The Inner API

One of the prominent characteristics of growing up is to start to find inefficiencies in the world around, and *stop* to try to fix it yourself.

No my statement above doesn't relate to any distant political satire, but rather to my home at Lavanya Apartment, which I most groan-ingly complain to my parents as "Kya kachra pada hai" (what rubbish is lying around). The term kachra here relating to open electronics, extension boards inter-wiring circuits like black plastic neurons, naked MCBs - one from my father's antique sound system, another from my college robotics kit, unfinished engineering problems - like a self-made-from-scratch aquarium hood, bundles of life-saver gluing tapes, then opened razor blades, switches and plugs that silently say "Beware dawg".

So for long I searched for a 'why' to explain this, helplessly giving up every time.
Until that one day. Standing at the junction of the drawing room and bed room, I glanced at the scattered items, and suddenly they didn't seem scattered at all. Opened boxes with internals safely encapsulated in their open cases reminded me how once these lay hidden in deep caves that even we were not aware in our home. Whether it be the bed box or the small shelf above the door, there was always an unwelcome presence of items. And we never questioned them. Unless if it's time to move home, or a random cleaning drive until when they would rot and decay. And then we'd discard them for a newer them. And soon the newer that would find it's place in the same cave which it's late successor possessed.

The scatter was no longer ugly. It was a naked reality. The real Inner API.

Humorous Speech - Division G | Toastmasters

It's been a long time.

I started competing in Toastmasters to discover my delight of speaking. And more specifically, victoriously speaking.

And now when I look back at the best moments - most delightful it is to be able to leave a mark, an impression in someone's mind when you share your ideas. Speech champions are no different than Champions in any other field. They're polished and ripped - not in physical strength, but in the craftsmanship of words. When they perform, when they speak, the world watches.

But beyond this hazy philosophical description, there are some common things learnt by me which I document here today -

1. Never leave focus off the Core
2. Hard work beats talent
3. Months of work behind a six minute marvel
4. Winning performance shows
5. No one wins alone, share the happiness
6. Trust your gut
7. Don't forget to have fun :-)

That's it. Enough gyan for some now time. Ciao.

-K

PS: For sake of documenting a memory...

Erase me.

"Sometimes I try to find a safe spot at night and pull out my phone and write your name in it and then go back again. Don't understand it. I can live with the fact that we have moved on but I can't live with the fact that every early memory or any association to love will have you in it. I can try and let go of you, I WANT to let go of you. But with you I need to erase me too. And that's unfair. Because that is something I can't do; I am not over you."

-P

Long day

It's been a long day.
I can close my eyes and feel your smile, not a visual feel but a feel that I can touch. Touch and grab and hold close, not letting go. No, never letting go.
And even though all of you lives somewhere in an infinitely soft voice brushing against uncountable intersections of my thoughts, I wake up, ifs and buts and cuts.
And even though bits and pieces of you and time flash in the constance of what now defines 'me' deep inside, nothing to do with who I am, I open my eyes, with hymns and prayers and cries.
It's been a long day.

Tamma Tamma \m/

Back to One

It is 31st December today, and while I sit on my bed reading posts by people on Facebook about how their year went (with crazyloads of achievements) of which exotic location have they chosen to spend their last day on (and how much cash they can shell out for it), it makes me look back and ask myself where the fuck was I during these 364 days?

I guess I was...
learning acceptance,
trying not to land up in a fight,
dating (don't ask me *whom*),
working (don't ask me *what* work),
tasting spiritual delicacies and not so,
looking for my CV but never updating it,
experiencing our people our place in Bareilly,
starting a few books and never finishing them,
having a few high efficiency shots of projects at work,
starting my Gold's gym membership and never going there,
regretting over waste of time but seldom doing anything about it,
losing few friends to better education better companies or marriage,
thinking about Bhai how life would have been if he were here with us,
looking for a flat to settle with family but never being able to finalize one,
driving through highways of UP sometimes in stress sometimes in ecstasy,
building and repairing Adobe Toastmasters and learning so much about people,
making new buddies in the comfortable (and limiting) context of my workplace,
satisfying a stupid curiosity for alcohol and hukka (once in a while, *of course*),
looking up to material possessions on various online sales for an existential distraction,
discussing endlessly about multidimensional beings relativity theory aliens and time over coffee

And as the clock hands of life rotate, the year number resets itself as we move from Nine to One.

A Recurring Question

It is not many times when I've asked this question to myself -

What is this all about? Why are we here? What's really up?

Are we here to earn and build castles, or to understand the Universe, or to understand ourselves, or to understand a higher being we call God, or to work for the common good, or to live life whatever freaking way we want to and have fun.

I don't know at this point of my life, whether I shall ever find it's answer. Or if I do find would it be a general one or specific to myself. But regardless, whenever this question pops up, I can see life flowing by and it's like a moment when you reach a bus stop, and suddenly look outside the window to see where you've come to.

Life is an opportunity to live.

Today as I left home, trapped in my own synthetic mental dialog, I saw a glimpse of death. Or more appropriately post-death. And while I drove ahead, the image of that young boy, a deceased soul, filtered the running, executing view of the Universe around me - pedestrians walking by, bikers racing around, shops opening, items being sold on road-side stalls, children going to school, mothers holding their hands probably asking them to study well.
What's the purpose of all of this if in fact one day we all have to reduce to cold flesh and dried blood. Why did I study Mathematics for hours, sat in thousands of exams, got compared against millions in competition, fought for that better seat in a bus or train, hoped for that lucky draw to bring me a tiny speck of immaterial happiness, argued with numerous believing my solutions could fix their lives, when the same fate awaits us without exception.

Then an image came to my mind - one of a Giant wheel.
Life is an opportunity to ride a huge and long and tall Ferris wheel.

We're all riding this Giant wheel of life, and we all have been given an option to live this experience the way we want to. All through these ups and downs, some of us want to corner ourselves, hide our faces and hope the ride is over soon, while others want to spread out their arms, open their eyes wide, let the wind blow them away as they shriek in sheer madness. And while we're all thinking and spinning strategies about the most optimal seat, the position of least deflection, the orientation which will provide the best comfort, being at a better or higher or worse or lower location than Sharma Ji's son, we never really know when we have to get down. When it will all just end. Maybe for you reading this, maybe for someone you dearly love. When your parents shall say Goodbye, or you'll welcome a tiny soul to occupy the seat adjacent to you - your little baby boy. The wheel still rotates, and shall forever do. But not for me or you. For our tokens are limited, and all I can do is to be the best of myself through these ups and downs and rounds and rounds. And money? Why hold it tight closer to your chest, when none shall accompany you when you get down.
For while you're on the ride, architect your life the way you want to. Don't look at other cabins because you don't belong there, and they don't belong to where you are.

If you're reading this till here, probably some of this did click with you.
Anyway, if it did or did not, I'd just say till when we're both here on the Ferris together, let's not waste any more time finding answers.

Simply put, let's chill.