And that is why I want to die

Life has always been a very delicate thing. Effervescent, Approximate, Tiring and as per some experts, not even real. Death, in direct contrast is perpetual, peaceful and no expert can possibly say that the deaths of Pharoahs who died thousands of years ago is not real. 

So naturally death attracted me. Death, the wonderful state of infinite tranquility where nothing will matter, neither the pain of banging my feet with the corner of a leg of a table, nor the heartache of a lover gone away, nor the pressures of earning money and leading a successful life as per the societal standards nothing! Death is peace.

Every significant action or a major event of our lives is performed as a base for what's coming next. Academic excellence precedes getting a job at a big company which precedes having a good deal of money which precedes sophisticated investment plans and extravagant expenditures from where two possibilities emerge - you may want to earn limitlessly and selfishly or you may want to earn to give back to the society.

Now, at no point we stop and wonder why we're doing what we're doing. 

Taking my own example, I am pursuing Chartered Accountancy in India. The end result of this course would be a CA who will either approve financial statements or work under some boss at a low level in the scalar chain of a giant organisation or high level in the scalar chain of a small organisation. However, you'll find very few people who are in the profession for anything more than money. In fact, in any profession, any walk of life, all our efforts are put in making more money, either for our own gains or for others. Why Money?

Money is the basis for getting every commodity for which you don't have to directly put any effort. 

For instance, your mother cooks dinner for you at home for free but the same product (well, similar utility) in a restaurant will require you to pay them some pieces of paper in return of which they will cook for you, serve you and most importantly expect a tip from you (hehe).

You're basically using money to avert efforts. 

But doesn't it sound a bit redundant and kind of illogical that people put in highest levels of efforts in earning money, an item whose ONLY use is to REDUCE your efforts? It's a funny world we live in. 

Maybe we are so madly in love with the idea of not having to work again that we work our asses off for years and years in the hopes of achieving it. 

So by all this, what I am really trying to say about Life is that it's based on something which is not only valuable only as much as the people value it, it's also a series of events which just happen - few people pay attention to the Why. 

And that is why Death is such an attractive prospective. Think about it, many people don't commit suicide even though they want to for a long long time because of what their absence will do to their family, friends and other people they know. The funny thing is, once dead nothing will matter to you. The Departed don't come back to share the pain or agony of others, don't have any guilt of their own.. The dead are just plain fucking dead.

Now isn't that wonderful? No physical pain, mental torture, human flaws and limitations...

Moreover, in the larger scheme of things, one person has no value. Not just philosophically, we see all around us that individual freedom, choice, opinion has no value in society and governance. Since life trumps any kind of work (a person committing suicide because of work pressure is seen as someone stupid because "he could just leave it, why end your life for it?!"), it makes death that much more special.. Because it directly.. Well, ends life. 

Death > Life > Work

So we have large citadels, palaces, parliaments, sports centres, bars, clubs, temples EVERYTHING.. That we humans did. That we created out of the stones and other material found on Earth. Imagine if all humans are Dead.

In fact, imagine a rather clichéd situation where a heat wave + magnetic wave breaks from the sun and hits the Earth with so huge a force that it can shake it from the inside and blast it out!

Will any of this matter?

Imagine a few 100 survive and go to some other planet using a space shuttle or whatever humans may have created by then. And let's even go so far as to assume that they find a habitable planet. What next? The purpose of LIFE is continuance.. Keeping the dice rolling, constantly reproducing so that the race survives. But what is the interest behind such survival?

And that's precisely why, I have always wanted to die more than live.

Yes, we have the most complex bodies ever; Yes, we have the most gifted brains ever; Yes, we are special and awesome and just the best of the best.. But what's the point of it all? 

We have so many evils in us and most of it is just laughable.. MOST. 

Take lying for instance. We are probably the only species which indulges in manipulation and misrepresentation of facts in order to deceive another member of our own species. Lying takes place when a dominant, high moraled individual's opinion matters to the suppressed, low moraled individual so much that the latter needs to showcase something other than the fact.

Take formal parties where we are expected to sit and stand and dance and drink in a certain way so as to not end up being a laughing stock. What's the ultimate goal of it all?

Most people spend their lives in petty nonsensical things like family politics, hypocrisy, making someone look bad among a billion other things which just goes to show our true status in the scale of evolution - and I can assure you, we are the only species who can be so fucking flawed and yet consider ourselves superior to each and every other species there is..

So now you know why I wanted to die.. 

Because life is a lot of pain with zero worthy returns.

In the language of finance, the NPV of the project is -ve when age and experiences are discounted by the rate of evolution.. 

It's All the Same - Act Now

As time goes by, nothing much has changed in our lives

The human mind adjusts as our surroundings take a dive

We let our frustrations and feelings pour

And let our fingers type out an extempore

We wish for the darkness to pass

We hope for our mental peace to last

But who wants to stay in one state of peace

When we're constantly hunting for things to grieve

Who wants to pray in a state of chaos

In a made-up spiritual trip, counting our loss

But when were times any better or different

This pandemic has just paused our hate to accumulate

Rise up, rise up to the occasion now

Fire up, it's time to stage your show now

For times will change and the lines will cross

And everything will remain as it never was

Justice - Bleak Idealism or a Right worth fighting for?

It slithers from one broken tree branch to the other. The sound of dry leaves breaking under its smooth skin is so faint that it cannot mar the happy delusion of the creature trying to suck out some left out nectar out of a dead flower. The journey of a hopeful bud had to end as the last meal of a creature, unaware of its imminent demise. Whether the snake gets to devour the insect, the insect gets to suck the flower’s nectar, or the flower gets to be plucked by a beautiful dame, one thing is clear – none of this is or can be motivated by the idea of justice. 

Justice is not something that we inherited from nature. It is something that was developed by humans alone, because our consciousness dictates that a civilization without justice will dig its own grave. Further, if your tribe includes only 40-50 people, it is imperative to maintain justice lest there will be no future of that tribe. However, as the size of the tribe increases, so does the pretence of justice. Moreover, the fear of evolution coming to a standstill is also diluted when the count of tribesmen in a civilization increase. If tribe A is not given justice and therefore, ends up perishing, tribe B has no problem with it because they can ensure the evolution of civilization.

However, the reason why justice even came to be is to counter ‘Might is Right’ philosophy. It does not make sense in any way to question whether the weak should get justice or not.  Justice is a concept which was devised only for the weak and the voiceless. If everyone could ‘fight’ for justice, justice as a societal concept would hold no meaning. Then, justice would be a personal issue. It is part of the ‘social contract’ because peace is the only way forward and justice can be ensured only through peace. Implementing justice requires power for which we have police and the government.

Going with the assumption that justice is NOT an inherited concept for humanity but a devised concept to ensure survival and evolution, it is embarrassing that most of us indulge in victim blaming. Once a criminal is nabbed, everyone wants quick fix solution of death – but swift justice can never ever give voice to the voiceless. It just reaffirms the belief that justice is only for the powerful. The only way to get justice is by a vulgar display of power. “These criminals deserve this”

The only thing that this does is dehumanize a group of people. Once, as a society, we agree that ‘Mr. A’ deserves to be killed, we deem him and people like him less than others as humans. A divide like that will just increase the number of categories which aren’t ‘equal’. When America was dealing with school shootings there was a strong voice in PMRC which demonized heavy metal music. Now, once that is accepted as a norm ‘Kids who listen to heavy metal music shoot school children’ it becomes so easy to keep at bay, the idea of Justice for the artists because they are not musicians anymore, they are ‘harbinger of destruction’.

I do not believe that revenge as a personal emotion is a bad thing. The need for revenge is our primal instinct and it cannot be suppressed for an extended period. However, once revenge becomes a collective emotion instead of a personal emotion against the dehumanized, that’s a sure-shot way to anarchy.  

I’m writing this article to show my dissent against the encounter of Vikas Dubey. It should not have happened. The politicians and civilians trying to mask this as some great victory of the police forget that police are there to implement the law. Law is there to ensure justice. And justice through law can come only and ONLY by strength. If you’re weak, you will kill; if you’re strong, you will nab the criminals and break the nexus of crime. Norway is a brilliant example of this. Now, I’m not naïve enough to compare Norway and India. Both are VASTLY different countries, culture and most importantly, have very different populations. But we could learn from Norway’s outlook on crime and criminals. Their jails aren’t the bleak houses of suffering and anguish that so many of our jails are. The idea is not to punish the criminal, it is show them that they can lead a life as rational members of society capable of performing their civic duties, without indulging in crime.

When a criminal is murdered as a criminal, the voice of people who support crime, who support violence gets even stronger. The voice of dissent against the murder of a criminal will always be more violent than the voice of dissent against the murder of a policeman not because the life of the former more important than the latter, but precisely BECAUSE the support for the former, the criminal, ONLY comes from violence, whereas the support for latter, the policemen, comes from a trust in law, order, justice, government and all the tenets of the social contract a peace-loving society must adhere to. Since the support for the policeman does not come from violence, the dissent against their murder will also not take a violent shape.

When we laud the murder of any human being – criminal or otherwise, we’re killing the idea of justice for the weak, justice for the poor. That kind of justice is dependent on the powerful supporting the weak in seeking revenge. That kind of justice will only encourage those who support criminals like Vikas Dubey to create more haters of policeman. I wish I could make this as clear to you, my dear reader, as it is in my mind – I DO NOT support violence, I DO NOT support crime and I BELIEVE that justice through the legal system is the only kind of justice that is worth anything. A criminal justice is an insult to a society that calls itself inclusive, secular, open-minded, peace loving and progressive. 

I want to touch upon one more topic before I close this article. If you’ve stuck around this long, thank you for being tolerant of my opinions mentioned above. A lot of times when people use the word ‘racism’, they end up making some error in using the word in the right sense. Some may link racism to ethnicity, others to religion, even other to language and so on and so forth. And every time someone makes that mistake, they are attacked for not understanding the problem of racism, for diluting it by using the word ‘racism’ frivolously. There may be some things that I’ve said above that might be factually incorrect – maybe Norwegian jails aren’t as great as I make them out to be (my source is a documentary on black metal where noted black metal musicians recorded their albums from a jail cell, successfully), maybe the things that I spoke about tribes is not really the genesis of justice and so on. But as with the ‘frivolous’ use of the word ‘Racism’, I leave you with the following two questions:

1. Are the linguistic technicalities more important than the dissent against discrimination?

2. Are the examples and analogies around the concept of Justice more important than the conversation itself?

Thank You.

Rebellion - Treacherous guide to an examined life

Rebellion -> Critical Thinking -> Ability to filter out information from garbage

As soon as we enter teenage, the one constant feeling most if not all of us have (depending on our situations) is that of rebellion. Suddenly the well oiled hair seem too "champu" or dorky, the clothes we used to wear down-market, the rules we used to follow - an encroachment on our freedom and so on.

It is very important to feel those emotions and more because without that, it's almost impossible to develop critical thinking about anything. If you can't question something without guilt or hesitation, you can never fully understand it, therefore never fully support it. Rebellion affords you the ability to question whatever information is fed to you and critically evaluate whether or not the information is garbage.

In our teenage years, we have enough energy to spend time on arguing over topics like religion, patriotism, culture, morals and more. The older we get, the busier we get with less and less time to spend on these seemingly impractical topics that may not have any utility for you in life. I mean, when you have to submit your thesis, get a high paying job, find the right words to appreciate your loved ones or sustain a business empire - your patriotism or your religious will, under normal circumstances, will not be of any great significance.

For example - Consider a 40 year old grocery store owner who prays to Goddess Laxmi every single day before opening the shop. At the age of 13-14 this grocery store owner could have questioned the relevance of praying to Goddess Laxmi and the tangible difference it may make on his/her life. However, with time, the degree of his/her argument against praying the Goddess would significantly reduce because there are more pressing matters to attend to. And therefore, if you don't rebel against the idea of praying to a Goddess everyday, you will never fully be able to support the belief behind it because your deed wouldn't be backed by spirituality - they would be backed by a combination of blind faith and exhaustion (you'd be too exhausting with life in general to spend energy on questioning something which has been believed by so many for so long).

Rebellion -> Forced Disobedience -> Slave to existing notions

However, just as important as it is to question everything between the age of 13 to 19, it is imperative to identify and contain rebellion without a cause - disagreement for the sake of disagreement. If the rebellion is against an ideology or a geography or a race, then one will rebel with complete disregard to the subject matter of discussion. 

To program your brain into believing that all kinds of rebellion is good and therefore seeing no difference between rebelling against the notion of women not being allowed to vote and rebelling against having a healthy routine is dangerous. 

A teenage should never let go of critical thinking which is a result of consistent rebellion for a decade, but the teenager, as they reach adulthood, must ensure that rebellion is based on breached personal principles. That is the only way in which one can lead a life truly free from the clutches of Hypocrisy.

When your rebellion is a function of external stimuli and not internal analysis, the freedom which rebellion is supposed to provide is turned upside down. Where earlier the rebellion allowed the rebel to expand their perspective, if not controlled, the rebellion will make the rebel a slave to the opposite side of his/her "enemies".

And the loss isn't restricted to that. When rebellion is based on anything other than internal analysis of a situation, it creates a strong belief of "Us vs Them" sentiment which is a sure-fire way to destruction.

For example - Consider a 16 year old student who believes that rebellion is his/her duty and therefore, if his/her parents tell her to, let's say, get the cheapest vegetables for groceries or complete their homework, (s)he feels that a law of freedom has been violated and it needs to be protected no matter the cost.  

Had the rebellion come from internal analysis, the student would have rebelled against the former because health of the family is being put in jeopardy, but not in the second.

Further, if in future the parents were to suggest something which is favourable for the student as well, it would be forsaken by the student just because of the fact that the same is suggested by the parents. Thereby making him/her a slave to the opposition of whatever his/her parents tell her.

Furthermore, consistently forcing his/her brain to rebel against whatever is instructed by his/her parents would create a very strong "us vs them" sentiment in him/her which would lead to a vast generation gap between the parents and the child - without any real reason for it.

In conclusion

Rebellion guides us through the seemingly incomprehensible jungle of information in examining our lives, our actions and the collective conscience of groups of people and humanity as a whole. However, too much of it can recede our minds into spiraling down a rabbit hole, coming out of which is a herculean task.

Perhaps, Rebellion is like hair oil, after all. Too little of it, and your hair will be undernourished and you'll face hairfall and scratchy scalp  for eternity. Too much of it, and you'll attract enough mosquitoes to make your every evening a living hell.

Choose wisely.

Credits

I would have never thought in this direction had a very important friend not pointed me into this direction. Although I met this friend when I was 22/23 and by that time, I was already fully engrossed in rebelling against anything and anyone, he showed me the folly in that line of thinking for which I will forever be grateful. This one is for you - Ajit.

Blame

Who's to be blame for the shortcomings of your life? Who's to be blame for defining those achievements as my success which I never even wanted?

The blogger in me blames the poet in me for being too Idealistic, 

The chartered accountant in me blames the blogger in me for being too fuzzy, 

The poet in me blames the musician in me for expanding my perspective,

The musician in me blames the cynic in me for never believing that effort could ever materialise into something,

The list goes on and on and on.

I'm sure that for most of you this line of thinking wouldn't be strange because we all exist in various capacities. We are scientists, cooks, financial planners, comedians, singers, teachers, philosophers and so much more at various instances in life. 

Under normal circumstances, in choosing one, you have to reject the other aspects of life so that you can "give your all" and "beat your expectations" to "achieve success*"

* Terms and Conditions apply

It is one of the toughest decision in our lives to cut out parts which seem to not be going anywhere. Charles Bukowski famously said "Don't try" which has largely been interpreted as "If you have to try to try something, don't try. If you have to take conscious effort in writing poetry, don't try. If you have to take conscious effort in maintaining human relationships, don't try."

In not trying, one gets closer to things that (s)he is innately interested in and willing to spend their life on. Those are the times when the impact of your life, at least in your young age, is most palpable.

It is a tough decision because of the infinite potential of life to be so much - there are billionaires, exceptionally strong, beautiful, bold, courageous, sensitive, empathetic, philosophizing men and women out there that force us to rethink our next course of action at every step and if these actions aren't taken in time, to regret our inactions. 

It is easier to live in a culture where the freedom of choice isn't made for you. A society that can afford the freedom of failure is one that grants the greatest level of satiety its members. 

I have always been afraid of failure and I continue to be. It's not the fear of failure itself that is the problem, but the fear of justifying that haunts me every day. In feeding this fear, I have learnt to play the blame game - a delusional endeavour where you find problems in solutions you don't even have. Greed, jealousy, contempt, arrogance, ego.. they are very raw human emotions and they have immense value - not only in today's world of cut throat competition but also in ancient times where life wasn't as complicated. It wouldn't be wrong to say that if necessity is the mother of invention, greed is, at the least, the kickass aunt that strongly pushes you towards it.

The trappings are in the blame game; one which is harder to avoid than any other trap under the sun. That is because taking responsibility is hard, asking difficult questions, demanding answers, demanding change and monitoring that change is goddamn hard! 

So you blame your bosses for being insensitive towards your personal life, you blame your ex for a heartbreak that lingers on forever - allowing you to put every inefficiency on the shoulders of a dead relationship, you blame your parents for presurrizing you or not presurrizing you or not guiding you enough and so on and so forth.

Since we live in such an interconnected society there are bound to be problems we face, which weren't caused by us. If you're blaming somebody else for a problem you face, then you have to relentlessly make them realize it and ensure that you don't continue to face those problems. Otherwise blame is simply a tool for escape, because real life has absolutely and irreparably defeated you.

You are allowed to blame someone, you are required to complain about your problems because if you don't, the changes the world is inevitably going to see will not consider your inputs. And who'd want to live in a world like that, right?

One needs to blame someone based on investigation, based on merits and not due to bottled anger which cannot be exposed. Because blame without intervention and eventual change, eats you from the inside - making you feel cowardly and worthless. 

Be resourceful with blame, be thorough with blame and ultimately - be relentless in demanding a change.

I'm still struggling with this. However, I have changed bit by bit over the past 2/3 years of my work life and I'm sure it will continue changing as time passes. And if it doesn't, what do I blame it on?

A Game of Curiosity - Test your limits

When we were young, we used to play Name Place Animal Thing. Refresher for people who don't remember it - it's when you think of a letter and all the people playing the game need to make a list of as many names, places, animals and things starting from that letter as possible.

However, as we grow old we learn that it's not the quantity but the quality of our content that matters.

Therefore in the interest of quality and revisiting a familiar game in these difficult times, I'd like to share my list starting with the letter Q.

Name: Quentin

Quentin Tarantino is my favourite director - his movies progress like a fugue with all characters playing their part to coalesce into one beautiful piece.

His movies inspire me to develop decisiveness and a bird's eye view.

Place: Qatar

Qatar was a fishing country but once gas reserves were found in 1970s, Qatar changed entirely. 99% population in urban regions, 97% literacy #9 highest GNI/capita, 0.848 HDI - the list goes on and on.

Qatar inspires me to be resilient in life and tolerant of all cultures.

Animal: Queen bee

A hive functions like a well oiled machinery due to the directions of Queen bee. Surrounded by worker bees and servants their entire life, Queen bee is quickly replaced once it loses fertility.

Queen bee inspires me to ensure order and simultaneously maintaining humility.

Thing: Question

In school, we're lauded for knowing the right answer but with time we learn that it's the right questions that foreshadow success. Questions inspire me to be curious about everything around us. Right Question can change your outlook in life.

What would your take on this be? Please respond on the comments below!

Emotions - The power they hold

Did you know that when you bring your hand close to fire, you immediately feel an urge to retract it? That happens because you don't want to get burned, and that makes perfect sense, right, it hurts like hell!

But how do we know that it hurts?

Our experience or somebody else's experience, either way, it's a past knowledge that's stored so deeply in our brain that we don't even need to be reminded of that again. We just automatically know it because our brain tells us to do this for our survival.

And along come emotions.

The source of physical pain that the body experiences is easily identifiable because it can be seen. However, the source of mental pain is very difficult to narrow down because of its intangible nature.

Our emotions help us, or at least they are supposed to help us, identify the sources of our mental pains or pleasures.

The problem with these emotions - these biochemical signals is that they aren't always telling us what is right or wrong. They just push us to do things that have worked in the past for our survival. 

For eg. If someone has always got what they wanted by crying, their brain will make them believe that, that is the only way they can get something. Therefore, the next time they see a book, a painting, a guitar or a toy, they will instinctively cry because their brain knows no other method like negotiation, aggression, stealing and so on.

When this pattern in which the brain works, merges with depression, a very poisonous environment is created in our head. This environment makes it very difficult for us to function normally. 

It becomes instinctive to think that it's you, your attitude, your discipline, your determination or your grit which is why you're not able to do "X" task. Once we live a few years like that, it becomes extremely challenging to deal with these deep-rooted thoughts of self-doubt and self-hatred.

When one has lived like that for a while, depression may seem perennial. It may be an illusion created by our brain which makes us believe that, but it seems very real. This is because our brain is wired to accept the line of thought on which we have spent the most amount of time leading up to our survival until the present day - through depression, through sadness, through pessimism, through drowning ourselves in a sea of darkness. The first step to dealing with this is to remember that depression does end. With constant effort - Depression Will Die!

But it's easier said than done, right?

I don't know the "how" part of that because I spiral back to my depressing thoughts all the time. It takes all the strength and courage I can muster to smile and talk to my friends and family without breaking down every minute of every day. 

For me, the source of my depression, from what I understand till now, is an absence of feeling like I belong somewhere. And there's this trick that I thought of today that I'd love to share with the world. Perhaps it's just a sense of awareness but it should help.

Just like my brain now knows I shouldn't put my hand over a burning flame, I could use my "sadness" to make sure that I stay away from those situations which make me sad.

Stressful situations, last minute changes to a presentation, writing a song within a day or half a day, making rent, getting groceries the list goes on and on. But these affect all of us. What about the things that affect some of us? And most importantly what about the things that only affect me? Things that only affect us at an individual level?

There's no limit to the power emotions hold as long as we can mould it, control it and make decisions based on the analysis of these emotions. Identifying how our body reacts to situations we don't like is the first step to our journey towards creating a life we want to live. I recently learned that my defense mechanism is feeling sleepy, my brain ends up shutting down slowly - giving me enough time to wrap up whatever the outside world was expecting out of me - to shield me from whatever my brain thinks is "a bad situation"

It is not enough to just be in that situation for the famous 21 days to change your habit. We need to spend a considerable amount of time in consciously changing our attitude towards that situation for 21 days straight for our brain to think "Ah! That's how I need to react to this!". The brain retains for a  long time which makes it super difficult to make it learn something new. And therein lies the challenge.

People who are great with meditation or those who seem to have a very positive outlook towards life don't have a love-hate relationship with their emotions. Instead, they are very closely observing their emotions and the impact of emotions on their body. That's the secret of their self-improvement. Even when we don't know whether something is good or bad for us, the emotions give us a hint about it. The more we're able to listen to our emotions, slowing our brain and letting our entire body work as one giant machine - the emotions, the brain, the locomotions/movements and the interactions of the entire body with the outside world - the happier and more satisfied we can be.

Perhaps, this too might not work and the perennial nature of depression is something none of us can move past. But, as a close friend mentioned very recently, "at least we will have actively tried something to deal with it"

If you have any suggestions, please do share them in the comments section below. I can't wait to get as many suggestions as possible to deal with this and to make sure that people around me have access to your wonderful suggestions too.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. It's really encouraging!

A society in symphony

Terms and Background for the Poem

Bass - it's the foundation of every kind of music style, from hip hop to jazz to classical and everything else.

Violin - considered to be the instrument that sounds most similar to a human voice, it's generally the lead instrument in Hindustani classical

Drums - well, drums

Flute - wind instruments, commonly used in morning ragas, very soulful instrument

The Poem
If I fly toward the stars, would you come with me?
Would you forsake your forest for an unknown tree?

I dream of symphonies, I dream of sonnets
Of ripples moving across this pond of consciousness
A world filled with colours I'd never seen in schools
Let me paint a picture of my dreams for you

I dream of bassline, murmuring of an elated time
As an old man holds tiny hands around his frail fingers
And with his selfless morality, his ethical values
The world of my symphonic dream gets its roots

I dream of violin, breaking the void
As a girl takes birth in a world of androids
And with her bow, she takes the world by surprise
They are human too, with her voice, they realize

I dream of drums, in the rhythmic chaos
Of a boy whose flight knows no recourse
And with his sense of wonder, the world learns
That time is just a signature of birthday candles

I dream of flute, and the glorious ragas
In the fruits of a hard day's labour of a father
And with the cloak of protection and security
The world learns of consistency and harmony

I dream of dulcimer, in its melodious urgency
Like the hurried care of a mother for her babies
And with her selfless benevolence the world feels
A little more tranquil, a little less lonely

I dream of guitars, I dream of hurdy gurdy
At the heart of distortion, a dexterous mystery
And with its mystic, optimistic tune
My world dances with the joy of equality and love

And then I wake up

I wake up to violence, wake up to deceit
To hunger and poverty and grief-stricken teens
To a war of colour and race and gender
Where hope for peace is a mind bender

As I look around I find myself
Taking part in the cacophony that betrays my dreams
Breaking down symphonic attempts of the brave
And silently subscribing to the murder of repentance

Let's join our hands and fight for a world
Where no harmonic dreams are subjected to pragmatic burns
As you place your head on that comfy pillow tonight
Pluck the strings of your heart for a future radiant and bright

..because staying alive is better than dying

Hi All,

I have forsaken this blog since 2018. Mainly attributed to my lackadaisical attitude towards everything that I try in life, I have recently learnt that my pessimism also has a part to play in this. I have always wondered the possible difference a few words on the page of a CA-cum-poet can make, where the page is not even known to enough people, let alone read.

However, I was reading this book - The virtue of selfishness by Ayn Rand and it has completely change my perspective towards life. The general feel of the book is - Motion is life, Stagnation is death and from that I interpret that every decision we take in life is just that - a choice between life and death. Invariably, I chose death over life at every instance.

Let me give you an example. You have to complete a book. Its your dream to write a poetry book and you have given yourself 50 days to complete it. Now, every time you don't work on the book and choose sleeping in or binge-watching a series on netflix or just going out to get drunk and come back, incapable of lifting a pen or pushing that power-button of your laptop, you are choosing death. You are choose ways of passive living, the kind of living that has no impact on yourself or your surroundings.

If you spend 50 days working on the book and the book is not completed you will still come out a lot smarter than your version of 50 days ago. However, if you just go out get drunk and come back, you can do it for 50 or 500 days, there will be no real growth to your personality, your perceptions or your profession.

Making that choice to work on the book or complete a 37 day exercise challenge or learning how to cook, ride a bike, play chess... all these things give a certain dimension to your personality and that will only happen if you're doing these things to do these things - i.e. you're choosing life - instead of doing these things to escape from doing other things -  i.e. you're choosing an escape from this life.

Hence, I have decided to revive this blog because I can't see the premature death of something I created. Well, not anymore. So, this blog is less for the viewers and more for the writer - for me - because the person most affected by this will be me. I hope you find it worthwhile to spend your time here. But even if you don't, no pressure.

This blog will feature strong opinions about the government, meaningful breakdowns of song lyrics and insightful poetry about life and lots more. Stay tuned.