Neatly Folded

My career in journalism started out with an internship at India's prestigious Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. The office, which took me well over an hour to commute to, was even then, a formidable force in journalism in India. Still an wide-eyed undergraduate with a theoretical grasp of the field, my first and only project over 2 weeks for the organisation, left a huge impact on my career.  The idea of going into journalism came from my English teacher, Mrs Moss. One day, close to the completion of my 12th grade, she was suggesting career options for some of us to explore. She looked at me and said, "Given your love for talking, you should consider a career path in law or in media." To put this into context, I was a student with good grades in an English medium school in one of the most backward states of India, Bihar. Any further educational aspirations would take me outside the town that I had grown up in, as was the case for all my classmates. Most of my peers w...

It has become so common to come across Whatsapp and Facebook posts that come with the disclaimer that "media does not want you to know this". And it makes me wonder why any media house would be bothered with your opinion! In an age where knowledge has been rendered irrelevant and sensationalism drives almost all content, clickbait is no longer just a tactic but an acceptable way of life, news reaches you in a selective, handmade parcel - your social newsfeed. To better explain, you only get news of subjects you are interested in. And no, "smart is the new sexy" is a tagline, like most of the content you see around you today. If you haven't been living under a rock, you should know that Google and Facebook (add WhatsApp) already know more about you than you would like anyone to know. Which means that these social media groups know exactly what you want and when you want it. In order to keep you engaged, they keep delivering stories and posts that you woul...

A movie I just saw brings back the memory of a very old friend. A question.."How can I be true to myself if I don't know who I am?" The very same has helped me make many mistakes in life, filled me with guilt and caused, I must admit, much trauma to my fragile sense of balance. Since I have never really known the truth about me, I have always chosen to be surrounded by those who identified with me at that point in life or, were as confused as me. It was a convenient thing to do. And now, I realise that convenience, no matter how articulately portrayed as reality, runs a certain course. So I am now standing at a point where those who related to me have no use for my existence, my quest is rendered redundant and my restlessness annoys them. If I play along, I'm being too polite and artificial, if I choose to keep away, then I am rude and insensitive. Somehow, though it still bothers me a bit, I know this will pass. My quest is mine alone and no one is bound to unders...

It was after much persuasion that I have been able to bring myself back to writing. For some bizarre reasons the ideas in my head tangoed about quite a bit but never directed the body to putting them in ink. That's the way it becomes, every once in a while, I suppose. This post is about how deep the impact of the surroundings become on a mind that is clogged with too many thoughts and how mental stress triggers vivid dreams making unreal elements of a real life, the dream reality. After having watched Mel Gibson's Apocalypto yet again, I rushed to hail the night cab and get back into the confines of home. I watched yet another movie ( In Good Company ) on my phone before I finally slept after daybreak. What followed was a crazy labyrinth of dreams that became impossible to follow the thread of once I woke up. The usual problem of being in a dream emerged. It was all too real and I spent quite a bit of my energy on living through it. The scene started somewhere in my old ho...

Life continues to be on a roll and I continue to fumble along with it. Now is the time to pause and reflect and also the time when the injuries take their toll. I go back to one of the conversations I had a few months ago. One about looking at life in blocks. When I started out, everything seemed to blend into a single block - behavourial patterns, circumstances and their effects. As I moved closer to the present, these blocks started to get smaller till it became one flowing mass of circumstances with a varying range of effects. Fast forward to a time when even pausing to catch my breath seems like a remote possibility. Barring the frantic pace of things of life forming and deforming around me, there is also the challenge of keeping an eye out for the obvious. The movement of the starts in the sky, the flight patterns of the birds, the falling and growing of leaves and flowers and the multitude of colours that dominate the expanse of my existence. They cannot and should not be over...

It's a tricky question... For the past three days I find myself returning, every now and then to search for new tracks for my digital high. I have to admit it is quite addictive. Taking my curiosity to an all new high, I opened my sound cloud account today and VIOLA! discovered an entire community of people who have succumbed to the sound. It is the same feeling from earlier, just that now I don't have to worry about waking up with the stench of alcohol on me. I just sit in my office and punch a few keys and stay submerged in the sound. The problem is that like any other addiction, I cannot share this ecstacy with the world. I tried getting a colleague to hear one of the tracks but she didn't like its effects. Twenty continuous minutes of listening to the music and I feel so high. I feel light, I feel strange. I feel happy too. It's nice. I plan to get my music player and download some of the grub and carry it with me. Give it a listen for a few days and if it works fi...

I take the title of today's post from a movie I saw a few months ago during one of my trips. The idea is not to let circumstances get the better of me. To be able to resurrect, no matter who or what I face and always, find my way back to the starting point from which I can make it all right again. No need to say that this is much easier typed than done. Going by the number of distraction that I face on a daily basis, the real challenge is to keep my focus. To analyse on an every day basis where my destination lies and how much I have been able to fare in the span of time alloted to me. It's never easy, considering telling a lie to myself is always an easier option but that's the real fix, being honest to oneself. We all like to believe that we do not tell lies. But is that really the case? Are we truly capable of being absolutely honest with ourselves. If we did, wouldn't that be the foundation of a utopian society? Or a perfect human being? The ability to be honest a...

I have known for quite a while that chemical drugs simply don't go well with me. It induces a high that I cannot control and losing control over my physical being is of extreme discomfit to me. I have stayed away from chemical induced highs and the only rare occasions when I have indulged in them were only when I was drunk. Even then, the experience was anything but memorable. As the drug takes charge of my mind and forces me let go of control over my body, a defense mechanism takes shape to fight off the drug and retain control over the body causing a very disturbing pattern in my mind. In short, I get violent. Having been an active surfer on Youtube for meditative chants and sounds that calm my mind, I came across a video called Digital Drug and was instantly intrigued. The effect of a chemical is, after all, to cause a particular pattern in the mind and the same can also be brought to effect by an aware mind using a stimulating piece of music. Having some time to spare, I clic...

It's been quite a while being with myself. These are the happy times I could say, unlike the restlessness that I feel when I am with someone or even when I am with a group, desperately trying to fit in, knowing all the while that I never will and that in time, the connections, the warmth and the affections will fade. It would unfair to say that it doesn't bother me. Of course it does but I think I have just about sufficient human connect for now. I am struggling to make peace with the solitude every day. Keep my moods stable and reel in the outbursts that have welling up like a tornado within. There will be madness again soon but I want to relax for the time that I have for me right now. Funny, being in the present moment is an incessant struggle. For example, I know that is a Saturday night again and I am in a total party mode but all the same I am happy being in my space, listening to tracks that I would like to listen to instead of putting up with a mob's affection fo...

My fingers are flying across the keyboard and I don't remember making sense anymore. i don't know why I should keep writing.. if there is anything at all that still needs to be said that I have not been able to say so far. Before this,. I was not even aware of the emptiness that had started becoming me. I had been running away from the shadows , not realising that I was heading straight into the arms of a darkness and now, when I don't see the shadows behind, I try to stop to take a breath and I realise that I can no longer stop. That I wasn't running at all. That I was being dragged away... mind, body and soul into a blankness. Into a place beyond explanations, justifications or the need of either. I see someone in the distance, it seems like a haze. Despite the blur, I can see that she is scared. afraid and needs someone to reach out to. I try to move towards her.maybe she has seen another way in and together we will be able to find ourr way out. She is crying no...

" Perhaps you have reached the stage when life stops giving you and starts taking away " - Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull . Few, very few, have not been as lucky. There are those out there, like me, who have only learnt to let go. Whether we want to or not. To learn to love, only to lose - is a fate that I would not wish upon my worst enemies, even in my greatest rage. For that is a reality that I am still teaching myself to live with. There are those who believe this is an act of self-pity but believe me, after years of scornful speeches from well-wishers and watching them return in their own time to apologise for their insensitivity, I have learnt not to care. Those who try to understand might succeed but those that grow tired of only listening to my daily struggle to live a meaningful existence and more than welcome to walk out of the door - and they have. I will not wallow in the whole morbid recollection of all that I have lost this year, for the list continues...

India's much too short autumn is breathing its last and the onslaught of the cold draught of wind stirs up an age-old foe, depression. I am not among the surprised ones this year. I have known all too well of the creeping hollowness that winters can bring. However, I must admit that I am surprised that instead of being on guard against the symptoms I have come to know very well. I find myself wielding a defiant shield against a recognised few. So here I am today, battling the horrors that make the ones I care about weak and try to help them overcome their fears and the only question that I face, like every other year, is.. What should I look forward to now? Do not misunderstand my anxiety for depression, let the insolence lie aside for a while. Sit, listen to me for once... for I have much to express. Life has been as exciting as I could have never possibly imagined. My understanding is so very limited that I simply give up in awe at the beauty of everything around me. It is tru...

It's quite an unnatural feeling. I do not remember last feeling it. It is a fear. Prone to tragedies, I am quite used to the concept of death/passing over or whatever you may wish to call it. Hence, my fear of the dark is not for myself anymore. What can a spirit gain of hurting me? I do not fear death for I do not feel the urge to live. No, I am not depressed. I am just honest about the fact that I have realised that there is no major loss in my death. Hence, I see no reason to fear it. Or at least that's what I thought. Sidelining the issue a bit, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Uppa. It was about why I hate calendars. I do hate them still. The date and time have their relevance but I am comfortable with a simple icon at the edge of a computer to remind me of it, instead of a full-fledged sheet with numbers and months printed on it. As someone who has seen a little too much of death in life, a calendar often turns out to be a bitter reminder of birthdays, a...

I had happily passed the phase after the strange dream I had of a naked woman wrapped by a giant snake. Till a few minutes ago when a picture of the very vision I had, popped on the screen of my colleague (who sits next to me).. It was a page about Lilith. The true alter-ego of man and the woman God created before Eve. On reading some more, I understand that Lilith was way too explosive to sustain life on Earth and hence, she had to be destroyed. The tamer Eve took her place but Lilith, having been a resident of the Earth, left her traces behind. She had, in fact, borne Adam children.. a girl (I don't know why this sounds obvious) along with several various lesser forms of human (who were conveniently tagged as demon off-spring and their mother termed as a demoness) but since she was uncontrollable to Adam, she was banished. Adam and Eve continued their life on Earth. It is thus, a myth that all children were born of Adam and Eve alone... Lilith and her children prospered as well...

I don't think I can ever stop talking about my bizarre and mostly non-existent sleeping habits. From not being able to sleep a wink for five days at a row and then collapsing into two continuous days of a world-weary slumber, to being groggy all the time despite having sufficient sleep. At times, I felt that life chose to put me to sleep in accordance to its plans but I don't think that is the case any longer, for my patterns do not make sense now. A new facet, a thought is developing in my sleep-induced mind. I need a dream. Like a mirage.. that will excite and prod me through a phase that I am going through. Like I always say, it is impossible to master the shades that life has to offer and that is exactly what makes life such a good teacher. There is nothing as unpredictable as life and as a true follower of the same, I understand the complicated soul that I seem to become in the eyes of those who choose not to believe. It is impossible for me to imagine myself content in li...

It really isn't that hard to smile, I have realised. Yes, sometimes you really get tired of being in one state of mind for too long and then you erupt with all the anxieties and frustrations that you have been tossing away for 'later reference'. At such times, it is easy to spiral down the never-ending darkness and no matter how hard you try to find a foothold, there is no way that one finds an easy way to break the fall. As I age, I find it easier to become calmer and therefore, my spirals have become more violent. The sense of constantly tripping into the abyss from which I may or may not be able to crawl out takes a toll on my psyche. There are two ways of dealing with this now. I can give in to the sickening feeling that rises in my system after every storm or take charge and find brand new ways of combatting my own mind! As far as I go, I need to just remind myself that anger is pointless. The only person affected by my misery is me. The world I live in has no room for...

For quite a while, the essence of life has been dawning upon me by way of little miracles that egged me on to celebrate the life that I was living. I sought nothing more than a reason to make sense of every day that I was gifted and found contentment in witnessing those little acts of God that few passers-by stopped to marvel at. Needless to say, the night had waded away as I set about living my life with all the dexterity of a peasant going about his business in his waking hours. Crash! Boom! The night descended yet again. I have often admired how quickly darkness descends after twilight as opposed to the almost reluctant daybreak, marred by a cover of dense clouds on some days... Days like this are the ones that make me feel as if they were not meant to happen! Despite having slept right through the weekend, I did not quite find the energy in me to engage myself in any useful activity this morning to I simply turned towards the wall of the room, seeking the comfort of a memory I had ...

It has indeed been quite a while since I posted the thoughts on my mind. It is easy, for those like me, to lose ourselves in the flow of events and find in us the courage to reconnect with what we are forced to leave behind. It is as painful as looking into the mirror, for I am no longer sure of what I am going to see. Yet, I know that it is important to return to any semblance of an identity. For me, returning to this blog is a reminder of who I was, who I am and what I capable of. There has been yet another loss. It is strangely stifled though, the pain. Perhaps it will reveal itself to me at a time when I might not be in a condition to handle it. In the series of events of my life, this seems very likely. Till then, I simply have to wait and perhaps, try to prepare myself for what I will face. Fir now, the physical agony is enough to dominate my mind. I am trying to deal a little differently with it this time. Keeping off the alcohol, despite the pain and though I do not have much o...

It seems the universe has not found too many patient ears for some time. Relentless dreams and visions have started playing tricks on my sense of reality. My body demands longer hours of isolation, to sleep.. to wander in the world of the mind and soak in everything. I would not have been perturbed if the visions did not start, so blatantly, borrowing images from my mortal existence. I am trying to chronicle the flow of dreams so far and I hope it will help me make sense of them all. I am not sure of the time when I saw this dream, it could have been late on Saturday morning. It was part graphics or maybe just a burst of activity that I could not see through but what I saw very clearly was a floating lotus-shaped figure. I could recognise it instantly and yet I hesitated, even when it was closed I could feel that not was not a good sign. And then, it opened as if it's trance had been broken by my presence and that's when I recognised it fully. A third eye. An angry third eye! I...

It has been quite a few months since my last room partner, Emma, bid me goodbye. A silent entity, I will remember her for her uncanny habit of finding her way into my bed soon after she knew that I had drifted into sleep and lie next to me causing my quilt to slide away towards her. It really pissed me off at times! Having to wake up again and again from my sound sleep to pull the quilt back on me, only to recede to my slumber and be woken yet again. I don't think it was just my imagination that I could hear Emma stifle a laugh. I just snort back in irritation and draw myself back into sleep. I often wondered about how Emma came to live with me. A peaceful childlike entity like her sharing space with a moody loudmouth like me. She must have had her own share of complains about me too. I never truly understood anything about her except that for some strange reason she felt protected around me. Perhaps because I didn't treat her like the other people she might have chanced upon. ...