Thursday, February 16, 2006

Coming Back to Life

It's been a while. A week to be exact. Which is not much time, considering this is not my profession and so I needn't be doing it as religiously as I would, say, be studying. Yes, that was a joke, you can all smile knowingly. But it is such a compulsion to pour out the smallest, dullest, most insignificant happenings in your even more insignificant life into this webpage that you wonder if people don't have any concept of privacy anymore. The sad part is that it is so widely done as well, and getting ever so popular. The world is shrinking. But not so much that it shrinks into MY own, separate world. No Thanks. You can all shrink till just outside my world.

I don't know why I put that Floyd Song as the title. I don't know much these days. It's all abstract, a vague collection of thoughts and ideas and desires. The sinking realization that my life is headed nowhere suddenly rammed home with startling clarity in class today. Well, not nowhere, I THINK I can vaguely see paths laid out in front of me, leading to places. So I guess I must say I don't know where I WANT my life to go, instead of saying it's going nowhere. Yes, take the blame. It's easier that way.

I went through my Yahoo Mail Inbox today. The oldest mail I had was dated 25 July, 2004. It was one of those jokes which come through forwards. It was a good one, I wouldn't have kept it otherwise. I smiled when I read mails from my friends all excited about the first few weeks in college, whichever one they were in. And I was being pretty excited too, my Sent Items said so. "Oh wow, this campus is really cool.", "The Chemistry professor is unbelievable.", "The Computer Facility has Net connection at the speed of light!" Innocent, awe-struck wonderings of a boy lost in an unfamiliar place. And around November of first year in college, I saw the first signs of the crack showing. "I'm a man broken by the system he tried so hard to get into.". Now of course, I'm beyond all of that. Take life as it comes. Go with the flow. Things will happen when they have to. Call me a believer in destiny.... or someone resigned to fate.

Room-cleaning. With a vengeance. Trying to get back some of the lost me. I'm usually very ordered, I like to see things neatly stacked up and symmetric. Symmetry is pleasing to the eye. My room was a mess. The table was littered, the cupboard had clothes in a heap and there's a lizard in one corner of the room which lives in this room more than I do. Therefore the room-cleaning. Swept it. Once, twice, thrice. The dust simply wouldn't stop coming. So I gave up. Rearranged the table. Ordered the clothes in the cupboard. Why am I saying all this? See what I meant, in my opening paragraph?

What do I do when the quizzes are over. Where do the 24 hours go on normal days? Frightening thought. That absolute murder of time could come so naturally and without our realising it. What DID I do yesterday??? Um, I don't know! So there's a resolution made, to do something... anything! As ever. To be broken at the first possible chance. Oh well, at least I realised that I don't realise I'm wasting time. It's a start.

It's been a while. For many things. It's been a while since... I drove my car. Since I watched Live Cricket. Since I read a novel, lying on the bed, munching on horribly unhealthy snacks. Since I went to the beach alone and sat at the water's edge and listened to the waves. Since I watched the Saturday Night movie on Star Movies. Since I've been to a friend's house. Since I've had a pure, cold shower (Chennai's becoming COLD!). Since I sent someone a greeting card. Since I've listened to a very old song on the radio. Since I played Minesweeper. Since I wrote a short story, just for the heck of it. Since I sat in front of my book collection, took them all out and arranged them again in exactly the same order...

Since I've been myself...

Thursday, February 09, 2006