primary reason for my not being a regular at the gym is night shifts.  I have a few ideas floating around in my head for sometime, let’s see what I can do about them.  I hope to figure out a way soon.  Money was something high on my priority list the previous year, and I think I have fared quite well in that department.  There are more milestones to reach, however.

Well, I think this much will do for a New Year entry.  More next time, which will be soon.  I need to put some of my original thoughts down into the written form before they are too lost to be retrieved.  And also just to be able to see what’s on my mind with my own eyes gives me a sense of purpose.  Blogging is good.

Until then…keep evolving.