Reflections of a restless eccentric

I was one of those people who would get into cabs and immediately plug in their earphones, shutting out any attempts at conversation on the part of the driver and any other passengers. Till one day, a persistent cabbie ranted out to me over the din of my earphones: "All you IT people are the same. You get in and you plug in your earphones.Why don't you people speak to us drivers? I do this for a living, and I feel less and less like a human being. Most of my passengers pretend I don't exist, and by my tenth ride of the day, I start feeling invisible. It's bad enough that I have to drive in this traffic all day long, and to add to it people have forgotten what it is to have a decent conversation. Please talk to your drivers, Ma'am. I'm not asking you to talk the whole way. Just a few minutes to acknowledge our presence. It will make us feel very happy." This guy made a lasting impression on me, and since that day I have always tried to talk to whoe...

How memories are inevitably linked to physical entities. Weird, isn't it? It's like the butterfly effect manifesting itself in your world. You happen to be doing something, and some minute facet of that brings up something totally unrelated, linked to it by merely a hair of the thinnest logic. And yet, you are transported to that freshly raked up memory ever so effortlessly. Without even being aware of this tiny connecting link. It happened to be a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the fan was on, in full swing to battle the heat. Lunch had bid its goodbye and evening was still a couple of hours away. When this happens on a holiday, people use this golden hour to grab a siesta. My parents were fast asleep, peacefully slumbering away. And then there was me, clutching my kindle at an awkward angle and trying to read. The sun was streaming brightly through the windows, the cool breeze was soothing, and all around was quiet. The only sounds that I could hear were the steady tickin...

My silence is not a weapon intended to hurt Nor is it a sign of my condescension or superiority It is merely a part of me, one that refuses to be tamed into socialization Those awkward pauses and deafening bursts of silence that you curse  Are not a testament to your conversational skills, nor mine for that matter When you try harder to draw me into conversation, it only makes me cringe For it feels like you are condemning my silence Pulling away my comforting armor, which only makes me clutch it harder When I am quiet in the midst of cheerful conversation I can feel the accusation in every glance that comes my way In every question that is intended to draw me out, as if I were a snail in its shell When I do not make small talk every time I see you You assume it is out of hatred or disinterest But small talk is a language that shall always be foreign to me And silence is as natural to me as words are to you In a world that thrives on communication...

I have recently been listening to a lot of spoken word poetry, and I have come to appreciate it quite a bit. Spoken word poetry, when compared to conventional written poetry, is much more expressive. It provides a platform for the poet to actually give life to his/her creation rather than leave these things to the imagination of the reader. As a result, every nuance of feeling is expressed--an inflection that tells you just a little more, a catch in their voice that gives away exactly what they feel--there are a million subtleties and non-verbal cues that your brain registers. For people like me, who love watching good orators/speakers, this is one of the ultimate treats. I have spent many an evening listening to random people laying their soul bare for the world to see. So vulnerable, and yet so strong. But then I noticed this: most of the good poems were based on real-life experiences, and they were incredibly, unbelievably tragic. And I stopped to think of my favorite works of poet...

I've been finding it increasingly hard to write of late. I envision this as a collection of brief drabbles--because to write a little is better than to write nothing at all, right? One of the things that has always piqued my curiosity is what motivates people to do what they do. Especially when they do something that is out of the ordinary, given their circumstances. I wonder, where did the first seed for this idea germinate from ? By looking into people's lives and listening to their own and others' accounts of said lives, I see this to be one of the most common motivations: Escape. A powerful desire, nay, need , to get out of something. When people flounder, like sinking ships in a storm, there are two things that can happen. They can conclude that the storm is their destiny, and let it carry them away as jetsam, maybe making a little progress before they drown. On the other hand, there are those people who even when they lack oxygen, look for a way out. People  who c...

I seem to have been caught in the maze of life yet again. My writing average this month has been at an all time low and I'm trying to find out why. :P Interestingly enough, tomorrow happens to mark two years since I started writing on this blog. Time to reflect and analyze, I thought. In other words, I'm staring at the odds and ends that constitute my writing and questioning if they're good enough. If there's really any sense in continuing to do this. If I'm really getting better at writing. I happened to be reading an answer on Quora just this morning, one which went something like "What does it feel to suck at writing?". Weirdly, one of the answers happened to be from a writer I follow and look up to a great deal. Her answer scared me, because what she essentially said was this: "It doesn't feel like anything, because you wouldn't know that you suck. It is only in retrospect, when you have gotten much better, that you do realize that fact...

The God of choices looks down on me His two faces at odds with each other One smiles at me,  The Universe gives you what you ask of it . Another frowns in warning,  Be careful what you wish for.   I wonder now, wherein lies my fault?  Did I not ask for the right thing, Janus?  Or did my wish get lost in articulation-- Wanted something but ended up asking for something else? I looked for the crystalline clarity of a million sunbeams,  Stumbled upon enough amorphous confusion to last a lifetime. I asked for a fort of unassailable convictions A moat with the drawbridge of impossible choices lowered greeted me I wished that I would always be a rolling stone Only to find myself mired neck deep in a marsh of complacency  I went in search of a rainbow called equanimity And was pulled into a thunderstorm of an emotional roller-coaster I asked for a soul as pristine as a lotus And was at once thrown into the murk...