In Vacant or in Pensive Mood

“It’s kinda funny how life can change. Can flip 180 in a matter of days...” - BLUE Our life is a journey, and it is what we make it to be. We draw up a course for ourselves; deciding, planning, contemplating, and taking determined steps into the future. But sometimes, life chooses to make changes on its own. Once in a while, it alters its course from the usual, and decides to take an unexpected turn. These changes break our mundane routines, and come as pleasant or unpleasant surprises. Either way, an unexpected challenge or change thrown at us by life causes us some excitement, urges us to be creative, and teaches us to think on our feet. Sometimes these changes are welcoming, but sometimes we don’t know what it has in store for us. Such was my opportunity to be associated with a multinational IT company. I was a student from a humanist stream of study, and I strongly believed against the IT industry. I disliked everything I knew about this industry; the centralised air-condi...

One Sunday afternoon, I sat with a few cousins, my brother-in-law, and my youngest uncle, playing a game of Monopoly . When a certain argument started out at one point in the game, we had to refer the rules in order to settle it. The argument was regarding a certain sum of money I was to pay my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law claimed one thing, saying he always played the game online and that he knew the rules. I claimed that the rule with the traditional version of the game was different, and so we decided to look it up. My uncle, who played the ‘banker’ (and, for those who know the game, the person with the last say in Monopoly), read the rules and proclaimed it in favour of my brother-in-law. I wouldn’t have worried if it had been a fair decision. However, on reading the rule, it was pretty clear that the situation was actually in my favour. But the men had just decided it was more convenient for them the other way. Well, what could I say? It was the word of two people against ...

Walking towards my office building one morning, I looked skyward and noticed a few eagles soaring overhead. As I watched them, I was reminded of the white-chested sea eagles I had seen at the Vandaloor Zoo a few days ago. I tried to see if the eagles soaring above me were also white-chested. But they were way too far up for me to see the colour of their chests. I stood there for some time, looking up and thinking how much fun it must be to fly that high up and not even bother to flap your wings. Even as I thought this, my mind switched back to a picture of the eagles in the zoo, and the contrast stung me. I felt a little sad for the eagles in the zoo, for obvious reasons; they don’t get to do those fly-highs they must be so good at. All they get to do is to perch on low branches all day and stare at people who stare back at them or click their pictures. But then again, I argued with myself positively, the eagles in the zoo are being taken good care of. They are all well-fed and ha...

I think I like novels better than short stories. Novels begin and end well. They start easy, get thick and difficult around the middle and finally conclude on a note you may or may not agree with. You become the character in the novel, you live and grow, fall in love, get hurt, face difficult situations, survive, or die. When you have read through from cover to cover, you are almost proud of the character you have been, and the life you have lived as the character in the book. If you are not proud of the character, then maybe you didn’t like the book; but that is something else. At the end of the novel, whether you liked it or not, you feel the satisfaction, or the dissatisfaction, of a life lived. Sometimes you feel tired and exhausted from all the action. You are happy, nevertheless, because you know how it ended.  (This is for readers like me who get so involved in the book that when I am forced to take a break from reading, I am almost a zombie. My body is in this world, but...

I’ve just created my blog page, and this is my first-ever blog entry. In this day and age, when pretty much everyone has a blog page, my first blog entry seems a tad too late for my almost 22-year old self. Oh, to be honest, I’m a lazy person, and I like to avoid doing anything that is not mandatory. Except, of course, the things I love. It’s not mandatory to read a novel, or Facebook constantly, but these things I do, because I love doing them. Most normal people don’t like working/studying, but both these are not optional for most of us. So we do them. Writing, for me, is not optional because it is part of my job. So writing is programmed into my system, into my nature and into my way of living. Apart from the writing I do at work, I write anything and everything my friends want me to write, I scribble down spontaneous lists anywhere possible, I devour quotes from all possible sources and write them everywhere for inspiration, I record almost every feeling and every event of my life...