Meanderings…

A maddening, sleep-depriving restlessness. Can’t concentrate on reading, music, lose count of sheep counting at 4912 (backwards from 5000). Everyone is asleep or busy or drunk or depressed. Tonight I feel the loneliness. The loneliness of having only yourself. Irutinilae nee nadakaiyile, un nizhalum unnai vittu vilagividum. Nee mattum dhaan indha ulaginilae unakku thunai endru purindhuvidum. (When you walk in the dark, even your shadow abandons you. You realise you are your only companion in the world.) The lyrics that seemed so cynical now begin to make sense. The loneliness of being trapped in yourself–it’s so overwhelming. Maybe that’s why we manage to forget it most of the time, to stay sane. Maybe that’s why we’re so desperate for love, from whoever, in order to forget that loneliness that can gulp you whole.

What do I want? Where is this headed? Why wasn’t I consulted before having life thrusted upon me? There’s a confusion, a sense of utter senselessness in EVERYTHING. I’m a little child throwing terrific temper tantrums, a moody teenager, an angry young woman, an overworked middle-ager, a tired old woman all at once. I suddenly feel over-dramatic and stiflingly repressed. Where do these emotions come from? Do you feel it too? Does anybody?

Where are we headed?

WHO are we?

Laziness is truly underrated. As a society we have become slaves to this thing called hard work (more picturesquely and reduplicatedly [is that even a word? Hmm, well now it is.] termed “surusuruppu” in Tamil). Apparently it’s so misunderstood that certain people even group it under a list called the “Seven Deadly Sins” where laziness in the name of Sloth parties with other cool doods like Lust and Pride. Well, forgive me, for I have sinned! In fact, I’ve been  sinning all my life!

See, this is part of the whole “banning the good things in life” conspiracy that people indulge in. Like the whole hullabaloo over Valentine’s Day in Karnataka (which, hellooo…?, goes on in a smaller, quieter way all the time in Singara Sennai anyway!) Because laziness is fun. It’s cool. Everyone wants to do it, but few can perfect it to an art form (as I have) (modest smile).

Ok, I can hear a few disbelieving snorts. See, this is what I mean by laziness being misunderstood. You disbelieving-snorters must be wondering what could be so challenging about sleeping in, lying about all day and postponing/not even thinking about all that work you have to do. Now, I’ll give you that a person who does these things is undoubtedly lazy. But she’s not Lazy. She has not committed the sin of Sloth. She will not hang out in hell with the Lustful Ones and the Proud Ones. No indeed. What she will do is put on a couple of kgs, develop bed sores or die when no one was looking (depending on how lazy she is.)

So, you ask, your disbelieving snorts turning into expressions of puzzlement, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU RAMBLING ABOUT, YOU PRAT?! Ah, well, *stalls while furiously flipping through notes for the point* I mean… Ah yes! those of the capital-L ilk of the Slothful have certain qualities which the average beach bum does not. (No offence to beach, or any other kind, of bums.) See, these creatures have a certain air about them that doesn’t just come from living in close prximity to unmade beds or overflowing workspaces or cobwebby ceilings. No, that air of indolence, of otiosity, of sheer fainéance (yes, yes, I do have thesaurus.com open in a parrallel tab. So, you learned some new words, don’t grumble! ) that surrounds the Idler has a deeper, more profound reason. You see, “Laziness if not a state of being, it is a Way of Life”*. To achieve that transcendental state of Languour, you must free yourself from those troublesome bonds that plague human beings on earth–the curse of the Mind. Yes, the mind is a great deterrent to Laziness. It clouds your judgement and obscures the world of Matter, which is where one must dwell. The mind, it does the one fell, evil thing that condemns you to the base land of the Small-L: It makes you think!

Ah, yes, now you see it–we reach the heart of the matter! So, one may sit around doing nothing, but at one point, the Mind worms its dark tentacles to wrap you in a death grip. You begin to worry or think or (gasp!) get BORED! And so, one more falls.

And this is where the Lazy ones differ from ordinary mortals. By a set of methods that are so complicated that they became so easy that only the truly lazy can perceive them, it is possible achieve the divine Way of the Niryawna. Here, the mind is shut off, as definitely as a laptop with no battery or a government office during lunchtime. Such a Non-Mind will not allow the smallest twig of worry or the softest whisper of a thought to disturb it. Not only does it not allow anything to distub it, but is like the still, sluggish surface of a swamp on a hot day: stewing in its own juices and swallowing anything that comes its way so no trace of the disturbance is left!

Once this state of inertia is achieved, the Lazy one may go for hours and hours with absolutely no thoughts, no worries, nothing even remotely resembling an action. The Non-Mind is blessedly blank, snoozing away. And this is not as boring as it sounds (besides, the fact is that the Blessed are beyond boredom, remember?) One may stare at a screen/page for hours while nothing is going on behind the eyes. One may appear to be listening intently to a conversation/lecture while secretly sleeping in one’s head. Of course, one may decide to descend upon Earth once in a while, out of pity for the unfortunate mortals, but this is entirely optional.

Ah. Bliss.

And that is why We the Languourous are envied. Jealous-ed, even. And, inevitably, persecuted. Sigh. I hope you realize the dangers I have put my own Rest to by trying to enlighten you! But never mind, my child. The Snooze forgives.

Now go read the Ode to Indolence

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*The Holy Snore-Yawn, Chapter 1, verse 24: And so the ‘N’lightened One said unto them, “Go forth and slumber, ye  bustling hordes, for Laziness is not a state of being but a Way of Life.”

Well, it’s been a month since my last post. Questions of whether my blog has been abandoned have begun to be asked by the privileged (ha. ha. ha.) few who read it. So here I go…

There’s been so much to write about, ranging from the light-hearted, to the giddy, to the sickeningly depressing. And sometimes, when you have too much to write about, you end up not writing at all. Oh, plus I’m so lazy Anyway, moving on…

Looking back at my last post, I realize how silly we human beings are. We live in a world that is so much our own creation and then have all these huge arguments about who created it, how it should be, who has more power, etc. Now, I’m not talking about anything so profound as whether there is a god or not. I’m talking about the simple fact that our ideas of time and space and all that crap are just that–our ideas, not some universal truth. Ok, take ‘time’ for example.

So, we celebrated the new year, hoped it was a new beginning and life would become wonderful again/more wonderful. But the fact is, time is a human invention, isn’t it? If we didn’t mark it with new years and deadlines and almanacs, it would  just be a huge blob that passes by without our even noticing it. And we know all this! Even if we’re not aware of that knowledge, we know it. Yet, we get caught in that very trap. We hope for “new beginnings” even though nothing is really new. The irony is that, things are just getting older with every “new” year. The same things continue to happen, life still doesn’t really have any meaning other than what we give it, and yes, people still catch colds. Still no cure for the common cold.

And yet we continue to do it, continue to fool ourselves. Continue to believe that the little imaginary marks we make on the huge puzzle that is time mean something real in the world. But then, we human beings are and have always been good at self-deception. I think that’s our greatest strengh. We can believe that we as a species are essentially, “naturally” good even though good/evil is our own invention. We can shut our eyes to truth and reality while claiming to be engaged in an investigation of that very truth and reality. Yes, self-deception is our greatest strength.

It’s why we, the weaklings of Nature, still survive.

Ah. Cheerful.

The next time someone tells me that Tamil is a difficult language to learn, I’ll thank them and feel flattered. After all, I must be pretty smart seeing that I learned most of this “difficult” language by the time I was four!

P.S.: Brain nice and empty now!

(… As opposed to waxing, get it? Sigh. I must stop explaining my jokes.) You may ignore this if you a like. Just a little parody for my amusement…

I’ve just eaten my fill and
I’m ravanous
I’ve just woken and
I’m already sleepy

every hour I’m away seems
like a second.
the minute I return
stretches for hours

your eyes are like endless pools of warm honey
but really, closer to molten lava in hell
your voice is dark and smooth like chocolate
or rather like a blackboard when nails rake it.

serious symptoms of an illness, you’d think
but my love, these are symptoms
of the long-awaited cure:
I’m falling out of love!

So yes, the summer has been upon us for a couple of months and, unfortunately, as summers tend to be, I have started LEARNING things. Sigh. An unfortunate side-effect of being utterly vetti I guess. It’s most disappointing. I never went about arbitrarily LEARNING things when I was in college! Why should I now, when the days should be spent in decadent wastefulness? Sigh again. Anyway, here are these great lessons:

- Celebrity Crushes Are Fun!
Beside the garden variety everyday crush, which is often painful and almost always embarrassing, there is the Special Realm of the Celebrity Crush (hmm, what’s with the capitals, you ask? No idea!) Now, the thing about the CC is the ridiculous ease of accessibility to the object of your interest/affection/desire/lust (ha!). One google search for certain strangely attractive cricketers and there are about a million pictures to go ga-ga over. One foray of television channels and there’s Hrithik Roshan, bulging muscles, yummy eyes, cute extra digit et al! Now, a few heart aches could be caused by little factors such as… “Oh no, (dramatic hand-to-forehead) Christian Bale is married!” or “Damn that Deepika Padkone, trying to steal my guy!” or “Ah, if only my lowe wasn’t straight…” But overall, your friends tease you and you grin along, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never get caught in THAT trap, at least!

- It’s Possible to Do a Lot of Nothing
Now this might sound like something Garfield would make up, but it’s true! You can pretend to read… while doing nothing. You can pretend to watch television… while doing nothing. You can pretend to be online, doing important things… while doing nothing. Well, you get the drift! It’s a glorious feeling when you look back at a long day of doing nothing. In fact, I plan to write a book about it, Doing and Nothingness. I’m sure it’ll be more popular and… “experienceable” than Sartre’s similar ramblings.

- The Sad Truth about People
It’s a sad truth that people have an endless capacity to deceive themselves. Some (no links here, sorry ) would even sink into melodrama and self-pity rather than admit that they might have done something wrong or work at a compromise. Ah, well, it takes all sorts of nuts to make a fruitcake.

- The Happy Truth About People
You know there’s always another side to the grass but both the less green and the greener sides can be on your own lawn! Ok, ok, I’ll stop talking in metaphors before you throw something at me. It’s just that the happy truth about people is that PEOPLE CAN BE WONDERFUL! Sure, we’re all full of faults and no way is anybody perfect but still, there are people who will understand you and respect you for what you are and bother to stick with you even when you’re being a total loser or completely lame That’s what makes the fruitcake sweet, after all! (Ok, I promise, no more cliched metaphors!)

- Being a Girl is Fun
Yes, yes, we all know it’s a hard world to be a woman in. Men constantly come up with trivial complaints about how difficult life is for men but it’s obviously just men being men. It’s often the case that women wish they were men but at the end of the day, I realise it’s fun to be a girl! I mean, womes are so comfy in fun sleepovers where previously mentioned objects of interest/affection/desire/lust are drooled over, fashion, world affairs and everything else are discussed, clothes and weird hairstyles are tried out, crazy pictures are taken and hysterical laughter goes on for several minutes over nothing. Now, not being a man, I can’t imagine what male sleepovers (sorry, is that an oxymoron? Let’s call it something more MANLY… Hmm, ok BOOZE PARTY!) are like but I doubt there’s any of the emotional sharing that women do. Wow, I’m being so sexist. It rocks! So yeah, go, girlpower!

- Coo-coo-cooking!
Ah yes, I have leanred rudimentary skills at the kitchen. Never thought the day would come when the old family joke about me having to marry a chef could be shelved. Well, I still wouldn’t go THAT far but I’ve learned some basics. Such as how to make scrambled eggs (ahem, the broken eggs and the weird smell in the kitchen will NOT be mentioned, atomic!) and chapati and dosa and rava idli! So yes, I might survive on my own, provided there are convenient Spencer’s Dailies in every corner to buy bread, idli/dosa mav and eggs from. Hehe.

Oh, there’s more but all this writing really is getting in the way of my “doing nothing” campaign. So it’s bye-bye for now

Now, wait just a minute… How the heck did this happen?! One minute it’s New Year’s Day 2007 and suddenly it’s 2008. Sheesh.

So anyway…

Here I go with my usual profound remarks about the new year that will gloriously mark this special moment in time… The “days of our lives”, if you will Well, this time it’s rather short, pithy and while I don’t know if it may be considered an actual REMARK, it holds profound philosophy… So listen carefully:

PPPPFFFFFRRRRRRT!

Ah. I see from the rather puzzled look on your face that you’re cautiously wondering “WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?!” Ahem. You know. Look deeper. Such great thoughts cannot be explained but only expressed and experienced. Ok, ok, FINE. The old “figure-it-out-yourself” cop out isn’t gonna work on you. That was an expression of the rip that is created in the fabric of time as we move from one great epoch to anoth– Ok, ok, fine, you can stop looking sceptical. That was just me sticking out my tongue at the world, blowing a raspberry at it.

So yeah, that’s my profound remark for the beginning of this year:

PPPPFFFFFRRRRRRT!

Hey but if you think about it, it actually DOES sound like the sound of God’s snore–cos he’s bored with us humans and has fallen asleep–

Hey, hey hey! THAT’S NOT NICE! At least throw tomatoes that are not rotten so that I can… you know… make a meal of it. And, er, could you substitute the smelly eggs with some fried fish? Really, I’m not being very particular. It can even be not so fresh. *drools* Thanks a bunch.

‘APPPPPPPY NOOOOOO EEEEAAAARRRR!

————————————–

Ahem. Some post-scriptitious (hey I just made up a fake word!) remarks…

I know this was a rather sad attempt at a blog post, but in my defence, my blog and Miss Perfection (you can read about her elsewhere {haha, now you’ll have to comb through my blog [and comment]}) were literally SCREAMING at me to update and well… this is the product. So don’t blame me. You can continue the rotten tomato throwing at THEM (I’ll still have the fish though Thanks…)

Oh, and the Zzzzz… label was new cos I realised I don’t have any labels beginning with Z… In fact, that’s my new year’s resolution… To come up with a label for every alphabet (wow, I just made up a fake resolution!)

The other in a drama-writing workshop, we were asked to look back and think of a “crisis” or a turning point in our childhood that changed who we are today.

I thought… I scratched the A4 sheet with my pen… I turned those little lines into meaningless doodles. And all I discovered was a penchant for cartoon faces, leaves, lips and black-and-white alternating patterns!

I couldn’t think of a SINGLE incident that stands out as changing who I am, making me what I am today. This is something that really disturbed me because everyone seems to have one incident–happy or sad–that changed their life. What does my not having one mean? Am I… shallow? Too complacent? Or worst of all–BORING?!

Not that I wish a childhood trauma upon myself, just so I have something to write about. But c’mon, how am I going to become a famous–and more importantly–RICH writer if I don’t have that “something” that’ll haunt me all my life, drive me first to writing, then to drinking, smoking, drugs, indiscriminate sex and finally to death! How will I face the literary world? How will I support myself (consults a previously mentioned list)–LEGALLY!

Sob… oh woe!

Ah, forget it. I’ll just… traumatise myself now. Better late than never, eh?

—————-
Now playing: KT Tunstall – Throw Me A Rope
via FoxyTunes

You’re a Hyena!

You have quite a sense of humor, though many others find it derisive
rather than appealing. You are perceived as being a coward, but actually have moments
of great bravery and have even stood up to those much larger than yourself. You like
hanging out in groups and are always making a lot of noise. Disney thinks you are an
idiot.

Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

You’re a Hyena!
You have quite a sense of humor, though many others find it derisive rather than appealing. You are perceived as being a coward, but actually have moments of great bravery and have even stood up to those much larger than yourself. You like hanging out in groups and are always making a lot of noise. Disney thinks you are an idiot.
Take the Animal Quizat the Blue Pyramid.