A Perfect Evening

An evening perched precariously on the edge of sanity swaying intoxicatingly between the realms of soberness and freedom, a cube of ice melting its essence in the warm embrace of single malt scotch, a laptop cooing songs that drape a veil on vision, a tear dancing on the verge of lips crooked with sarcastic smile whispering their silent prayers to the heavens above and their darkest desires to the Satan below , some random images of a past life fluttering all around as beautiful butterflies enlightened with the joys felt and a half sober mind helplessly and hopelessly striving to catch them and put them together to make a coherent picture, few broken fingers trying to capture this mixed torrent of thoughts, experiences, memories and emotions while they dance their broken dance on this keypad and caught between these interdependent elements of my existence my dwindling self........

A perfect evening

Yesterday

Time
Don't let it slip away
Raise yo' drinkin' glass
Here's to yesterday
In Time
We're all gonna trip away
Don't piss Heaven off
We got Hell to pay
Come full circle

(Song "Full Circle". Band "Aerosmith")

Times change a man.

Yes they do.


From over the top of his three work monitors he gazes vacantly up at the flat screen monitor on the wall right in front of him running endless CNBC Europe with all manners and shapes of charts, bar graphs with numbers scrolling up and down and left and right all endlessly hammering his mind with incessant information. He stares at the screen watching all "Breaking News" headlines as they jump around pretty faces of business women with a "I mean business don’t fuck with me" written all over their forehead and middle aged pot bellied men offering endless opinions on stock prices, company actuals, EPS numbers, EPSREP numbers, EBG numbers...XYZ numbers.


He simply stares.


He averts his gaze which inadvertently falls on his three work monitors. These smart handsome boys scream another tale of the same world that he now lives in. Emails from Reuters, Bloomberg, traders, stock analysts, Quants, techies, stock prices not coming in, numbers bungled, sedols wrong, issuers fucked up...oh damn!


He was a Delhi boy through and through. The kinds that roam endlessly, freely over NOIDA toll bridge at 2 in the night with a plastic bucket full of melting big ice slabs and 12 bottles of Fosters chilling in them. The mission - to ravage these 12 bottles during the journey from west Delhi toll bridge to Gurgaon where more booze awaits. The kinds that would dance bhangra and break dance routines all mangled into one limb jerking madness of an orgy which would take place over cheap cello taped dance floors used commonly in weddings, throwing his stole up in the air as he yells on the top of his voice the lyrics of any song he could remember. Never mind if the so called DJ was playing a different number altogether. The kinds who would catch every movie featuring Bipasha the day it was released and towards the end get insanely jealous of John, and then work out in the gym diligently after every Bips movie only to give it up after a month till the next Bips movie kicks the entire cycle again.


The kind for whom every girl was a pursuit, a challenge, a conquest he had to have and had to win, the kinds that would be brilliant, geniuses at college, at school but would always be hunting for books one night before the exam and be miserably drunk on the evening of the last one. The kinds who would be always missing from classes, intimidating, cajoling some geek in the college for his/her notes and who would always run up the most massive bill at the college photo copier before their exams and would promptly forget about the bill as soon as the exams were over.


The kind who would always be least bothered of whatever he is wearing, the kind who would lazily drag himself to the afternoon class in torn chappals and jeans having just woken up from a bad hangover of the night before, only to realize he hates the guts of this prof and would promptly turn back on his heels to head back to hostel again where in a room without any kind of air cooling system with a lone fan that wont work because there would be no electricity his royal wooden bed without any mattress would await him on which he would sleep the most glorious relaxing sleep in the hot Delhi July afternoon.


Yes he was a Delhi boy through and through.


Now he wears a suit every morning. His shirts are all designers with cuff links, his trousers all pressed crisp. His shoes shine; he wears horn rimmed designer glasses and lives in a world of numbers. Working in the heart of old money's financial capital, the city of London, for a reputed big hedge fund he gets up at 6 every morning and is at work by 8. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t scream with delight anymore, and doesn’t delve into the limb jerking madness while he is on a brilliantly finished posh dance floor in one of his organization's events dancing with pretty ladies around him. He doesn’t drive wild in the nights doesn’t go roaming over motorways with chilled beer in the back of his car and definitely is not up till 4 am. He sleeps on comfortable beds in temperature controlled room and yet has difficulty falling to sleep. He hates but takes sleeping pills.


His “friends” are all PhDs, learned fellows who can simulate trading patterns in their heads and rattle off the earning numbers for FTSE 100 companies while they nibble over their chicken skewers and sip their droughts. No more the neighborhood guys from the street who barely cleared 10+2 but for whom life meant this moment, this very moment that they breath in, nothing beyond this moment mattered, the moment that just passed never existed and the next moment would never come. Those who lived their lives right now, right here even if they are slumped on the floor of a hostel room piled on by 5 guys each side, all passed out after a session of good old hostel party and didn’t have a scooby about what class is at 9 tomorrow morning.


Gone are the roadside dhabas with 4 am Aloo ke Paronthe and their ultimate adrak waali chai coupled with a Fan that he used to relish dunking in. Now it’s Lavazza black Americano with a tad of cold skimmed milk on the side please and an occasional donut from Krispy Kreme or maybe just a fruit and nut bar hmmm?


Gone are the days of Royal Challenge when Blender’s Pride used to be a gourmet treat. Now it’s all Scapa and Jameson and Jack Daniels with occasional Remy Martins and Hennessey for our boy. No more drinking straight shots from plastic Pepsi glasses while stuffed into a dark hot and cramped room at the back of a small local cyber cafe hiding from parents, neighbors, other friends who didn’t share the cost of the whiskey or Kurkure. Now he sniffs his wine while slumped in comfortable leather bean bags, swooshes his crystal glass and gurgles it in his mouth before he spits it out for sommelier pretending to make up some cock and bull story about the flavor while frankly he couldnt give shit about the wine's "particularly woody tinge".

The boy has come a long way. A long long way rather. He acquired all that he wanted to and is on the path that would lead him to more of his desires. Things that he always wanted to achieve ever since he was a teenager living in a single room with his parents and siblings. Luxuries he could only dream of, life he could only imagine living. Now he has it all and soon would have all that is remaining.


Why then is he sitting on his desk, middle of a business day, staring at his monitors and asking himself – I achieved all I wanted to, want to, but is this really worth what I gave up?

Time
Don't let it slip away
Raise yo' drinkin' glass
Here's to yesterday
In Time
We're all gonna trip away
Don't piss Heaven off
We got Hell to pay
Come full circle

Who am I

I am drunk.

I am drunk and I am alone and lonely and I am bored. I am strong and I am iron willed and I am headstrong. I am torn between what my head tells me and what my heart yearns for and if I am neither my heart nor my head then I don’t know who I am.

Who am I?

Who?

I live in this body. I use its senses to see to hear to touch to smell and to feel. I use this heart to desire to ache to yearn to love to loath to convulse in alternating pangs of yearning and desire and love and loathing and I use this brain to think and contemplate. I use this hand to pour my drink to light my cigarette and I use this mouth to savor them both. I fill these lungs with this poison and I use this respiratory system to exhale the spent lethal smoke out. I use this brain to think to analyze to morally chastise others and myself for doing what I do and yet I am not bound by the thoughts that I force this brain to think. I then make this brain contradict the same line of reasoning I made it rationalize with the arguments I forced upon it. I give it an alternate path of analytical and logical reasoning and I torture myself when this brain starts liking the contradicting line of thought I just gave it. I make my own chains, I put myself at the two ends of this “logical” rope and play tug of war with it and then I make this heart cry out with this pull from the two ends that I suffer and I make it yearn for these contradicting forces to stop which I had forced this brain to come up with in the first place.

What am I?

What?

Caught between an intense emotional situation like death (http://achingpen.blogspot.com/2007/07/ode-to-death.html) or a heartbreak (http://achingpen.blogspot.com/2007/10/welcome-to-end.html) or an innocent desire (http://achingpen.blogspot.com/2007/08/angel.html) or a betrayal (http://achingpen.blogspot.com/2007/09/dance.html) or simple pure exhaustion (http://achingpen.blogspot.com/2007/09/weird-song-for-gym.html)I feel and I think. I react and yet I am detached. I stay in the situation playing around me in this world bound by the metaphysical laws defined by the equations of mathematics and theorems of physics and yet I float above the room in the hollow emptiness and watch the same situation passively from a distance impervious to all the emotional drama that is folding all around me. I then make this heart yearn to escape this multitude of sentiments pouring all around me and I command this brain to come up with an escape route. Then when this brain reminds me of the brilliant yet impossible conclusions of quantum mechanics I often find a black hole and use its gravitational field to tear across this universe and reach into another one which is a part of this multiverse to make myself content. Failing the availability of a black hole or a shooting start I simply pulverize myself and drift across the quantum foam present all around me to again reach another parallel universe. Yet I feel the tentacles of the same emotional drama reach me and lick me and burn me and what more, now that I have crossed the boundaries of my immediate universe and have escaped to one of the “n” possible universes I feel the simultaneous torture of all the possible emotional situations in all the possible infinite universes all together in all of my possible hearts in all of my possible bodies in all these universes and I burn in infinite infernos all at once. I am in this universe and that and another one all at once and I am caught in a whirlpool, a frenzied torrents of all possible sentiments which these muscular hearts are capable of realizing and I suffer them all at once.

Where am I?

Where?

I came into this universe as a byproduct of human love and in some other universes as a byproduct of pure simple lust. I was caught from that “place of eternal peace” known as the moksha or the pearly gates or jannat and was bound in this body and the others and was sentenced to spend some human years on this planet and all others. I was given an option called death to escape the cycle of time and a multitude of means to realize it but simultaneously I was bound by the magical ties called relations and was stripped of my ability to exercise a willing escape. I know not who am I know not I what am I and I know not where I am but I know for sure I am what I am and I shall never be what this heart desires.

I shall never be what my heart desires.

The Real ME

Kicked off my shoes, stretched my body to the max, gave out a huge big dirty yawn and closed my eyes. Feels so good!

No am not thinking about those eyes, no am not looking out for my next prey and no am not sad or happy or blah blah blah. Am just me in all my entirety and on all of the planes-physical, mental, spiritual and emotional.

Sometimes I feel this life is stretching unnecessarily long. I mean I have seen and done and experienced enough in these short years that went zooming by. I am not inclined to live the full circle of this life. Nehhh, am not. Then why the hell am I still carrying on? I mean how difficult it is to end this all up? Gotta just go and stand in front of the next bus/train/truck that comes in and close my eyes one final time or maybe just keep walking on the balcony of 16th floor and forget that I have to stop when the railing comes or if nothing else then just go real high on the sleeping pills I have in my pocket! Just how difficult it is?

Very.

I once said this to someone who was very keen on ending up his/her life – “If you so want to end this up why don’t you just go and end this up? What is holding you back?” When the other person gave me back a look which was more comical than quizzical and I found it almost impossible to hide my wide grin (which is very famous by the way) I knew I had to carry on. I continued saying this – “I’ll tell you what. Close your eyes and ask yourself the same question and then give yourself an answer. Your first reaction might be that you are scared or you really don’t know. Don’t stop right now. Keep asking and keep answering and slowly and gradually you will realize that it is not why you don’t do it, it actually is all that you stand to lose when you do it! Fine no one loves you, fine no one cares about you. But is it so that you don’t love anyone? That you do not have even a single shred of this fibre called emotion attaching you to someone in this whole wide big world? Someone you are afraid would not if miss you then atleast find some difficulties when you are gone?” The next thing I knew, her id changed to smilingflower from witheringflower.

And I was glad. Quiet glad actually and here let me also kick off my modesty with my shoes and admit that I have been able to persuade quiet a lot of people around me to change. To see and to think differently. Its not something that I am really proud of but yes it is something that makes me split into a broad grin every time I come to think of it. I can be like a radiant sun exuding warmth light and hope when I want to and in a snap of fingers change myself back to a rapidly shrinking blackhole taking down everything that comes into vicinity. Really kicked out my modesty didn’t I? Lol!

Back to the question then. Why don’t “I” do it when I feel that this life is getting unnecessarily long? Do I have the same reasons to give myself as I gave to her? Can I convince myself with the same logic that I used to convince her? Probably not. And why not? Well lets just leave that between me myself and I. What I am trying to say here is that for whatsoever reasons I do indeed chose to live on and on and on perfectly aware that I have nothing to gain from this life anymore and yet much to lose to it if I chose to go on like the way I am doing now. Well yes somethings do help me to carry on. I mean when some ladies gang up against me and tell me they are going to make me fall in love I am like “ Jeez! Can life get any better than this!? Imagine being chased by these gorgeous girls when am trying to push them away!!” Loll! Yes things like these do help but then they can not be the only reason I carry on.

Of course there is sex. Come on now! How can you even think that sex is missing from this equation! There is sex and lot of it(modesty still out!). But then am at a stage where my mind is always in a frenzy no matter where I am what I am doing, even when am pulsating on top of a beautiful dark skinned dame whose gorgeous eyes are closed in either ecstasy or maybe trying to imagine Tom Cruz or Brad Pitt on her instead of me and frankly I could not care less even if she is trying to make love to God himself while calling out my name or even if she calls me out by the wrong name altogether (well happened once; seriously). Anyways, so having sex does lend a credible weight to the entire equation I am trying to balance here but it is not the only good thing in life I am left with.

Money? Not really. Have just started working, come from a very poor family so no inheritance other than a lot of social responsibilities which even if I try to give out as free gifts none will accept. Yes I have a couple of ideas which if I work on can get me billions pronto but then I am tooo lazy to work on them. Give me some time alone, a bottle of beer, a Marlboro and this is what I’d be doing – out of my shoes into my skin and onto my laptop! (right now am in my office though, yes I am!!).

Love? Now define love. If you mean love as in one of my regular readers (yes am talking about you starry eyed lasse) interprets it to be then NO! :-D. But if you say love as in what I might feel towards a friend, family then ummmmm maybe yes and that too a teeny weeny yes. I mean I am perfectly capable of snapping the threads whenever I want to and retract back in my shell, isolated. I am, and I do that often at times. These are the moments when I usually write heavy crap on my blogs, when I talk about philosophy and god and you know – the works. So love might just be a part of the equation.

Not making much of a sense right now am I? :-D I know I am not and this is the “me” when am in one of these relaxed moods! I try to think and be rationale but instead I get carried out towards all the sins of life and lose my way (temporarily ok!?) on the path of wisdom and land up in the arms of this Satan. Its like letting my hair down (don’t laugh!) and basking in the sunlight for once.


Oho! Sorry guys, would have to wind up right here, some one is calling my name in my mailbox. Would have to slip on my shoes again and type something worthwhile on my machine now. Damn! See what I meant? Cant afford to steal some time for myself ever L

Don’t know if I will publish it or not, but if I do, I apologize in advance for wasting a few moments of your time and making you see this irrational, erratic, crazy me!

I walk a lonely road

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

'Til then I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

Song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day

If I were to ask you how much time do you think you will take to recount your entire life, to visit your past again in your mind, to ponder over every decision you ever took and wonder if it was right or wrong, to visit every heart break you ever had and relive every orgasm, to think of all the people you loved and forgive all those you hate. What would your answer be? An hour or two? A week maybe?

One second.

I remember walking down a lonely road and it has indeed been the one I have ever known. It takes me to my office and brings me back. It is my solace, my haven, my escape and is much more closer to being me than anyone else since it is in real terms of the word-“lonely”. No one takes it but I. Yes I indeed remember that road.
I also remember a warehouse on the road. A deserted colossal structure with shattered windows, broken wrought iron gates and high walls. It is along one of those walls that I walk. The sun is out on my right shinning brighter than ever on my face as if trying to burn me to ashes and the huge wall on my left trying to make me feel dwarfed by the sheer virtue of its height while I try and take each step quicker and quicker not in my haste to get anywhere but just so that I am able to escape the combined onslaught of these two forces governing my psyche one of which is natural and the other man made. I trot with my head resolutely bent down my feet pounding on the asphalt one after the other with such precise rhythm as if they are not my own but pieces of a machine moving in tandem one after the other. Sweat is eventually beginning to pour out on forehead and would soon dance its way along my face and start dribbling down on the road just ahead of me. How fascinating this is. My sweat pours out of my body and drops on the ground just ahead of my feet. That ground that I have not yet traveled, that part, which is still to come under the pounding of my feet, is yet to be explored by me, to which I do not owe anything right now. Yet before taking my liberty to stomp onto the freedom of that virgin I first must make my due payment, my tax to trod on. What is more amazing is that it is not some one whose making me pay this tax as I would like to call it but just my body and that blazing hot red mass of matter in the sky both of which I can not try to reason with. I drip and I walk and I simply can not do anything about it.

How fascinating indeed.

Neither can I do anything about my companion. Oh yes! I do have a companion, someone who is walking right along me, making sure I am never alone. It is my shadow. It always walks besides me. I can always find it right here. Though it does not talk to me or amuse me or share my laughter or my tears or for that matter even my sweat yet it is always here-my dead reflection on a dead wall. Dead? Of course dead, for it speaks naught, it cries naught, it laughs naught. It does not have a face I can remember, it does not have eyes I can see in, it does not have heart I can share my pain with.

Conscience and Desire are perhaps a man's worst enemies and best of friends. One would make you do such forbidden acts that you can not even dream of doing and the other would make you feel so miserable when you are done with, that you just want to somehow kill yourself. And yet again these two force you to give up your seat to a lady carrying a child in a bus and propelling you sometimes to do something extra ordinary of such magnitude in your life that you end up as Mahatma Gandhi, Kennedy and even Bill Gates. The desire to explore shall carry you to the edge of a cliff where your conscience would subtly push you off.
Lost in my thoughts I must have taken some wrong turn for I do not know where am I wandering to. Somehow the wall is on my right and the sun is on my left. I am perplexed! I don’t know what is going on. For though I was not paying attention to the direction my feet were carrying me in but I am so used to this road that I daresay I can take a wrong turn.
Something didn’t feel right. I had a feeling in my stomach intensifying with every passing second. Something was just not feeling right. I was looking left and right trying to make some sense of what was happening.

And then I saw it running-my shadow! It was sprinting along the length of the wall running way ahead of me. Yes it was mine, yes I am positive for there is no one around me till miles. I could do nothing but see it run ahead on the wall, sprinting and jogging.

I had just a second but I felt it. I felt the rush of the wind coming towards my hair, I felt the cold touch of the butt before it made contact with my skull before it knocked me out.

Time passed. Some hours or maybe some weeks. Maybe a life ended. Maybe I died and got reborn.

I am lying down. Someone is screaming. No I do not want to open my eyes or wake up. I am comfortable, cozy. I wish to Lord they would stop screaming. The voices are getting louder and louder. Oh damn! I can not take it anymore. I stir breaking the comfortable position my body had become so used to from lying down for so long. The first wave of consciousness hit me and along came deafening noise which rattled me right down to my soul. I jerked and sat up. I am on a stage, there are gothic figures screaming and dancing all around me. They are playing music.-hard rock, metal, deafening music. The screams are shrill and high pitched. Jumping and dancing all around me pointing at me and singing in a strange tongue which I can not comprehend these figures resembling monsters straight out of hell are entertaining a huge crowd. There are bodies as far as my eyes can reach. Everyone is using the same tongue. I do not know what they are chanting. My sitting up straight seemed to have enthused a fresh wave of energy throughout the crowd. Everyone is screaming, jumping, pointing figures at me.
And there I saw it-my shadow. Mute as ever it was jumping as hard as it could. and though there is no face, eyes, features that I can remember or recognize it by I am still sure it is my shadow. It is weird and the oddity of it was never clear to me until this point here. If I were to draw an example it would be something like picking your cell phone out of 3 other cell phones of the same make, model and color from a table. You just know its yours. You don’t need to check or to make sure.

I knew it was mine. I saw it and I had a weird feeling it was looking straight at me, right into my eyes. The meaningless babble of the crowd began to take shape, as if a picture is emerging by itself slowly out a pool of colors which were dribbled on the floor. I could make out what they were screaming. It was repeated incantation of just one word-Kill.

Kill, kill, kill.

I felt like a gladiator in an amphitheatre. A gladiator who has been thrown in the middle of wild savage animals and for whom the crowd is bursting with enthusiasm to see some flesh ripped of and blood being poured. It is like chattering of a sacred hymn in a temple. Everyone is on the same page, everyone is united and everyone knows just what to say at any precise moment in a singing tone.

Kill, kill, kill.

The chattering is getting louder. It is filling my ears and reaching my brain. My brain which is already thumping with a frenzy of activity from within. There are questions floating all around like sharks in an angry ocean, and my conscience is like a lost sailor amongst them.

Kill, kill, kill.

I looked all around me in a haste. No one I know but my shadow, which is now being hoisted on the shoulders of these gothic figures. Fresh energy is seeping throughout this menagerie. My shadow is on some shoulders. It is hopping and jumping and making way towards the stage where I lay. Everybody wants to touch it, to give it a part of their shoulders to step on. It is like the plate carrying sacred incense in Indian temples which is passed all around the devout participating in the holy prayer to touch and be blessed. My shadow is advancing rapidly towards me.

Kill, kill, kill.

A final hop and it is on the stage, facing me. The crowd has gone silent. The silence is so thick I can hear my every breath explode with a bang right in front of me. I do not know what is going to happen. I wish my shadow had eyes, eyes to give me a hint to let me know what is coming next. But no, that is not to be. Here we are facing each other. My shadow raised its right hand slowly pulling it up bringing in front of me clenched as a fist. Am I to take it? Grab the fist, bend down and kiss it? What am I expected to do? What is everyone waiting for! Torn as I am in all these confusions and questions the thumb popped up from the dark clenched fist in front of me.
The fist turned and the thumb pointed downwards.

Kill, kill, kill

The crowd erupted! The verdict had been passed. My shadow whipped his hand like a blade and the next thing I was looking at was a 9mm barrel of a revolver staring right between my eyes. The last thing I heard was the cocking as the trigger was pulled.

One second.

One second was all it took for the bullet to leave the barrel and penetrate my sanity. One second was all I had to live my life again. I had flashes, flashes lasting minutes, how I don’t know. I could see everything again. I as a child, I growing up, I losing my loved ones. I felt the pain of all my heartbreaks and relived all my orgasms. I hugged all those I loved and said good byes. After a long time I thought of God and said my prayer. I felt the chilled wind of London freezing my lungs skin and scorching heat of Delhi burning my skin. I lived every second and every year of my life again.

And I was happy, truly exotic on leaving the world finally.

The alarm went off and I realized I am late for the office. Damn! Cant even die in peace. Better get up. I have to go to the office and a road to walk. Maybe as they say my morning dream would turn out to be a reality....