A Bowl of Elusive

Majedar, one of my best friends is not speaking to me right now. Why? Because the last time I was in our hometown, I didn't call him up. Instead, I happened to call another friend, Keshav and inquired about Majedar's whereabouts. When Keshav informed me that Majedar wasn't in town, I saw no point in bothering him, so I didn't call. So, Majedar, the drama queen that he is, took offense and hasn't spoken to me since. "Majedar" is not a name, by the way. It mean "enjoyable" in Hindi. The word resembled his surname, so we ended up calling him that for fun. We all have that one friend who's a little dramatic. For me, that's Majedar. We have been friends since the eighth grade. We were a a lot close-knit group of 3 to 5 friends who spent a lot of time together in school. And after school ended, even though, all of us moved to different places and pursued varied careers, we still stay in touch. I've realized over time that childh...

"Kritika" & I: A Long Time Ago An old flame (Lets call her Kritika!) recently felt insulted when I referred to her as "an underdog" in one of my articles. This surprised me. She missed the whole essence of my writing. When I call you an "underdog", you must take it as a compliment. Because I myself am an underdog. I have always been one. I wrote back to her, "Its the underdogs of the world who actually rule it." I totally stand by that philosophy.  Anyway, the whole incident kinda got me thinking. I've written about all the significant people who've shared part of my life with me, except Kritika. That's not fair, is it? So here it is. Long term relationships are like drugs. You get addicted to them. You get addicted to the comfort level that you share with that person. You get addicted to being desired. So when you break up with that person, it feels like withdrawal and you start craving for "the drug". Lon...

While so many schools of thought insist upon the limitless nature of man's aptitude, I have been recently questioning my own. Being in a corporate setting has been getting on my nerves lately. I have been having a hard time coping with the way businesses are conducted in our country. Services are promised but not delivered. Payments are promised but not made on time. Corporations overwork the front line employees while the top level managers just work with numbers and not necessarily in the interest of the organization. Legitimate arguments are not heard and unrealistic expectations are put forward. I have seriously started questioning myself whether I am cut out for this. I believe in doing things well. I believe in success that can be sustained and not just success that is just an Excel spreadsheet. I'm horrified at the idea of becoming the CEO or Director of a Company that's just working in numbers. Maybe I just don't have it in me. I read this articl...

Death has a strange finality about it. It's extra-ordinary. You die and you just cease to exist. You may leave behind a few people to mourn for you if you're lucky. But soon, even they will move on with their lives. You'll just stay behind as a fond memory and a bunch of old pictures. My father died on the 8th of March, 2000. Before his death, he was the only parent I had had for over seven years. But life moved on. I was 10 when my father breathed for the last time. But I couldn't shed a tear. There was just too much crying around me. Amidst all the mourning, I was trying to cope with the fact that my hero was dead. He had literally been the strongest person I knew, both physically and mentally. And he just succumbed to an illness and nobody could do anything about it. Fifteen years later, I don't know whether any of his friends still think about him. I am not even sure whether anyone really knew him during his lifetime. But I did. And today, I...

So, those of you who knew me between 2001 and 2007 must remember what I was like. I was very talkative, often ended up being the brunt of all jokes and frankly didn't give a shit about that. Well, happy days! And if you haven't actually interacted with me since then, you might have a hard time getting used to me now. I don't talk as much. Even though I often say this, it's not true that I ran out of things to say as I grew up. I just ran out of the energy to speak up about the things I had in mind. Now I don't know whether my peers can relate to this or not. Frankly many of my friends actually found their voices as they matured. I, on the other hand, lost mine. After a long hard week, it's Sunday again. So I guess it is time for some soul searching. At 7AM in the morning, here I am, awake and worrying about how I am gonna get through the week ahead. That's my life now. Anyway, where was I? So, I was telling you about how I lost my voice. ...

Jay & Sunayana were high school sweethearts. Were. They live two very different lives now. Jay is now an average young man who has forgotten how it was to be in love. Sunayana has disappeared from the social media front altogether. Jay is not able to trace her on FB and any of her tweets or blogs that he did find were almost a year old. So, not much scope for online stalking. As he swiped through a bunch of profiles of people named Sunayana, Jay asked himself why was he looking for her after all this time. Maybe because he could no longer visualize her smile when he closed his eyes. Or maybe because the other day, no matter how hard he tried, he failed to recall how her voice sounded, the voice that once was fuel to his imagination. It was all fading now and he was fighting to bring it back. Hence, there he was, out looking for a profile picture to remember her by. But he couldn't find one. It's funny that he was feeling like he had lost her, now that he couldn...

Around the year 2011, I suddenly realized that I was a grown up. My last year of college was coming to an end and I had to find a job and start earning soon. It was all becoming very real very fast. College had been a hell of a ride. Not all good (like I have told you earlier) but not all bad either. And soon, I was immersed in another life and never looked back. Not until recently, when a fellow mate from the first year of college accused me of having played a pivotal role in making his college experience traumatic. His message read: "May God forgive you for all the bad that you did to me during our stay at Goa." This got me thinking. As far as I remembered, this was a scrawny little fellow who was bullied very often due to his small size and a knack of getting on people's nerves with his weird behavior. I myself was victimized very often in college and with so much shit of my own to deal with, I never stopped to consider how this guy must be feeling about wh...