There is an immediacy about talking. Ideas and reactions flow back and forth, stimulating the mind, forcingit to think on its feet and respond within a few seconds. Unpredictable, spontaneous, animated and full of vigour and energy. I have had no problems, for the 21 years of my young life, with gabbing away. In fact, people who know me intimately often wish I would just shut up and give my overactive mouth and larynx some rest.

However, love as I do to talk, I always find greater peace and satisfaction in writing. The satisfaction comes from the fact that writing requires you to be precise and exact. There are so many times that have typed entire paragraphs and then pressed delete because on giving it a second reading I find that it doesn't quite say what I wish to. The chance to revise and to redo gives me a greater articulateness that I love. The mental effort, the play of words and the possibility of reading it again and again and yet again; the notion of permanence give an immense satisfaction - to know that your idea will exist forever, for people to read.

There is peace in writing for it allows me the luxury of saying what I want to without being interrupted or contradicted. It gives me the feeling that I am the only person in the world. Paper (and now the computer screen) is the most non-judgmental of all things, accepting everything that I chose to put on it.

I started this blog on a chance conversation. Slowly but surely it has become a place where I can say the things that I am not able to articulate verbally or simply things that slip out of mind. It has also become a medium for interacting with my closest friends on a different plane altogether. I have learnt not only about myself but about them as well. While our conversations have always been stimulating and energetic, this medium has brought with it more thought and consideration.

To be honest, it is not something I expected. I did not expect any of us to discover anything startling about the other, only gentle reaffirmations of what we already knew. That however, has not been the case. We've discovered more similarities and differences that I had hoped to in this short span of just 2 months. And as the physical distances between us grow, and we find our own paths in life, I'd like to believe that this will keep the mental wavelengths in tune.

Straightjackets

Human beings are the most complex creatures on this planet. So difficult to predict in their reactions, each so staggeringly different from the other. They come in all shapes and sizes - short and tall, fair and dark, thin and fat, calm, moody, temperamental. It takes years to get to know someone and they can still surprise you with a fair bit of ease. We spend lifetimes together without ever knowing everything about a person.

However, if you have ever conducted a market survey, you will realise how easily people are straight-jacketed. I presume, questionnaires were the beginning of stereotyping since the beginning of civilization.

Do you read this? Do you watch this? How old are you? where do you live? Oh so then in that case this is how you must be thinking!

The Forbidden Fruit

When God created the garden of Eden, he put Adam there and told him all was his to tend and to eat except for the fruit from the tree right in the center of the Garden - fruit from the tree of knowledge. He then created Eve to give Adam company. When the serpent spoke to Eve, he enticed her into eating the fruit of the tree and giving it to Adam as well. And so were Adam and Even banished from the blessed garden forever.

Now, before anyone jumps to any conclusions, this is not a post on religion, god or knowledge. I simply find the story suitable to illustrate a very personal point of my own. I seem to seek the forbidden fruit too often too. I shove far from me that and those who come easily. That which withdraws from me, I wish it closer. I fight many a losing battle and am yet again reminded of Rhett's words to Scarlett, "you only want what you cannot have!" Well so do I. What I can have, that which is at arm's reach, I do not want. I run from it as far as I can. That which I cannot have, I wait for - sometimes in glorious euphoria and at other times in wrenching loneliness.

Someday maybe the parallel lines shall meet. Till then the forbidden remains forbidden (though I would much rather be banished from Eden than wait!).

A Taxi Conversation

Whenever anyone says the word EGO, the first notion is extremely negative – of a person who blows his/her own trumpet, is completely insensitive to others, highly unlikeable, pompous, bombastic and so on and so forth. But I wonder how any of us exist without an ego. For an ego, in technical terms is what makes each one of us conscious of ourselves. It is the ‘I’ and however much interdependent we may be, the need and will to co-operate comes out of an overriding concern for the well being of the ‘I’ and the ‘ME’.

I was in a taxi with two of my colleagues on my way to grab some lunch the other day when one of them, after a heated conversation on the phone, exclaimed, “I hate people with egos!” It is at such times that I feel we use the English language too loosely, that words loose their true meaning, that we say things we do not mean and mean things that we do not say. I pointed out to her that it is people with ego issues that are a problem, not people with egos as such.

And that precisely is my whole point here. What is unlikeable is the fact that people think that concern for oneself and one’s betterment must necessarily involve pulling another person down; that there is only room for one person in this world. Completely untrue. I believe it is possible to better yourself without hurting other people – whether in a materialistic or emotional sense. In fact it is necessary that it be so. If the sole purpose of one man’s progress is another man’s destruction then mankind would have become extinct long ago and I wouldn’t be writing this. However, interdependence works only when each of us recognises the importance of independence.

I know I sound extremely Rand-ian here, but I think she has a point. Men must interact as traders. We must respect each others ego. And such comments as the one made in the taxi serve only to irk me not only because of improper use of knowledge but also because most people just don’t realise what they are saying; that they tare being hypocrites when they make statements like that without qualifying them.

Ramblings of a Bored Mind!

I sit and talk meaningless inanities all day. The wait is endless... oh for that one moment that shall give purpose to an otherwise purposeless day in office.

I admire workaholic people for their devotion to their task. However, when it eats into my time - keeping me jobless for a large part of my working day and then insisting that I stay back - I want to holler! I wait and I wait and I wait some more for my boss to get free. He just doesn't seem to. My mind wanders in a very mundane direction. I grow increasingly grubby and with it cranky. How indispensible can a man be?

There is an old recitation - oft quoted in my school assembly - about the measure of an indispensible man. And I am sure if my boss were to put his hands into that bucket of water, the result would be pretty much the same. So why then can he not finish briefing me before taking up meeting for hourso n steel racks? I assure you briefing me is a smalled task - just about 15 min.

I have finished chatting with all the people I can and I write this post in utter frustration, in a last ditch attempt to evade the boredom that threatens to envelope me and transform my good mood of days into one of grumpy sourness. I look forward to chicken soup which I shall buy if my energy sustains me - 2 dry rotis and vegetables that a sick man wouldn't eat are not sustenance enough for me. I ramble on in utter joblessness and maybe I should stop before I stop making sense all together.