Miracles and Irony and the likes...

Disclaimer: A friend who happens to read my blog once critiqued - "You could NOT make any less sense in your blog posts..." and I cut him short with a usual "Challenge Accepted!" So here's a blog post where I have tried my level best to make no sense at all. Obviously, do not point out to me that the logic, in what ensues henceforth, is flawed. It is supposed to be... (?)

* * *

“The problem with life is not that there is an absence of miracles in it. It is, in fact, their presence!” 


Let me explain…

So, why, you ask, is the presence of miracles, in fact a greater problem than their absence? Simple. When miracles DO happen… (Yes they do! They do happen like once in a while! There is no way you could have scored that much in that one exam, if not for a miracle! You KNOW it!) …they mess everything up! You are living your life peacefully, as you should, not expecting anything extraordinary to happen, and actually working hard towards solving the problem you are facing and BAM! Miracle! You suddenly find yourself bailed out! Once that happens, you start spending your whole life, wishing for a miracle to happen every single time you face a problem or badly want something.

This is somewhat like this other equally ironic observation of mine. It goes something like:  

(/Warning: Skip this part!)
“Is it better to be a sad person than be a happy person, because logically thinking, a sad person ought to be, by default, happy, while a happy person ought to be, by default, sad?” Makes no sense, does it? Yet again, let me explain…

The categorization of people as sad people or happy people is done on the basis of what they usually wish to be (A happy person wishes to be happy for majority of his time, while a sad person wishes to be down for most of it). Please note, the definition doesn’t say what these people usually ARE (which I’ll eventually go on to prove (most probably unsuccessfully) is the exact opposite of what they wish to be), but what they usually prefer or wish to be! Now it is a fact, (surveys, data and various psychological experiments show) that the mind, for a majority of its time is in a NULL state; which means, when you are working, studying, having fun or basically doing anything when your mind isn’t empty to think about whether you are happy or sad, you are neither happy nor sad, you are neutral!

So, a completely-logically-sound-happy-person’s thinking pattern (when his mind IS empty to think about whether he is sad or happy), should go something like this – “I am a happy person! But, I know for a fact, that for a major chunk of my life, I feel nothing! I am feeling nothing for all this time in my life, when I could be going around feeling all happy all the time! Which, apparently, I am not! What a waste! I suddenly feel sad now!”
Uh-oh! The happy guy is not so happy anymore, is he?

On the other hand, a completely-logically-sound-sad person will go around thinking something like: “I am a sad person. I am supposed to be sad all the time. However, I know that, for a majority of the time, my mind is neutral, so I do not feel anything. The feeling of nothingness is so much more soothing than all those sad feelings that hurt! So, I am spending a major chunk of my life being a big improvement over being sad! Wow! That makes me feel happy!”
And lo and behold, the sad guy’s happy!
(Note: This logic goes pretty much to the dump in the face of Lady Antebellum claiming "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all....", but let's not go there!)

So, what you've actually got here is a choice whether you want to be sad guy who is happy most of the time, or a happy guy who is sad most of the time?

Anyway, now that I’m done explaining this part, I’ve realized that this has got nothing to do with what I said earlier about the miracle thing. Well, except that may be both are same in a way that……. Umm…Nope! Nothing at all... Actually on second thoughts, the whole thing doesn't even make sense at all!
Well, what’s done is done! Let’s just move on…
(/till here... Well in my defense, I did warn you!)


Coming back to the darned miracles... If only, they had left us alone, we could have all continued living our lives peacefully, without hope, but nope! The presence of miracles (however insignificant and however rare) brings you hope! And hope… Inspite of what Morgan Freeman has led you to believe, is not a good thing! It is absolutely SO NOT the best of things… Hope, my friends, is in fact, as I keep saying, a bitch!

And knowing that just makes me really sad… Which, in turn, by some strange thought process I read somewhere, eventually ends up making me happy?!!! 

Sinking In...

It’s been almost a year since I first arrived in the US of A, and now after all this time, it was time to go back! I was sitting in the plane, extremely thrilled about the prospect of returning to my motherland, but the immediate short term goal of going through a 22-hour journey, all alone, did not excite me at all. With the lack of anything else to do, my thoughts began to wander like they tend to do in such times, and I started thinking of the journey I’d embarked on a year ago. And that’s when, for no apparent reason, ‘the question’ popped into my mind, after all this while. May be it was because my mind had time-warped itself to when I first came here or may be because I felt a small sense of guilt for not having found ‘the answer’ even after all this time, but I found myself thinking about a question that a complete stranger had asked me then. It seemed like a really long while ago…

So, a little background on the question in question here. The thing is, when you first come to the US, you are bombarded with questions from everyone, which is understandable, since most of them are from friends and family involving inquiries of my well-being. But then a major part of this barrage is from prospective students who wish to follow suit. Most of these questions involve their own well-being, with their inquests being regarding the University and the student life in the US in general, which is again, quite understandable. But then, in some cases, the latter part of the population sometimes feels the need to suddenly inquire about my own well-being and what with them being complete strangers and all, here is where understandability of it all ceases to exist. What made the question stranger than usual, was the fact that it was asked to me by such a complete stranger. There we were, sending emails back and forth, with regular run-of the-mill questions and their replies, when this particular guy probably realized that the length of my replies to his questions was getting shorter and he needed to get into something personal to make sure I don’t quit on him. With enough fuss having been made on and around the question, to cut to the chase, here is what this guy asked me:
“So, when did it really sink in, that you are actually leaving your home… You know, was there like a particular moment when it hit you that you were ‘leaving’?”
I thought about it and I answered,
“You know, it wasn’t till the last moment that it actually sunk in for me! The actual moment when it hit me that I’m leaving was when I was sitting in the plane ready to take off. It was when I felt the wheels of the plane leave the ground, and when I watched through the window, the sight of my motherland fading away into the distance… That’s when it finally sunk in!”

That is the answer I gave him. As extravagant as the answer sounds, to tell you the absolute truth, I LIED! That answer was as much further away from the truth as I was from a window seat in my flight to have seen the aforementioned fading view of the land. But then, I had to lie, because truth be told, when I tried to come up with the defining moment when it had actually sunk in, I drew a complete blank!

Now, almost an year later, as I sat in the plane waiting to reach back home, the question gnawed its way back into my brain, initiating a domino effect of thoughts. With one thought leading to another, I went back to search for whether there really did exist such a moment…

Was it the moment when I saw my friends for the last time? When I saw the last movie on a weekend in my favourite multiplex in my home-city, or when I had the last bike ride through the streets? Or was it when I stood in my house, about to leave, taking a long last look at it so as to store each and every thing about it in my memory? Or was it when I looked back one last time at the airport at my family standing there teary-eyed, waving their good-byes? I would have very much liked that to be the moment, but well, it wasn’t. It was none of them that struck me as the defining moment. May be there was no defining moment…?

Unable to take no for an answer, I decided to cheat the question, by changing it to suit myself. I realized that may be it’s never a single moment that makes you realize that you have left. It’s those small things that keep occurring daily even after you leave, that hit you every single day, aiding you in the realization. It's when you wake up in your new bed the first few days and it takes you a second to figure out why you aren't in your own bed at home, that it partly sinks in. And it is when you look to the wrong side while crossing the road, even weeks after you've arrived... Or when you try your hand at cooking, and realize how vastly unlike your Mom's food it tastes... This list could go on for a while, but the gist being, it's all those moments bringing out the trifling differences in your routine.

Well, its not just these differences, but the moments of some remote resemblance, as well, that you manage to come across everyday. It's something as small as when you pull an all-nighter before an exam, since you waited till the last moment as always and realize how some things never change... Or something as grand as watching your country win the World-Cup with people around you celebrating with an enthusiasm that makes you forget that you are 8000 miles away from home... And so on...

Thus, I made my peace in thinking that ‘the one moment’ was, in fact, a collage of all such memories, scattered across your daily life. It is every time you smile knowingly to yourself when you’re reminded of something back home, that it sinks in one step at a time… Yes! That must be it. That must be the answer I was looking for. Yet again, it WASN’T…

Because, in the end, just when I’d stopped looking for the answer, I finally DID find it! And ironically enough, the answer was more close to the lie I’d told, to that stranger, a year ago, than you’d think. As my journey drew to a close, I watched through my window outside (as this time I did have a window seat) and then it struck me!

As I watched the familiar shoreline of Mumbai approaching; as the wheels of the plane touched the soil, the soil of my country; as I felt the exhilarating joy on finally returning back home and as I finally realized what I was missing all this while, THAT was when it hit me! It was really strange and might not even make much sense, but I just knew I’d found my answer - the moment when it finally sunk in, that I’d actually ever left, was that moment when I had finally come back!

#Quotes

Its been a long time... with nothing to blog about! When I think of stuff to write in my blog these days, I draw a complete blank! I have nothing original, creative, witty to contribute for now. So I thought, what would certain Bollywood movie directors I know, do in such a scenario? What would a poor little Engineering student who fell asleep the night before his exam do? What would a graduate student who failed to do any research all semester do to complete his paper? What would a ... Well, moving on... Why, yes! The ‘Copy-Paste’ !!!

So here I am, doing the Ctrl+C – Ctrl+V thing! These are some of my most favourite quotes, one from each of the TV shows that I have seen (and loved) so far...

(In no particular order:)

The truth is, we hide so we can be found. We walk away to see who will follow. We cry to see who will wipe our tears away... And we get our hearts broken to see who will come fix them!
-Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy)

I love Halloween! The one time of year when everyone wears a mask... Not just me! People think it's fun to pretend you're a monster... Me, I spend my life pretending I'm not...
-Dexter Morgan (Dexter)

Alright, brain! You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.
-Homer Simpson (The Simpsons)

Screw you guys... I’m going home!
-Eric Cartman (South Park)
--LINK--

Peter!!! Haven’t I killed you before??
-Sylar (Heroes)

Newbie, if the next two words out of your mouth aren't 'See Ya' then the third word will be 'Oh my god! My crotch! You've kicked me in the crotch!"
-Dr. Cox (Scrubs)

BURNNNNNNNNNNNN! You have the right to remain BURNED!
-Michael Kelso (That 70’s Show)
--LINK--

Gordo says it's always useful to confound your peers by NOT doing the thing that's expected of you. I have no idea if he's right but I figure if you're going to listen to anybody it might as well be a guy who spends an entire Saturday helping you tie-dye your sheets.
-Lizzie McGuire (Lizzie McGuire)

This is going to be LEGEND... Wait For It... and I hope you are not lactose-intolerant, because the second half of this word is... DARY!!! Legendary!
-Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother)
--LINK--

Clark, did it ever occur to you that the hero of the story is... Sageeth?
-Lex Luthor (Smallville)

Yes, well, I’m polymerized tree sap and you’re an inorganic adhesive, so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns to its original trajectory and adheres to you.
-Dr. Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory)

Every once in a while, people step up. They rise above themselves. Sometimes they surprise you. And sometimes they fall short. Life is funny sometimes. It can push pretty hard. But if you look close enough, you find hope in the words of children, in the bars of a song and in the eyes of someone you love. And if you're lucky, I mean if you're the luckiest person on this entire planet, the person you love decides to love you back.
-One Tree Hill

Do you know what would be the best way to wipe out all of human kind? Make all women telepathic because if they suddenly found out about the kind of stuff that goes on in our heads they'd kill us all on the spot.
-Jeff Murdock (Coupling)

"Reality is almost always wrong! Truth begins in lies!"
-Dr. Greg 'Everybody Lies' House (House M.D.)

P.S.: I couldn’t decide on a single quote from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. to write in here, because that would be really unfair to all the other quotes.

Short-Story # 1: X & Y - First Love...

X fell in love with Y the very first time he saw her...

The day began just like any other normal day at school. It was his first day in Third Grade and X reached his new classroom well before time. Peeping inside, he saw some other kids present, catching up with one another after the long summer break. As usual none of them paid him any heed as he entered. It didn’t bother him - he didn’t particularly care for any of them either. The kids preferred to leave him alone and he was absolutely content with it. Interacting with the dim-wits was a rather tedious activity for him anyway. X had always been a great deal smarter than other kids his age. He possessed an unusually analytical mind that made him a bit too intelligent for his age, and the problem was – he knew it! No surprise that he wasn’t too popular among his classmates.

X walked to his usual place and promptly settled down on the obviously empty first bench.
Geek! – thought the other kids.
Fools! – thought back X.

By the time the first bell rang, most of the kids had arrived and taken their places. That was when he saw her for the first time. She stood at the doorway, checking the sign at the door to make sure it was the right classroom. Seeing her, as she walked in, X experienced something like never before. All of a sudden, there was this knot in his stomach as he looked upon her and he was left gasping for breath in awe of her beauty. He suffered over a hundred other cliches that one is subjected to when one falls in love. He couldn’t help following her every move with his eyes as she came closer, mumbling something about being late on her first day. By the time he could recover from his trance, he was dimly aware that she was smiling and saying “Good Morning!” He opened his mouth to reply but his voice simply stuck in his throat and it was suddenly impossible to utter words. She gave him a look, which he interpreted as a mild scorn, before she moved on. “Great!”, he thought, “its been hardly three seconds and she hates me already!”

On his way home in the school-bus, X thought about her all the way. He had realized that she was not only breathtakingly beautiful, but also very smart - just like him. May be, even smarter than him! He was sure by now that he was in love. It had taken him not more than 5 minutes to arrive to that conclusion, after evaluating his reactions and associating his behaviour with the romantics he had seen in movies or read about in books. Now that it was established that he was one of them, he had no idea what to do next! He needed some advice about the matter, so he decided to discuss it out with the only friend he had...

“Dad! I need to speak to you about something. And its something very important!” X said to his Dad (who served as his friend at times of need) as soon as he reached home.
His father looked up from the newspaper and inquired, “Hello, son! What is it?”

Something very important probably meant this was another attempt for making him buy the Playstation.

“You see, there’s this big problem...” continued X.

Here it comes...

“...about love!”
Momentarily, his father was taken aback by this, but he soon recovered.

Of Course...Emotional blackmail...

“Oh! I get it! Yes, son! I do love you, you know that! But it still doesn’t mean I’m buying you that Playstation...”
“Dad!!! Its not about that! I’m serious!”

Its not! Wow! This really must be serious!

“Oh! Then go on, son!”
“Do you think it is normal, at my age, to fall in love?”
“Ha ha! Does this mean Einstien actually likes someone other than himself now...”
“Umm...sarcasm duly noted Dad! But that doesn’t answer my question.”, said X with a hint of impatience.
His father smiled and said, “Normal? Well, to be honest I’d say no! But then there is nothing normal about you, is there?” Then noticing that the impatience was increasing to a possibly critical level, he continued more seriously, “It doesn’t matter how normal it is, son! If you are in love, there is nothing wrong in it, irrespective of age. You see, love is ageless...”
“Thanks, Dad! I’m glad you said that. Its precisely what I was hoping to hear. I was a bit bothered at first... It felt weird somehow... But this is such a relief. So what do I do next?”
“You go talk to her of course... You have to give her a chance to know you and like you back.”
“And how do I know what to say to her?”
“That's what YOU have to figure out, son. Love is never easy...”
“Yeah...It sure isnt...”
“So do I get to know who the lucky girl is....”, started his father, but X was already half way up to his room.

For a guy who had the tendency to solve any problem coming his way in less than 5 minutes, it was rather depressing that in two days, he still couldn’t figure out what he was going to say to the love of his life. Moreover, when he was finally ready with it, it took him two more days just to gather up the courage to go and spill his guts out to her. So after four days of fretting, when his class was over, he made up his resolve and followed her as she left the classroom with other students. He went up to her and mustering all his strength blurted out, ‘Hi! I’m X....’
It was when she walked on without acknowledging his call that he realised that though his mouth had moved, he hadn’t managed to get any syllables out. He tried to make another valiant attempt, but his voice betrayed him. Some of the kids around him started sniggering, but he ignored them. He was appalled by the fact that a mere mental emotion could exert such precedence over routine and regular actions, somehow managing to physically jam his larynx, rendering him incapable of speech in her presence. He felt completely defeated – an altogether new feeling for him and it made him curse himself. And her too...

Oh! How I hate her... For making me love her so much!

The next day started off no better. He sat hopelessly at his desk, a lost cause, egging himself on and attempting all kinds of self-encouragement.
Come on! I can do this!!!
“Argh! Now I have started talking to myself!”, he cursed! If nothing else, it was the thought that he was rapidly turning into one of the idiots whom he so despised, which gave him the final thrust of much needed motivation. Today he would end this...

While he waited for the class to get over, time slowed down by epic proportions, even as his heartbeats catapulted to a frenzied pace. At long last, the bell rang, sounding just like the death-knell. It was time...
When the teacher wrapped up the class, cleaned the board, gathered all her books and taking her purse was about to leave the classroom, she heard X say...

“Miss Y! Hi! I’m X... If you could spare some time, there is something important I would like to talk to you about....”