Divine breakfast

I had the most wondrous experience of receiving a coffee machine and mixie all the way from India just last weekend... And the coffee machine spits out coffee that melts through my taste buds and drives me to heights of ecstasy. All last week, I was eagerly anticipating today... awaiting with beating heart, and eager caffeine-soaked tonsils, a lazy Saturday morning with my love and a spectacular, late breakfast. For a moment there I had forgotten that my love had a weekly appointment with the cricket field and thus would be unavailable to me. A disappointment - but I managed to move past it with the help of my coffee! Awakening to the knowledge of a solitary breakfast, I girded my mental loins, and sloshed elbow-first into the soap suds of my kitchen sink. There was no way that I would allow the grease of yesterday's wash to cloud the perfection of today's freshness! Once that was done, the coffee machine started to purr, and release the heady aroma of Brazilian glory... ah! Gloria-Jean had contributed her share to the perfection that was to be my Saturday morning brew by providing a generous quantity of caramel syrup that added the twist of sweet to heighten the perfection of the bitter concoction so many of us drool over. The decoction was done, and the milk was at the perfect temperature, ready for frothing. The frothing was done to perfection, and my coffee was ready. I slathered some cream cheese on toast, added some chutney, and some raungi with masala as dressing... slid both sides of toast carefully together, zipped it through the toaster oven, and there.... the breakfast experience was amazing to say the least :D

so ma! Thanks a ton for the coffee machine and the mixie - the mixie was what I had made the raungi masala with, so both contributed heavily to the makings of this brekkie :D

And why such a long post about breakfast, you might ask... well, just felt like it :P G'day mates!

Emoting

There is this book I was reading... It starts off saying: "There were some days that deserved to be drowned at birth and everyone sent back to bed with a hot brandy, a box of chocolates, and a warm, energetic companion."

Completely brilliant and makes me smile even though today appears to be exactly one such day for me. There are days when I feel like the sun is shining inside my lungs, I talk non-stop, smile till my cheeks hurt, and add a little skip to each step out of sheer love of life. Today, it feels like there is huge sponge lodged somewhere deep in my chest cavity that is sucking my heart's blood with every arterial-pump of my distraught heart. Melodramatic, ain't I? A concerned reader might choose this moment to drag the reading to a halt, and post a sweet question asking me what exactly is wrong? The irritating, annoying, difficult response that I must give is that I really have no proper answer! I feel rather like a wet rag, with my brain smothered in feathers, and each breath I take just seems to directly open a leak-valve behind my eyeballs and squirt saline fluid to obscure my vision! Yeah, such nonsense ought, if there is any justice in the world, to be forbidden from overtaking anyone's system. Ah well...

Have you ever felt that your entire psychological self is one big, open, oozing wound where any joke, any laugh, just goes to irritate? to cause your entire self to shrink down for a moment, contract around itself, and rebound with such energy that it spills onto some poor onlooker who only wanted a laugh? How do you explain yourself? How do you say that it's pure dissatisfaction with yourself. You just want to curl up into a corner and forget about the world for a while, but the world keeps knocking at your shutters until you want to scream! You want to float on a stream of fiction while your subconscious sorts itself out, and suddenly you find yourself too waterlogged to float! Life can be perfect, but if you cannot communicate your feelings properly or cannot communicate them in a way that can be understood, then you might as well go stick your head in the ground, dig your fingers through to your ears, stick them in, and go "la la la la" and just let the world go by. If you cannot soothe yourself and find the path to understanding how to fix yourself up to your own satisfaction, it is with complete conviction that I state, you should, in no way, let the emotional overflow scald anyone else.... Of course, I keep telling myself all this, but sometimes, the best thing to do is to write it all out and let it flow away from you until serenity, will-ye, nill-ye, overtakes you... As it has overtaken me... :)

Emotional catharsis over...

C-c-c-collllddd; F-f-f-freeeezing!!!

Well, the title says it all. I had really planned on writing this post yesterday morning when the sharp memory of the acute cold was still as fresh as a bouquet of Himalayan snow in my mind. However, life got ahead of me - or should I say, work got ahead of me? All documentation stuff... productivity info, more productivity info and a very strange satellite phone whose efficacy in non-satellite, sub-stratospheric zones needed to be tested and needed to be tested NOW! So, yes... work got a little bit ahead of me... :) However, the biting cold was not forgotten. Luckily, it was not quite so irritable a chill today morning, but it was cold enough that I was determined to post this little note and get the whines out of my system :)

So, getting back to the topic at hand... Day before yesterday: I had been told by a minimum of 3 sources that the temperature was going to reach a low of 1 degree centigrade that night. If this had been 2 or 3 years ago, in a place where centralized heating was not just a dream but a realized success, this would not have made my bone marrow squirm. But, squirm it did, because I very soon realized that my poor 7 fin oil heater was not robust enough to do anything but wheeze faintly in the chill vapor of my frozen breath if the temperature should reach this close to zero. Upon the heels of this realization, I started to mull over all the items of clothing in my dresser and figure out what would keep me warm through this abysmal night. I reached home, headed straight to my cupboard and pulled out a hoodie, a fluffy pink silky warm bathrobe with a hood, 2 pairs of woolly fluffy socks, a winter cap which would cover my ears, my flannel Aladdin style harem pants (warm!), and a thick soft warm nightshirt and put them on my quilt. Then I got into all of them; the second pair of socks going on my hands right at the end. So, you can imagine me: round and warm with a cap and the hood of my hoodie and then the hot pink hood of my bathrobe on my skull, a hoodie and bathrobe on top of my nightshirt around my torso, a fire-engine red set of harem pants with the pink bathrobe hugging my well-padded behind, purple woolly socks on my feet and purple woolly socks with rubber splats (to keep from sliding in case I suddenly took it in my head to walk on my hands) on my paws. And I took my round self and plopped under the quilt, making sure that all corners and sides of the quilt were tucked right under my cocooned self. Thus, I was quite warm throughout the cold night and laughed myself silly when I woke up and saw the sun grinning at me through my lacy curtains. It's quite beside the point that I ended up with a fever in the middle of the night and decided to sleep in in the morning. So, I woke up warm, lazy, and feeling much better and was actually able to scrunch my nose, squint, and smile when coming up for air from under my covers... Surprising how a warm night can transform a person's mood :P And the morning was filled with that fresh, dew-drop-filled cold that was just waiting to delve into one's lungs and call up pictures of snowy peaks and sun-ridden early mornings :) So all in all, not that much of a whine in this post. More of a laugh and a skip...

I hate colds I hate colds I hate colds I hate colds I hate colds

I remember reading about this African chook thingy which was supposed to be so sharp that it could be used to send poison to a person's bloodstream without their knowing that they had been pricked (Willard Price is marvelous!). What I wish for now is a large scale version of this thing which could be inserted painlessly into my ear so that the resultant hole would leave a path for the phlegm to ooze out while somehow leaving my brain inside - or even if my brain must needs leave me, i dont care - as long as the phlegm goes first!!! I HATE COLDS!

Have you ever noticed how you dont seem to want to wake up? And all the sounds are muffled (which can be good but as long as it's not a side-effect of this awful CHRONIC DISEASE!)? How moving your little finger can make you want to scrunch your face up in a frown and look at your hand as though it belongs to some alien being who likes pain? It's not a sharp pain or acute in the exact sense of the term - but you are not used to your LITTLE finger asserting its existence with twinges all the time! And then there is the whole floaty feeling where each blink takes just a little longer than normal and you wonder where your day has gone to... sigh... may I re-iterate: I HATE COLDS!

And this blog post really was cathartic! ah! Regurgitation of mental phlegm can help clear the metaphorical body of toxins too! :P

Defining factor: Masochism

I will do it this time:

Dear Diary!!! :P pointless... hehehe

I think, no I believe... and very sincerely I might add, that my life is well written by fate. Now, I do not subscribe to the general belief of fate being a palm leaf with all the twists and turns of your life written on it and stuck on your forehead ("Thalai-yezhuthu"). I prefer a more quantum-mechanical view of the universe. I believe that when every conscious entity is first conscious of its existence as pertains to this universe and this space-time, at that very moment, there are an infinite number of future paths open to it. Every step it takes down one road leaves a set of branches back in the past that are no longer open to it. However, every single decision, every single thought affects its own fate and where it is heading. The further down this path of life we head, the more finite our options become. However, this finiteness is not countable in our sense of the term - it would still be innumerable to us. This is because the number of decisions we make each moment of each day are innumerable in and of themselves and each decision would head us down one branch of our life-path. Whether we are 7 or 70, we still have an unfurling tree to climb with so many branches as to shelter the biggest giant from all the rain that might possibly decide to liberate itself unto his head. All this means that our life, our fate, is in our hands as well as the hands of that omnipresent, omniscient "upar-wala", the ever-loving universal sentient energy that pervades our and all other universes. And this especially means that our life is our responsibility and ours alone. The super-sentient has handed over control of our destinies into our hands. So there is no use railing against life or others. We, each, are uniquely situated to hold the reins over the big decisions which dictate our life path. Yes, there will be impinging influences of others and the butterfly effect will waft our brains to dance over chaotic boundaries. However, the most basic decisions, thoughts, and emotional influences on our life are ours and ours alone.

Which leads me to my current bout of whining... If the main "culprit" who is responsible for my life is me - well, I'm a masochist!!! I like adventure sports, I like adrenaline rushes, I like running to things last minute because it gives me a delicious feeling to still be on time. And I cannot seem to stop myself from walking along paths and right into potholes even though I see them yawning wide and deep right below my feet! I come through it all well and happy, safe and sound and content. However, what I do not understand is how I let myself into these things. I pride myself on thinking hard about everything I do and everything I get myself into. But sometimes, I do stand back and find myself blinking - just blinking - I did this? I DID this? I did THIS? hello! What was I thinking??? And then I relax, breathe, and beat my brain back out of panic and realize: Yes, I DID THIS and Yes, I INTENDED to do THIS and Yes, it might not have been intended initially but I am not disappointed with the current turn of events - if anything I could be said to be ecstatic about most of it. Just that some small portions of my life will always be out of control and since they are out of control, and they will be spoiled little children, I will NOT give over control of my emotions to them. The in-control portions of my life leave me with a sense of joy and "twinkle-some-ness" (yes - but what can I do, it so well defined my state right now). So, yes, one of the defining factors of my life is masochism. The other is fate. One more is happiness. And the last and most important: my rational and evolving thought processes, no matter how right or wrong they might be viewed by the rest of the sentients on this planet :P

Ambitious overturn of laziness

Well, it all started off with me realizing the tires around my tummy were getting the better of said tummy :P So, shall we say, I bowed my head to the lords/ladies of weight loss and decided to do something about it. However, as is well known to the general public, thinking about doing something and actually doing something are totally different. Getting back to the main storyline... I had Made my Decision to start an exercise program a while back. I started slow, some 15 to 20 minutes of yoga in the morning to start off with, because even the thought of getting up earlier than that made me just want to stay back in bed. The difference I felt, versus being a couch potato all through as it had been before, was enormous. I felt stretched, lithe and energetic. I felt a lot more inclined to walk in the sunlight rather than squint through it and grunt. However, sadly, my fitness levels were still not up to anywhere close to the mark. A recent over-enthusiastic bout of exercise caused a state of irritable cramps, tension headaches, and sleeplessness. I had to literally wake up at 3am, take a hot shower and 2 paracetamols before I reached a state of enough relaxation that I was capable of sleep. I had to do some rather heavy duty stretches while in the shower before my toes would uncramp enough to enjoy the hot water. In the past, I really did not prescribe to a serious exercise regimen as most would describe it. All I did was an hour of serious yoga everyday. During that period, I had been on a trek of 2 days and may I say, I did NOT face this sort of pain. So, surprisingly, satisfyingly, I find that yoga is absolutely amazing!!! And I am so much more enthusiastic about going back to my old routine of an hour of yoga a day. But yes, I did not do anything remotely resembling exercise today. It was hard enough to drag my eyelids up, shower again and show up at work with a very sorry approximation of enthusiasm for another monday.... :)

It's a beautiful life!

I feel like starting this post off with a salutation that reads, "Hello Diary!"... :P I woke up today and the sun peeked in through my lace curtains, all golden and gorgeous - the rays seeming to be picked out individually among the ubiquitous floating motes of falling sun drops. I recall poking my nose out of the covers and scrunching my face into a shivering smile (it was cold!).

Going into my kitchen and looking out the open window, there was this enormous, symmetric, gossamer-spun spider web that twinkled and shown with sun-polished dew... The rain had decided to visit drier shores for the moment and had left my world washed clean as a freshly laundered cotton dress just waiting to be slipped on over freshly scrubbed pink-clean skin!

By all the gods above and below, I love this world! It has been spun so beautifully, each thread made unique with colors more fantastic than even my fertile imagination could conjure! Each breath so sweet, each smell so pungent with aromas beyond imagining. Each voice bringing a fresh barrage of laughter! Each smile a rainbow to hang dreams upon! The image of "uplifted heart" is stamped on me today, it's like every time I draw in a breath there's no room for more because my lungs and heart are already so full of life that each dark corner has been illuminated. I feel illuminated! And I wish, oh I hope, these days go on and on and on - for each moment brings a joy anew!

Clarity and catharsis

I'm just beginning to realize that no matter how logically you might think your thought processes are, there will always be something or other to show you how truly out of control your life really is! Not that this is a bad thing, in terms of edification - however, the shock can leave a brain slightly mummified for a few days.

There is one topic that has struck me as being important and needing further thought. The idea of rebellion. Whether it is quiet and is confined to your own life, or loud and embraces the whole nation is not the crux of the matter. The matter needing most thought is this: When does rebellion mean a need for change and a fight against rules considered obsolete, and when does it change to become a prison: you have been rebelling and everyone is rebelling so rebellion must in fact be the rule now! That was the point I came to a few weeks back.

Rebellion, as a whole, is a necessity in any society. Without it, without the thought that goes into it (I am not belaboring that rebellion which involves thoughtless disagreement due to there being bitterness between the rebel and the person whose strictures are being rebelled against), there will be no change, no growth, no progress. Science itself is in constant rebellion, against itself, against the scientists of the past, against God if you want to be finicky - metaphysics for instance in some people's perspectives... The most common art form is the rebellion against parents. Most common rebellions just involve a sub-conscious need to gain control of one's life and take over reins of said life from the hands of obsessive compulsive parents (most parents have OCD when it comes to their children, and I am almost 99% certain I will be one among them when I have a child of my own). Suppose, just hypothetically, you think that there is this common pattern that runs through your society that is only present to obfuscate and put blinders on the lives of the societal members, and, again hypothetically speaking, you think you have found a big enough reason that this pattern needs to be changed in your own life. I still hold, no matter that my pattern now falls back among old well-trodden paths, that it is not wrong and in fact, it would be a betrayal to self if one did not try to rebel against this norm. However, the rebellion should be made with careful thought and so that no harm comes to those around you and least hurt befalls everyone around you.

So, based on the previous thought, suppose that life has moved along down that path of rebellion - and mind you, every step along that path deserves grave and heavy thought, because, it is not just a simple cliché but a fact of life, that everything happens for a reason - meaning that even those patterns are present for a reason! So, giving enough thought, you find that you are enmeshed in some serious life-altering rebellion, quiet but personally grave, and have been at it for a while. There has been no reason to step out of that path for yourself because you have been quite certain that this is the right course for you. Now, after a while, you find that you arrive at a crossroads. You, maybe, arrive at a point where it is pointed out to you clearly that this rebellion of yours is causing irreparable harm to people close to you. And you find that the need for rebellion is no longer as important as ensuring peace and preserving balance in the lives surrounding yours. You realize that this quiet rebellion of yours is leading you down a path you are no longer willing to commit to. What is the right thing to do here? You can easily get stuck at this point. What if you decide to discontinue your rebellion? Would it appear that you were weak? That your thought processes from before were wrong? That you are no longer the most capable person to run your life? Will your peers look down upon you and think that you have taken the easy way out? Will you now have to bow down and never be able to make choices again in your life and imprison your thoughts to the same patterns and only those patterns that run like a lattice through society?

That was when I came to a very simple conclusion. If the rebellion had really been provoked from deep thought and full rational clarity, then not stopping the rebellion when that same thought process leads you to that step as the most rational step to take would just be a betrayal to yourself. It honestly does not matter what other people think. If you can no longer trust your own thoughts, then all is lost.

And in this post, rebellion might appear to be a word filled with heavy gravitas. It is not. It can be anything as simple as rebellion in the form of dress and behavior to rebellion in career modes or rebellion in a single word and saying NO and then moving on to continue with other patterns that are comfortable to your thought process. The only important thing is that every step that is taken in life should be given its due thought and its due respect. Without this, and just letting our subconscious lead us by the nose, just leads to a very depressing society where all rebellions are life-threatening to the rebels because moving out of the pattern that is so rigid will just seem that much more mountainous.

Have no regrets and plan to never look back except to keep the lessons learnt dear to your heart. Being human, and prone to errors in judgement, there will be sadness, there will be times when a little dulling of the natural enthusiasm for life will happen, but that too will pass. Life is not to be wasted on cyclic beatings and willful sorrow. Rather, it is to be filled with all the tiny things that make each day so beautiful: laughter and tears, thought and more thought, and love and loyalty and learning.

Blossoms!

I'm sitting at my desk at work,

Procrastinating just a little...

Not behind, not ahead,

Just about done,

Ready to call it a day.

Cut adrift,

Settling into a deep vale

of calm content -

of peace and haze

with no checklists to fill

and no tasks to complete...

And i get a jolt

and electric shock of massive voltage.

I receive a message which call up memories!

Of a bookstore I left back where

and back when!

I throw my head back,

my eyelids drift shut,

my nostrils flare with remembered scent,

and I am there!

Within my memory,

It's late and the day's far done.

Home and hearth calls

Traffic battles won

But a diversion beckons!

I park my bike

And hurry my feet.

A litany runs through my head:

Oh! let it be open!

Oh! let it be open!

And miracles do happen!

It is!

The sweet owner is bent

Looking to close the accounts for the day

And I peep in...

May I come in?

May I enter this treasure trove?

May I submerge myself?

Just for a few minutes...

And browse and bury my nose...

And catch a glimpse of far off places

And imaginary heroes

And palatial houses and cozy cottages...

May I smell the most beautiful smell of all?

The smell of brown pages,

turned by awed readers

The smell of leather wrappings

Dipped in mystic wonders

Holding memoires and fairytales

Hugging fantasies and maladies

Shouting for an eye to caress

Or a finger to fondle

Waiting for the reader

Who will cherish and drown

Within stories galore!

There are massive stacks of books

and books and books and books!

and more books!

And so many tales to tell!

So many dreams to share!

I put my toe in the store,

and I drown!

I cannot wait to pick new friends

There are so many!

How do I choose?

I soon have a stack

Waiting to own me

and bemoan my tardiness.

The store owner beckons...

Do I not want more?

He's willing to stay open

If I want to steal more of his friends...

Such generosity of spirit!

Of course, I will fatten his pocketbook

And buy him many dinners

With tonight's purchase.

Ah, I could not have it in me...

Not to grudge this sale to him...

So, I buy and I buy

And I go home happy!

My bookshelves swelled to happy content

And desirous of reading all within the next moment!

I miss them - the smells, the ceilings shadowing the books,

The enormous joy of being surrounded by books...

I miss Blossoms... the bookstore :(

The lamp to light my path...

It was the witching hour… and pitch dark. My mother was snoring peacefully beside me and I was twitching a little trying to get to that perfect state of comfort while still half asleep. I think I woke my mother with my wiggling. And right out of the blue, a burst of violent sound from my front door! The door to my little home has a netted screen in front of it with a couple holes around the corners just begging for insects to make their way through. And it sounded like someone was repeatedly throwing themselves at the screen and trying to get in! It frightened the wits right out of my head (there might be those who say that I don’t have many wits in the first place but I respectfully beg to differ – I distinctly felt my rather considerable wit start sliding out of my ears, right along with my brain cells…). I was still half-asleep mind you, and in that state, I believe that the rational, calm half of myself was still trying to crawl toward consciousness at a frustratingly mellow rate. In those witless moments, the fear enveloped me – fear of the unknown. It was forcibly brought to bear upon me that no matter how much science tries to explain the world around us and distill the magic and the unknown into bland, rational semblances, it can still be said: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

At that moment of ululating fear, the one thing that my mind latched onto was the lamp. I have a lot of memories of hearth and home of when I was a child. And a great number of them center around my parents lighting the lamp. To be sure, daddy forgive me!, my dad does not have the best pitch (musically speaking) in the world. However, when he speaks the shlokas that are my staple mental diet every morning while at home, their aural and emotional resonance sweeps me back into the cocoon of my childhood, back into the space where the belief that all is well with the world holds complete sway. Ever since I had started living by myself, the practice of lighting the lamp in the morning and evening sort of withered away into a childhood action, and not something of import anymore. In a lot of ways, I felt that the rational symbolism and psychological benefits of lighting the lamp and saying the shlokas could be had without the crutch of the actual rituals, and that using such a crutch was an insult to my rational thought processes. I was also being lazy, to be sure… My parents were brought up in that manner for so long, that in my mind, it was not wrong for them to continue that way. However, I, being a product of the 21^st century with a deep belief in science and globalism, believed that I should not give undue significance to the ritualistic half, but pay more attention to the meanings and designs behind the rituals that our ancestors started in order to provide our society with a solid foundation and neurological skeleton. The idea that the human mind had its animal instincts and deep rooted fears was not something to be tolerated.

In a lot of ways, we, of this world, are entirely spoiled. We live in such a sheltered, rule-bound society, where the external impinging from a foreign entity is almost completely prohibited. Our minds might be open while we are children, while the rational does not entirely overtake the part of the brain that is open to new wonders, however fearsome or unnatural they may be. But growing up with the TV, and the universities, and the books, and feeding our minds, while all well and good, makes us forget that there are other things out there which cannot be put into words. There might be forces outside our purview, which we might not have thought imaginable! And when such things knock on the doors of our minds and hearts, we are completely unprepared to face them. The fear that overtakes us, prohibits rationality. To get through the fear, pure belief that is coached into us from birth is the only solution that I see. Once past the fear, rational thought will certainly help us. But if we are unable to function due to fear, rational thought will never be within our reach.

And for me, the moment of extreme fear (which when I think about it now, was completely disproportionate to the situation), was resisted by the image of the lamp that my mother faithfully lit in my small home here everyday. It was that lamp that lit the darkness of my mind and showed me a threshold past which paranoia and the unknown would not quell my belief in myself and my protections. My protections form a curtain (transparent but present) around me in my everyday interactions, that I had never before thought to see! My protectors, Ganesha, Krishna, Vishnu, Gaea, and a whole host of others, support me everyday and give me the strength to dismiss them and believe in a rational world. Whether such entities exist separately, where I do not exist and where other believers do not exist, does not matter. They exist for me, and provide the cocoon for me without which I probably would be mentally disabled to the point of paranoia. And I am ashamed and disturbed by my arrogant assumptions that I am capable of existence without any support whatsoever. I am extremely grateful to my parents and my ancestors for fashioning this support system and providing me with this mental sustenance with no expectation of thanks or respect. And I hope that every child in this universe and in all the universes which exist will be given a similar cocoon against the night fears and the creepy crawlies of the mental/emotional layers surrounding us.