Both

We’re caught between discipline and debauchery.

The quest to choose either is eternal; the rate of success, almost zero. Both are equally tempting. The jogging track pulls you and so does the nearest watering hole. Between the post-run high and the post-drink high, how do you tell the degree of which high is higher? You’re forever falling from grace when temptation calls and at the same constantly making an effort to keep control. Suppression is just as common as the tendency to ‘say-it-all, do-it-all, go-with-the-flow’. One-night stands reluctantly co-exist with the search for true love. Hearts that curl up with fear of commitment also nurse the desire to commit and surrender to someone like they did in old love stories. Stability and wanderlust are both desirable. Smoke filled late hours of the night and fog full early mornings, how do you ever make a choice?

Desired disease

Was reading up the net, which is when I stumbled upon a website explaining Alzheimer's in detail. Splattered with a whole lot of medical jargon, most of which flew above my head. What I gathered though was that the disease has a vital effect on your memory. You lose it, bit by bit, in patches. You forget things, names, people, places, where you are, what you are doing there, your purpose, where you kept your glasses, so on and so forth. The disease or the mind chooses by itself, things that it will forget.

Now here’s my personal angle to the disease. How would it be if we could contract a certain sort of alzheimer's in which we could choose what we want to forget? You lose just the memory that you want to lose.

You could choose to forget smells that come back suddenly while you’re walking down an avenue and take you back to places you’ve been running away from all this while. You could also choose to forget some good people, some bad ones. Or for that matter, piercing words that vaguely indicated that your parents loved you a little less than your smarter, more intelligent sibling. You could choose to forget the sinking feeling in your stomach when a loved one left the city. You could choose to forget betrayals. Regrets. A bad childhood. You could also make a choice and forget the three most painful years of your life. You could then choose to forget some people in total, the way they smelt, talked, walked, reacted, not reacted, smiled, felt. You could choose to forget nasty remarks by relatives. And light moments that are over and cause intense pain because they are over. You could choose to forget hand holding around the car gear, long walks by the ocean, romantic train journeys, shared sunrises and sunsets. You could also choose to forget the texture of someone’s skin.

Roll on

What a rolling stone gathers, only a rolling stone knows.

When it rolls down the mountain and sticks to a thorny raspberry bush, it gathers resilience, it tastes pain, it learns the meaning of hurt.

When it is pushed from behind, it gathers courage and snaps out of the pain, moves ahead. It allows wounds to heal and pain to subside.

The rolling stone lands on a winding road, gets pushed around by fast paced cards, which is when it gathers that it must move faster if it must survive.

The rolling stone at every stage gathers experiences and lessons that encourage him to keep rolling. From the mountains to the city and beyond, the rolling stone is always on the move, pushed by strong gusts of winds that blow every now and then, throwing it in various directions.

It’s only the rolling stone that gathers friends and foes. It’s the rolling stone that gets hit, hurt, played with, loved, used. It’s the rolling stone that sets out on a journey, unaware of the destination. But reaches somewhere everyday in its own little book.

The spirit of all you rolling stones I acknowledge and appreciate, I am one of you. Roll on.

The inevitable.

Go Goa and you don’t lose something? Well, your trip is incomplete. That holds true at least for me and I am sure I can speak/write on behalf of my fellow psychos.
Materialistically and metaphorically speaking, here is a list of things that people usually lose in Goa .

Mobile phones, bags, caps, sunglasses, one sock, one shoe

Sense of time and sense of control

Sleep

Direction ( in every sense of the word)

Mini luggage locks

The white sand beneath as the waves come rushing by

People. As though it were a big school fate

The colour of your skin

The size of your eyes

Many lose their virginity

Inhibitions (I hate this word, but it kept coming back, so just getting it out of my system, please don’t judge me)

Speed

Chappals

The entire point of the post being, I lost my camera!!!

Off-season

Some people come into your life like untimely rain. Brief. Relief. And totally unexpected. Before or after the season. They’re not meant to be around for long, they will not return the next day. They refuse to be bound or rot in relationships. They pour, and leave you either cold forever, warm momentarily, or simply goose fleshed with their touch.

Inside, I'm a gypsy

I have felt my feet screaming with pain whenever I have stopped.

I talk to clouds, narrow my eyes, stare at the sky and expect it to react, and wait for rain as if it were my friend from grade two.

I never mind dust settling down on my face.

I walk, walk, walk through the city, stand on the edge of the train, hold the pole from both my hands, and throw myself behind, letting my unkempt hair sweep across the steel bars behind me.

I feel one with the wind that has blown over cities, lakes, rivers, and mountains, carrying messages from the ones I haven’t yet met.

I smell the earth and I like the fragrance that varies with seasons.

I have a collection of anklets.

I swing to music playing in my head.

I make eye contact with pigeons who go all amorous on my window ledge.

I enjoy the company of streets.

I never let heat bother me.

I never fear strangers.

I smile for no reason.

I sit anywhere, eat anything, talk to anyone, stop anytime and move on any day.

I tie my hair with twigs and keep ferns to remember pages in my books.

I prefer the cold floor to a warm bed.

I know the mountains are waiting for me.

Inside, I’m a gypsy.

Take the test.

Somewhere between late night and late evening comes a time - two hours that can make you or break you, that define, redefine, test you and your character.

You are alone, in a new city, away from cushions of family and the good ol' gang of friends. Work is over, sleep is on its way, but still is a couple of stations away. You've left work, you don’t want to meet the walls at home today, you are in a taxi, crossing flyovers overlooking tall buildings in a city that has made tall promises to you, and you’re hoping they’ll be kept. There's a bombardment of thoughts, new feelings are rising and falling, you're growing and evolving and experiencing at a pace faster than ever before. You are tired, but not enough. You are hungry, but don’t want to eat alone. You are alone, but you’d rather be by yourself than be at the mercy of others you still don’t know. These two hours that can drive you away from yourself, and pull you closer to things you would in all sanity stay away from. Pain is intoxication; it takes away your sense of reasoning.

These are the two hours can make you commit the biggest mistakes of your life and leave behind a tangled ball of regrets. These two hours need to be conquered my friend, they are responsible for what you eventually turn out to be. Depending on how you deal with this time will decide whether you sink or rise.

You may end up compromising on your self respect and make an untimely call to someone you have been trying to stay away from, the two hours may ruin two months of hard work. The two hours may make you sit in a café all alone far from home, dazed and desolate. The two hours may also make you bitter before time. Your eyes may rain these two hours, whatever the season.

You need to get a grip, it’s crucial. Look at this in between time which has nothing fixed. No meeting. No schedules. No obligations. You need to make it work.

Go,

Take a walk down a busy street, smile at strangers, have hot coffee, read two chapters of the French book translated in English, buy a flower from the street urchin and make her day, make polite conversation with the cabbie, watch a Clint Eastwood classic, have tea by the dhaba and get to know the life of those who don’t concern you, go to the church randomly.

Conquer this time, don’t let it conquer you.