Boxxo & Roundo (slide 2)

Boxxo & Roundo (slide 1)

The weeping womb

Passionate days, passionate nights,

week long, month long intercourses

and thus I was born.

Joyous, he welcomed me,

nourishing and nurturing me

dutifully in his womb.

But times, they changed.

Infidel, he began sinning with a vamp,

falling prey to her trap.

Now, impregnated into the same womb

is their offspring.

Feasting on his unlimited supplies,

the new one grins at me as I starve.

Choking me, he whispers into my ears,

'to thwart you and abort you am I here,

farewell you silly dream... my name's fear'.

Sudd-Suddenly #4

A lazy, aimless stroll inside ‘Temptations’, an understated, humble video/music store on Brigade Road.

Storeguy: new album saar. Today only it came.
Joblessguy (not paying much attention): hmm…
Storeguy puts back the album. Joblessguy sudd-suddenly spots a familiar font on its cover.
He picks it up with a sense of urgency and stares at it and it reads in big bold guitar-head fonts ‘MEGADETH - ENDGAME’
A massive chord from a Jackson-electric sounds inside his head. His pulse seems to have taken off on a lead guitar solo.
Joblessguy: you do accept card right….

Mustaine… dear god.. loyal friend…
News and rumours of a nervous breakdown and retirement… uahahaha… I can hear you laugh at us silly mortals through your album, through your guitar.
You have held the dying veins of speed/thrash metal and jolted it out of coma.
Oh lord.. thank you for coming back.

A spore of fire

Well… I’m back to what I do the best… brood.

Not that I haven’t been doing this at all. Actually I do keep brooding most of the time, at every opportunity my mind feels a bit untied and temporarily disconnected from everything happening around. But, using a technical term (and since I have also been attempting some ‘subject-surface-scratching’ - trying to understand some very basics of the subject matter I have been handling for more than 2 years now) this can be called ‘implicit brooding’! Here you brood, but only within. Yes, I acknowledge that brooding is by itself an ‘internal phenomenon’, pretty much concealed from the external appearance. But the implicit variety is like going another shell or another layer inside. Call it ‘inner-internal-phenomenon’ if that makes things simpler or sounds acceptable. You are so bogged down by activities/tasks/things/duties that you are left with very little time to devote to anything else. And so you brood in gaps/intervals/breaks/pauses, only for a few moments before you are rewound and catapulted back to reality.

And then there is the other, the grand, independent, carefree, unperturbed sort – ‘explicit brooding’! The state of mind where the foremost slot of application of the mind is allocated to brooding, second to none. It drives the machine and everything else rides pillion. Lets call it ‘outer-internal-phenomenon’ to stay inline with the other variety’s description.

If you consider yourself a seasoned brooder, you will at once recognize this to be an activity which aids in attaining supreme mental satisfaction. To me, this is the satisfaction arising from a session of analyzing and streamlining emotions. Happiness, sorrow, confusion, complacency, inspiration…everything appears to distill down to a solitary feeling of anger, which in turn fuels a craving for creativity, fuels a drive to do only things I want to do and not need to do and fuels the urge to attempt that big-leap, from what appears like the bottom of the pit currently.

Agni kunjodru kanden,

Adhei angoru kaattilo pondhidie veithen,

Vendhu thanindhadhu kaadu,

Thazhal veeraththil kunjendrum moopendrum undo?

A spore of fire did I sight,

It, in the dense of a forest did I hide,

Burn down to ashes, did the forest.

In their blistering rage, can one say a spore of fire from a blaze?

A '?' day

Today was a ‘question mark’ day.
One of those days where you keep questioning yourself as to why you are doing whatever you are doing.

Questions keep shooting out of your mind like bullets from a machine gun.
And the most difficult part is that you have to face these bullets alone, no army, no team. Try dodging them and you’ll see that they boomerang right back at you. There’s no escape, no refuge, the questions seem to work on the same principle as that of guided missiles.

Why did you join this company?
Why did you take up engineering?
Why are you working on such an outdated technology?
Why can’t you be technically strong in whatever junk you are doing?
Why are you still sticking on to this field even after you know its bad?
Why are you only mediocre in whatever you do?
Why cannot you make a firm decision on what you want to be?
When will you learn, gain knowledge and be a true champ at everything you do?
How difficult is the other stream you are trying to enter?
Will you survive if you take a plunge or will you drown?
Why can’t you dedicate even 1 hour everyday to improve yourself?
Why is this code looking endless?
Why is the logic appearing so undecipherable?
Why is the cafeteria playing music which is so loud and lousy?
Why isn’t anyone complaining against the bad quality of the food?
Why is it that everybody seems to be happy with the rip off prices?
Why is this cocky rotund clown my manager?
Why is he questioning me on my performance when he does not seem to know, in any sense, the word’s very meaning?
What qualities did they see in him to make him the manager?
Why are all the clocks appearing to run so slow?
Why can’t they function in the way you want them to?

At the end of the day you find yourself swimming against a high tide of questions. You are trying to reach the other side. But then you realize there isn’t a destination at all. Swim or sink. Its your call.

The Clockfools

He pulls the blanket
past his eyes, and over his head.
he recalls the nights
when he slept cozily, curled up in his bed.
he seeks that silence,
he searches for that stillness,
he closes his eyes,
those blood-shot in the battle against sleeplessness.

Into a deep slumber, his mind he tries to thrust,
futile, he twitches and turns,
unable to overcome its state of unrest.
desperate, he sings himself a silent lullaby,
as louder grows the day's bustle,
he hears a school kid shouting "mummy...bye bye".

He is just one of them,
among the many thousands,
the ever growing group of the clockfools.
those who live by the clocks of far off lands,
their own, ticking, not clockwise,
but in what seemed, a clock-fool way.
fooling the sun and the moon,
fooling their own days and nights,
they fool themselves
of the hours dark and bright.

As he lies, still in the quest,
he sees sleep coming, still a little distant,
he thinks about his life, the way
his career seems to have begun, hitting rock bottom.
he hears his father waking up the gods,
busily chanting the venkatesa suprabaatham.

When it thawed

He stood up and walked slowly and aimlessly, heading towards the edge of the hill.

Although he had sat there with the others, he stared straight, gaze fixed on the bottle of water, submerged in thoughts, isolating himself mentally. No comments, no jokes, he spent the time in silence while the others relaxed, had fun and eased away their weariness. The climb had been exhausting and everyone was trying to get back as much energy possible by consuming some snacks and fluids. He just took a few biscuits and a little juice, still mute in musing.

Several images crossed his mind... flickering, looping, growing dark and bright repeatedly like the fuse of a bulb moments prior to burning out.
He felt miserable at the control he lacked over his life. The independent, unstoppable way, in which it kept moving on, he felt stuck light years behind.

He hated every bit of his present state... his job, the 'software engineer' tag attached every time somebody referred to him, the talks about him 'settling down in life' which occurred almost every time relatives or friends spoke to/about him, codes and bugs, deadlines and commitments... it all made him feel sick, angry, guilty, helpless and lost.

The heat of the afternoon sun burned the skin on his cheeks as he stood, inches away from the edge, with an almost face-to-face glare at the sun.
the clouds, they appeared to him as if they were inviting him to float along, void of any responsibilities or constraints, nowhere in particular to go, no one in particular to meet, unstained and unstrained freedom.

"Just another step and you would be there" he said to himself.

"Would I really be missing anything if I were to proceed? Anything worthwhile for me if I restrain myself?"

As he continued contemplating, still looking intently at the silky white cloud, he heard someone approaching him. Not willing to be disturbed, he decided not to take notice.

"Hey mister software engineer... what are you doing here? Remote terminal bug
fixing eh?" said Anirudh, jovially, still a few steps away from sandeep.

He felt annoyed at this intrusion. He stayed inert, without responding, trying to neglect anirudh's presence.

Noticing this behaviour, anirudh decided not to probe too much. He walked up
to the edge, stood next to him and looked in the direction of the same cloud.
The next few minutes continued in silence, with both the men just staring at the sky.

Allowing the mind waves to settle down, giving it some time, anirudh said in a low, serious tone, sounding the least interrogative
"You seem to be looking for something".

sandeep felt he wasn’t being pulled into any silly talking and replied
"Hmmm... yes... searching for the thing i lost long ago... this thing called life"

"And what do you see up there?"

"Happiness... freedom... peace of mind... what not?"

"And how would you get all that?"

"Just another step pal... one small step" stressing on each of the words.

"Hmmm... damn simple right? Ok... go ahead... and then what would happen?...You'll be dead?" said anirudh in a bold, non-compassionate manner.

"Dead?... I won’t die ani... there is'nt any life left in me to die" said sandeep
trying to put across the statement as if it was a simple logical one.

While the conversation went on, neither of them looked at the other, still focusing on the same cloud.

"Ok... move forward slightly and look down" said anirudh, shifting gaze and looking directly into sandeep's face.

sandeep felt slightly puzzled at the pitiless way anirudh was talking, and could sense a small measure of fear rise inside. He just bent forward, firmly gripping his feet on the ground and looked down the drop. The wind was strong and it played silent songs into his ears. He stared at the bottomless depth. The openness and the emptiness that he saw made the fear inside him to grow. Just a few seconds and then he stood upright, looking at the sky. anirudh remained unmoved and silent. He could sense many things going through sandeep's mind. After a brief pause he said "so... what did you see?"

"Nothing... everything was blank" sandeep replied in a slightly scared and
weak voice.

"Hmm...you dint see a thing?"

No response.

"Ok... I’ll tell you what you saw." looking directly into his eyes "you saw life... its only when you stare into the face of death that you realize life."

sandeep dint say a word. His silence spoke it all.

anirudh tossed the bike key towards him and sandeep hurriedly caught it as if a
glass vase was thrown at him.

"Come" said anirudh turning towards away from the edge.

"Where?"

"Lets hit the road" anirudh walked away from him leaving him back in isolation.

sandeep looked at the cloud again, turned around and saw anirudh walking. The
rest of the group remained as it was, relaxing and having fun, unaware of the whole episode. He walked up to them and picked up a bottle of water and returned back to the edge. He let the water run down his face and watched it as it went down the drop, disappearing into the emptiness. He felt the cool of the wind blowing across his wet face.
He walked back to the guys, threw the empty bottle at one of them and said "ok guys... i guess thats enough of rest... get up.... lets go....
lets hit the road"




PS: This story nucleated from one of Anto's statements(antoniyms...as we know).
he one day said, when he was talking about the people at his workplace, "maam.... even if the floor above falls on them, they wont die maam... there's no life only...how will they die"

And this post is an ode to one of the few activities that injects a good dose of life into our lives... biking. Every single bike trip (and the small treks too) have been stand-out experieces in the otherwise monotonous life.

conscious in coma

Here, i put down my present state of mind...the whirlpool of thoughts spirallin endlessly in my head.

LOOPED INTO INFINITY....
wake up at 6 in the morning to time's tight slap on the face... my race with time starts off there after.... get ready.... get bottled in traffic... reach offic.... stand in a long queue to sign in, only after which u r allowed to enter inside... sit at the comp... listen to dumb lectures.... sign un-dated bonds.... eat... back to the code n the lessons on white board.... let off... q again to sign out... engulfed in traffic once more.... eat....sleep.... get slapped again.... wake up.....

the machine runs.... will have to run.... don know exactly y though.... fear of joblessness? family responsibility? success-drive? compulsion?

my mind has never been this interrogative like this until now...these few days have flooded me with thoughts about everything happening around me... may be im jus not percieving things the right way, but some of the questions risen inside jus dont seem to die... occuring and re-occuring.... never fading,never dying thoughts.


KNOCK-KNOCK.... QUALITY???? ANYBODY HOME????
assuming that i was moving higher as i moved from uvce to an mnc, i seeked quality. this feeling seemed natural to me, afterall all of us know the kind of dirt-level we put up with in our college lives.... but things look no diff here... the work, quality of training, the training staff, facilities, peer group, everything fell way below my expectations....


CAMPUS TO CORPORATE WORKSHOP.....BRAINS SHUT-SHOP!!!
this was a 4-day mega-farting session... everything about u is already laid down like rules of a game...u were a jerk in college.... u had no responsibilities... u were nobody then, value null.... now u r a dignified working proffesional.... u were never respected then, but u'l be revered now, provided u r a puppet to any sort of insructions given to u...

and then the steps to be followed if u want to reach higher in the 'corporate ladder':
how u have to talk, walk, dress, eat, piss,(rub??!!).....
u r no more urself.... u r a team-member...
concentrate, be on time all the time,n so on n on n on....

what the hell is all this man? cant these things be picked up by anybody as days go by? should v be instructed in everything v do? is a 'coaching' required for all this? n y cant anything outside these meaningless boudaries be socially decent or respectful or correct?


who's to say whats for me to say?
who's to say whats for me to do?
who's to say whats for me to be?
cos a big nothig it'l be for me!!!! ;) ...(mustaine)


LIFE GOES ON.... OUT ON A LEAVE
I remember the first words of the trainer during the Campus to Corporate shit..... she said

now everythin u say has a meaning.....everything u do in life has a meaning.... i asked(only to myself) ....ok... but does life actually have a meaning???
im not trying to sound very philosophical... neither am i trying to make some kinda fundoo statement.... its jus a plain straight forward ques...


the mentality of many ppl around leaves me puzzled... all that they seem to bother about is only the next step. wat im tryin to say is... statements like..."oh maga... studies aithu.... kelsa bandhaithu... nextu ondhu olle hudugi sikbitrey saaku.... ashte...life settledu"
understand??? i this is all life about?

is life jus about growing up n working n gettin married n having kids??? it looks like as is life is jus about creating problems for ourselves n then finding solutions to them n then seeking happiness in doin so. is there nothing more life's gotta offer?


whats happened to tat old 5-letter word 'dream'? weren all of us supposed to dream big when v were young? but when v r big the dreams r all gone. ambitions n dreams r slaughtered, sacrificed in the name of acceptance of life.
accordin to me, children should be taught never to dream or have ambitions. cos, dreams r inevitably going to come under the crushing wheels of the act-of-existance and the art-of-survival, get killed, rotting into valueless fossils of a what-cud-hav-been-life.


the way the lives of most of us r lived, seems so stereotype n similar at the base level....as if it were all pre-programmed....jus strip off the cloak of work or designation from the body of life n observe... the similarity is undeniably true n sad... they r all like clones...


our life thru school til colg is spent in triviality...

colg days in some increased maturity, occasionally even revolutionary thinking... but responsibilites reveal the inevitable futility of any revolution...

then on life is spent in an unsettled slurry of activities tryin to 'settle' in life....

(it reminds me of the matrix!)

we all somehow seem to fix our lives on to this 'life-cycle' n jus let our lives be driven by it, ultimately turnin into mere spectatators of our own lives....


i think the nuclues of this flawed-system lies in the way most of us r brought up.... right from early school days, v r always taught to 'enjoy what v do' n not 'do wat v enjoy', be it by teachers or parents....
y cant one be taught to do wat he likes until n unless it is against the law or someone els.... V can all continue to go on the same way, tryin to enjoy wat v do, but for how long???


FUEL FOR SURVIVAL....
even as i write this.... im thinkin of work... thinkin of some program which had gone wrong in class yesterday.... yes, even i find it strange, but i think thats the way things start to happen....
its some sort of mind-seige or seizure of the brain where any conflicting thoughts are annihilated...

existance just caves in n life gets sucked in... into bottomless pits of living, of routine, of indifference, and the inevitability of events strung together n told to be accepted as life.

the traumatic environment surrounding the mind, ignites many thoughts like career-suicide or substance-assistance, but somehow i've been over-powering these thoughts by adhering to certains decisions. The book 'a million little pieces' has induced certain interest in Tao philosophy, along with which ive deviced some of my own, creating a set of guidilines according to which i try to tame my mind :

Never judge anything. its only when things r judged, that v decide that somethin is good or somethin is bad. its only then that v develop interest or disinterest in it. avoid judge anythin. do not accept or reject anythin. just let it be.

Geographical boundaries, territory, language, religion, sect, etc must hold no relevance in life or in any decision-making. stay neutral. do not love or loathe, develop no affection or aversion towards anyone from any particular geographical division.

And, as James Frey says in his book..... hold on.