Tchah!

For all the hoopla and the ensuing panic I associated with flying, it turned out to be a complete non-event! And a back-breaking one, thanks to the seats that do not recline more than a degree!!

The only takeoffs I remember were from Hyderabad at night, when the city looked like a carpet of shimmering lights and then from Chicago to Fayetteville. Although, when we were due to land in Chicago, when the plane broke cloud cover, the sight was fabulous. It was like the world you build from a Lego set, except with even more colours!! Tiny houses, straight roads, little people and vehicles that were actually moving! The landing at Chicago could've been better though. There was a moment, I felt like I was definitely going to crash.

I do not want to feel like this. I do not want anyone capable of making me feel like I'm missing something in my life. I do not want to be incapable of keeping away. I want a fucking lobotomy, I do, I do.

I want to be someone who can genuinely feel happy for people without the least bit of resentment. I want to be able to give and give selflessly, without the slightest hint of expectation. I want to be like that family I met in that wayside church on Easter yesterday. They were playing basketball together and they invited me in to share their Easter lunch of homemade hamburgers. There was something about that warmth that repelled all the bleakness of the Bentonville climate.

I thank you, God.. For the little moments of joy like that.. Everyday.. It makes me want to smile at life..

Panic -> Laid Bare

I'll be honest. I've never been inside a tube made of tons of steel, that is supposed to do something it wasn't meant to do in its natural state. Fly.

I'm scared. I'm shit-scared. I'm crapping-in-my-pants-with-every-step-that-I-take scared.

I know what you're thinking. 28 years old, working in IT, never flown, how come.. Yeah I get that reaction. It's not like I cannot afford it either. It's just that there never was a need. Every trip that I took, the journey has always been more fascinating than the destination. Which is why trains, buses and bikes have always been a more preferred "modus transporandi"! Be it a vacation, or simply dropping home someone you really really like! Which is why sometimes I insist on doing the latter (hint hint)!!

It's not like I'm headed to war-ravaged Bosnia. It's not like I'm going to any place where they are going to use me for target practice. It's an onsite assignment for a client I worked for 4 years ago. And I have friends and acquaintances there as well.

It isn't like I have not faced the unknown before. There was a time when I did not dance. My first dance in school was just for 30 seconds, to the Mumbhai track, where I had to come in as a chai-waala, do some steps and run back out! From there I got better.

The first time I choreographed was when I came to college. And that was a small step too, which grew over the years. My first full-scale choreography was just last year Parichay2010! And since then I have choreographed other dances where I wasn't even dancing. And (I think) I got pretty good at it!

Same was the case with writing. I'm not saying I'm the Pulitzer of writers, but (again I think) I'm pretty good! Read extensively, started writing poems in college, progressed to blog posts and eventually reached here.

Dance, writing, everything has had its modest beginnings. And that's the keyword - modest! "Modest" does not entail doing something for the first time and doing it on a scale that turns everything below my knees into pillars of jelly.

And if it wasn't bad enough already, the three other people from other DCs, who were supposed to fly to the same location this weekend, aren't flying. So 25th April 2011 is going to be me, facing a new place, a new client, new tasks, without so much as an abdomen guard..

Flying! Onsite! Tranquilizers please!!

Older, Wiser, and Not-So-Much

Dear Lord,

Help me become whoever YOU created me to become. Help me so that I have nothing to do with the people around me, their culture, their upbringing, their (questionable) standards, their hypocrisy, their knack of taking credit for somebody else's efforts. Help me so that I grow up to be nothing at like them. I want to be known for YOU shining through me. Thank you for making me, ME. I wouldn't change a thing. :)

Alright, maybe I would change a few things.. Alright, maybe more than a few.. Maybe a LOT more than a few!

A small part of me thought this blog would end soon. I even had a post, that I thought I'd post some day, as a fitting epitaph. I have abandoned this blog so many times, let it drift and lie fallow, like my workouts, my dance, my love life; damn thing just doesn't let go...

Now since this blog is a shrine to my narcissism, here are a few things people really really ought to know

1) I hate unasked-for advice. Career, Love, Career, Social Life, Career, Colour-running-from-my-jeans, Career, everything and anything else. I hate gyaan, when I have not asked for it, simply because that means you assume you are better than me and THAT assumption simply makes you an obnoxious pompous little bleep in my eyes. Do not be surprised if I stop picking up your calls. I've done it to quite a few people without actually being nasty to them and I'm getting quite good at it!

2) I hate out-of-context humour. Humour that is so wannabe it makes me wonder why the one who possesses it does not puke on (him/her)self. For eg, I'm in a super-depressed mood, and I write a couple of lines and put it up as my FB status. If you put comments, that are supposed to be slapstick hilarious, like "Drunk? Passed out already?" or "Yeh kis kitaab se chhaapa hai bey", I WILL delete them. My profile, my status, pretty much my fiefdom!

3) I'm not a loner, like everyone thinks. I like to spend time alone, yes, I do hate social networking, like being online on gmail or facebook, yes, but I'm not averse to gatherings. I just don't talk much and I'm socially retarded, and because of that, I often get conscious if the other person doesn't talk. It gives me the impression that I'm a major bore. Not a good feeling when you're not exactly overflowing with self-confidence. I am (I think!) a good listener.

4) I love compliments. Face it, who doesn't! I don't want people fawning over me, no (unless 'people' means buxom blondes maybe :P), but compliments, getting credit for something you managed to accomplish, always a good thing!

5) I am the happiest staying away from home! I never get homesick, never ever.

6) Imagine you call a good friend. Imagine the person at the other end says they're in the middle of something and that they will call you back. Imagine they don't. Imagine that to have happened a month ago and still counting. Imagine the sheer ire and humiliation coursing through your veins. And now imagine me in your place. Enough said. Maybe I'm being a baby, then again maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm one of those that garnered a mention in #1. I think I'll go back to being an insensitive clod.

7) I'm a homophobe. Of the highest order. I really don't like it when guys try to hold my hand (not even my family) while walking. I do not like it if guys swat me on the shoulder playfully, the way girls would, at some witty remark. Makes me want to throw myself into disinfectant.

8) I could go on, but if you've managed to read this litany till here, I like you already, so I'll spare you, not because I'm magnanimous, but because I have run out of things to say. Later, maybe.

I'm drained. Like I've reached the dead-end of a cul-de-sac and I haven't the energy or the inclination to take a U-turn. And yet, I continue to claw at the wall, knowing I may not break through, and trying when I know I can't. Goals are not always meant to be reached, they often serve simply as something to aim at.

And in the midst of the despair, your voice keeps coming back. The sound of hope to me.. the most beautiful and welcome thing I had ever heard in my life.. As if the song were inside me, instead of around me.. A sound connected to longing, unwavering trust, unbreakable promises, baby voices.. Like a whisper of love in my ear..

I owe you an explanation.. An explanation of my mistakes. For I see now what I’ve done, and what I’ve not done, with regard to you, bear all the hallmarks of the failings of integrity.. Moral integrity.. Perhaps I cannot know how you think and feel.. But I am guilty if I forget what it is to be you.. And I seem to have forgotten lately.. In distancing myself from you, I was trying, and failing, to protect you..

Breaks your heart doesn't it..? Seeing the one you see, look at someone else with a certain vulnerability, and wishing, desperately inside, that they looked at you the same way.. Rips you apart inside...It’s as if something large and scaly erupted into life in my stomach, clawing at my insides.. Blood flooding into my head, extinguishing all conscious thought, replaced by the urge to simply pound something into jelly.. Disoriented, dizzy, like maybe how you would feel if you were struck by a lightning bolt.. And everytime you touch me.. we touch.. the monster inside my chest purrs, there’s a swooping sensation in my stomach that’s got nothing to do with falling, goosebumps that have nothing to do with cold..

When I laugh at something you say, I'm glad just to have an innocent reason to look at you some more.. I cannot help myself talking to you, laughing with you, walking with you... However much my conscience aches, I keep catching myself wondering..