The Interview

Notice: Persons attempting to find a plot in this story will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find resemblance with real people will be banished; persons who don’t find it boring will be shot.

                      1. The battle

One cannot blame the fan for his profuse sweating, for it was on its full speed. Maybe it was the reception room setting, but one can’t definitely tell. Arjun, all suited up in formals along with a matching tie and neatly polished shoes ,was waiting in the reception with his file for the final round of this interview. The only unwelcome visitor was the sweating.  He had forgotten to bring the deodorant, but well, fortunately he never forgets to bring his cell phone. He texted his best friend Srini to bring him the deodorant. Srini was placed in the first 3 companies that came to campus, so the university policy prohibited him from attending further interviews. He had routine final year classes to attend and he will probably miss breakfast, but what are friends for?

The reception was quietly filling in with the other candidates. But he paid no attention to the stream of humanity that flowed past him, as his eyes were seriously set on the entrance and his watch. There was at least half an hour before the process will begin, but it was impossible for him to be not nervous. A short, dark guy came sat next to him.

“Hi. I’m Harish, final year ECE and you are?” he introduced himself.

“Arjun, Mech.”

“Cool man, that’s awesome. I suppose this is your first interview?”

Maybe he noticed the sweating. Arjun was in no mood for small talk with a stranger, but he had to be nice.

“No, it is not my first interview” he replied. Every interview is scary in its own way.

“Oh so in how many interviews have you been screwed over?”  Harish laughed at his apparently funny question.

Srini arrived just in time to save the embarrassment. Arjun went out, used his deo, drank some water and thanked him for his timely help.

“No formalities da. You know this is the 42^nd company visiting our campus right?” Srini asked.

“Yes da. Why asking?”

“I don’t think any more good companies will come for recruiting. This may well be your last chance da. Remember how much you have struggled to reach till here. Don’t put all that hard work to waste da. This is the final lap and the race will be over after that. Give it your best shot. Greet the interviewer, make eye contact with him, look confident and answer diplomatically. And one request. Please don’t even drop a hint to the interviewer that you hate engineering.” he said.

Arjun gave an almost serious, wistful look at Srini and said “I will try.”

 “It makes you look bad da. Maybe that is why so many companies rejected you. I don’t understand why you hate it so much. After all, it’s just a degree and it’s not done you much bad” Srini said.

Arjun had always hated engineering. After his grade 12, he, like every kid had to go through the ordeal of making a career choice and a suitable college choice. The mood at his house was always tense.

“Don’t do arts, you are not going to be an artist. Don’t do science, you are not going to be a scientist.” his dad’s voice echoed in his mind.

“Well I won’t do engineering either, because I am not going to be an engineer” he had said.

“Stop arguing. I don’t have the time for this. I have lost a job that I was doing for 20 years and you know why?”

Arjun’s dad worked for a cellular company which was recently taken over by a bigger multinational software company for a whopping sum. Just when his dad thought it was a good deal, there came a shocker. The new management decided to layoff thousands of employees as a means of damage control. They were all fired with an annual compensation, but without any mercy.

“Why do you think I was fired? 20 years of service and I know my job in and out. They fired everyone who didn’t have a professional qualification like an engineering degree. When a company is downsizing, all they need is some silly reason to send you off. I am not ready to give those companies a reason to fire my son. So, listen to me, I am doing this for your own good, and you will understand it only after you grow old.”

“But what about who I want to be in my life?” he had asked innocently. 

“You can’t always get what you want” promptly came the reply. His dad always had a reply.

“But why is it that you always get what you want?” The teenage rage was pushing Arjun to ask such questions.

“No. Even I don’t get what I want. I wanted you to crack the IIT exams. If you had been more serious in your preparations you would have qualified for IIT like that Raghav. But you didn’t”

“But I am not him.” Arjun cried and went inside his room.

 People are a lot like numbers. Comparison works only with rational entities; not with complex ones. And parents discover that every teenage child is a complex entity only too late. By then, the children are already hurt.

“Cry all you want now, its better. I don’t want you crying when I leave you to your choice and you ruin your future. This is a bitter pill you have to swallow for your own good.”

A proverb to end the conversation. It meant that his dad had won. 

After those arguments, he could never really bring himself to love engineering. The classes killed his mind and the labs tired his body. But Arjun didn’t share any of that history to Srini because geniuses like him will never understand how difficult engineering was for an ordinary student like him. They will simply think that you are giving excuses and you just don’t try hard enough. But they will never understand what it feels like to be trapped somewhere you don’t belong.

“Thanks for the inputs da. I am going in” he said that with a diplomatic smile.

“I feel for you da. I hope you crack this interview for god’s sake. All the best” Srini said.

Arjun didn’t know if the interview is going to enable him to get a job and earn a salary, but it had already earned him a lot of sympathy. And if there is anything worse than apathy, it is sympathy.

“Thanks da” he replied and went inside sitting in his chair.

“I was asking you about how many interviews you had attended?” It was Harish. The little devil wasn’t decent enough to drop the subject.

“41” he replied with the recent input Srini had given him.

“So you have been keeping count. That’s good. I was rejected in my last interview because I couldn’t properly count.”

“Oh! What did they ask you?”

“The interviewer asked me the number of trees planted in our campus.”

“Look, I don’t get your jokes man.” Arjun was annoyed with Harish’s apparently funny jokes.

“I’m serious man. Not joking at all. He really asked me that question. It’s supposed to be testing your, erm, what did they call it, yeah it tests your structural thinking ability”

“Oh. How did you answer that question?” Arjun was curious to find an approach to that problem.

“I asked him if the problem was part of the job profile in the company. Maybe the job required me to go to colleges and say to people, ‘Excuse me, did you know that there are seven hundred and forty eight trees in your campus?’ Because I wouldn’t like doing such a job man.”

Everyone who heard that joke laughed out loud. Arjun couldn’t resist but smile, but he had no intentions of teasing the methods used by a company to hire people, so he wiped that smile off his face instantly.

Harish continued. “The point I am trying to make is, companies nowadays ask such different questions man. No point preparing in the age old fashion for a typical interview. I looked at how nervous you were and wanted to lighten you up a bit. The interviewer wants to hire you, so don’t pretend to be someone you are not. Be confident man.”

It made sense. Arjun realized that he had to be creative and original in all his answers and thanked Harish for that last-minute prep. The interview had begun and Arjun was the next man in. Harish stood up and gave Arjun an unexpected hug. ”Win this battle man, because you very well can.” he jokingly said to Arjun.

Life is weird. Suddenly, you start to feel more comfortable around a stranger who is jobless like you than around a friend who has three jobs as a backup.

                                                           2. The battlefield

The interview was on.

“May I come in sir?” Arjun entered the interview room which seemed like a battlefield.

“Yes, take your seat.”

Arjun gave his resume to the interviewer politely and took his seat.

“Hello Arjun, my name is Krishna.” the interviewer extended his hand.

Arjun gave a near perfect firm handshake just like he was taught in the placement training classes.

 “So tell me about yourself” The standard ice-breaker question.

Arjun gave the typical answer that millions of people have rehearsed in front of a mirror before the interview. He knew he had to be different but the nervousness of the situation got the best of him. His chance of making a good first impression was gone, but he was certain he had to make an impact in the forthcoming questions.

“Very well. Why engineering? Why not any other degree?”

Bad question.

“I was very much interested in engineering since my childhood sir. I used to build sandcastles, run remote controlled cars, and play with Lego blocks to build things. Now we are doing all that on a bigger scale which is pretty much exciting” He tried to sell his lie with a fake excitement.

“If you are very much interested in engineering, then why are your grades consistently low?”

It was obvious that the interviewer didn’t buy his lie. He must have interviewed thousands of students like him.

“Yes my grades are low and I am solely responsible for that. To be honest, I unfortunately do not possess the technical skills to crack an examination with better grades. I am good at certain other things like assessing a situation, communicating a point, working as a team, writing good reports, these soft skills which are more important in my view.” Arjun replied.

The interviewer was silent. Wanting to create an impression, Arjun continued with a quote.

“But if you are going to judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, it is going to spend its whole life believing that it’s stupid.”

“Quoting Einstein, are we?”

“Yes I thought it was apt; Einstein didn’t have great grades either. Yet he went on to do great things.”

“Yes, and Einstein didn’t sit for an interview in a corporate either” he retorted. The plan had backfired.

The interviewer was going through his resume and the silence made Arjun tremble. He got tense and sad at the same time. He knew that the interview was not going his way. He was thinking about how all his friends had a job offer; how he had to work hard to get a job he didn’t even want to do; how every time his dad tried to hide his disappointment with the results; how he had failed everyone who ever put their trust on him. For the first time in his life, he felt sorry for his dad who always had high hopes on him.

“So you have mentioned in your hobbies that you read books. Which is your most favorite book?”

At the moment all he could think about was his dad.

“To kill a mockingbird” he named a classic book on father-son relationship.

“Interesting. So tell me, who is your inspiration in life? Your role model?”

He never thought he would tell those words but they came out instantly from his mouth. “My father, sir.”

“Can you tell me Why?”

He didn’t answer that spontaneously. He was thinking. He remembered the moment when he happened to overhear his parents the night his dad had lost his job.

“My dad lost his job due to a change in company management when I finished school sir. He was competent and good in his job, but he wasn’t professionally qualified. The family was in turmoil. I am their only son and I was to go to college. I resisted the idea to do engineering initially because it was too costly, and my dad had to put up his entire lifetime’s savings on my education. My mom asked him why he didn’t invest his money on real estate, gold or even the stock market so that he could’ve reaped a larger return on investment thereby overcoming our economic crisis. He said to my mom that he was saving it all for the biggest investment of his life: an investment on my education. Because according to him, money is transient but knowledge, is eternal. The investment meant that he probably can’t have three square meals a day, but I will have enough to buy all the books that I need. Engineering is a struggle, but what he did that day, was heroics. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”

“Hemingway’s line from ‘A farewell to arms’. You read a lot of good books. I think your father has made the right investment after all. Because one who reads good books can survive anywhere. They will survive despite all odds”

 He’d gotten the first positive remark from the interviewer. It cheered him up.

“So you doing engineering was your father’s wish? It was by force, not by your choice am I correct?

“It is a bit of both sir. “

“Explain how.”

“True, it is only because of my father that I am doing engineering. But it was my choice too. A choice between obeying my dad and be a good son, or, disobeying him and betray all his dreams for me. He was a good father. I wanted to be a good son. So I took that choice.”

The interviewer seemed content with the answer but he didn’t explicitly show it in his face. He continued with the questions. Arjun got hold of his good run and wasn’t willing to give up that attitude till the very end.

“If not for your dad, what stream would you have chosen? What do you want to be in your life?”

Arjun realized that this was the first time anyone had ever asked him that. The whole world concentrates on surviving the scare and nobody wishes to know what you really want to be in life.

“Maybe I would have taken up literature, because all I ever wanted to be was become a writer.”

“Then why didn’t you pursue that dream?”

“I am pursuing it. Whenever I get a chance I write poems, plays, essays and short stories. People tell me I write decent enough. I have a printout of one of my favorite short stories.” He gave his file to the interviewer. He went through the file looking at the story, beneath which, were lots of certificates he had won in poems and essays and plays right from his school till college. “But it isn’t realistic to expect someone to pay me for all my writing. So, that dream is on hold sir.”

Krishna nodded at him and then, continued with the questioning.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“I don’t know sir.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

 “I don’t think you want me to give a clichéd answer that every kid that you have ever interviewed has told you over and over. I think you want a truthful answer.” he remembered Harish’s last minute remark.

“And honest to heart, I don’t know what the future beholds. Nobody knows. I won’t lie to you that I will be working in your company because honestly I don’t know that now. But I can prepare myself for that unknown future, build knowledge everyday and learn to adapt to that new future. I am going to have a go at it. If I don’t try, I’ll never know.  I may be wrong but I am not afraid of proven wrong. That’s how I learn. I’m sure wherever I see myself after 5 years, you will be happy to share that view without any regrets. Trust me” Arjun finished.

In all his experience of interviewing people, Krishna hadn’t heard a reply like that. He knew in the bottom of his heart that, Arjun was a good and honest person and he wished to know him better. Suddenly an idea struck him.

“Listen Arjun, you seem to be an interesting candidate to me. But also a very confused soul. I wish I can impart some clarity to you by talking more freely to you, by giving you important lessons on life, by citing some personal examples but not in this interview setting. This is the deal. You can have me, either as a guide, or as an employer. But not as both.  It’s your choice.”

Arjun was surprised. “I am not sure I follow you sir.”

“Listen Arjun. You are good enough for a job offer in my company. But I don’t think you want just a job. I will tell you this: you are worth more than the superfluous job title we give you. So I will offer you something more. I will be your guide and will steer you on the path to reach your dreams, I will share with you the secret of success, and I will give you a chance to fulfill your destiny. Pick anything you want and I assure you, I will offer you that. What is it that you seek? My job or my guidance? It’s your choice.”

“Give me a moment sir.”

Arjun was totally taken aback. He had never heard anything like that before. He had to make a crucial decision that can make or break his career. He weighed his options. He can take the job, and the ordeal would be over. Everyone who laughed at him, who thought he wasn’t good enough, would be given a slap-in-the-face response. His dad will be happy; he can improve his family’s economic status. He would be an adult. Happy ending. But it was too easy. And nothing’s that’s ever worthwhile comes easy. Maybe it was a trick question. Maybe he is testing him if he is desperate for a job. He weighed the second option. Everyone had a job, a job that paid them enough to make them forget that they don’t like what they were doing. He truly wanted that job only for other’s sake. But there is an inner child in everyone that craves for something more. He had burning questions about everything in life and he wished he had a bit more clarity. He didn’t want to be an adult. He wanted to be a child of his own choice.

He put himself in his dad’s shoes and thought what he would have decided in this situation. He remembered the story his dad had recited from the Mahabharata. Arjuna was asked to decide between an unarmed Krishna, the guide, the charioteer and Krishna’s army. Ordinary Men like Duryodhana would have wanted an army, because they think soldiers win wars. But the unparalleled Arjuna wanted an unarmed Krishna, because he knew that strategies win war, and Krishna was a brilliant strategist. Arjun realized the similarity in the scenarios. And he made his choice.

                                                     3. The Song

“I want you to be my guide, sir” he said that out loud.

Krishna smiled. “I thought so. So let’s talk. Shoot me your questions.”

“Sir, why is the educational system designed this way? I have to battle against my own kith and kin, take up arms against my own parents and my own teachers to get what I want. What’s the use of it all? Is it even possible to realize your goals without having to wash your hands in the bloods of disapproval from everyone you love?” Arjun asked.

“Oh Arjun! It’s just not possible to live without disappointing your loved ones. They have been disappointed millions of times before and they will be disappointed again. Even if you don’t disappoint them, someone else will. So stop worrying about that. Your dream is a piece of land that rightfully belongs to you. If you don’t fight for your right, then you are defeating your own purpose, in which case you disappoint yourself.”

Krishna continued. “As far as the education system is concerned, there is a reason why the system is designed the way it is. It has to accommodate everyone, giving most people a fair chance at life. There will be unfair evaluation, unfair reservation, unfair standards and unfair results. But who is to decide what is fair for all? In the existing system, everyone feels out of place, everyone feels something is wrong with it, and it is that idea of equal failure that holds together all these diverse people. You want to stick together a lot of different pieces but you don’t like the glue? How’s that going to work?”

 “So are you saying the system shouldn’t be changed? Because if it isn’t changed, the dreams of millions of youngsters like me will be crushed under the common roller named engineering.”

“You want to change the system? Sure you can, and you should. But first, you have to defeat the system. Come out on top. There is no point being in a sinking ship and complaining that it’s broken. Become the engineer the system forced you to be, and then become what you wanted to be after that. You will have the last laugh then. But a lot of people either give up or give in to the system. It takes someone strong to swim against the tide. So make yourself strong everyday.”

“How do I make myself strong?”

“With Remote. Read. Educate. Meditate. Observe. Think. Evolve. Do them all. In Every living moment.”

“I realized the importance of money only when it was scarce. In some way, money affects all our decisions. I wanted the job initially because if I had more money, I would have been happier. So tell me how to make a lot of money?” asked Arjun.

“I’ll answer this from my personal experience. I live in a penthouse. I own an Audi. I make so much money in a year that sometimes, I don’t know what to do with it.  But being rich is not being happy, I can tell you that. Of course being rich is better than being poor, but it’s not nearly as good as you imagine it is. I am not allowed to be sad, allowed to complain, allowed to feel all the little things in life simply because I possess a lot of money. As the saying goes, you are lonely at the top. All of the things you want to buy are now worthwhile only because you simply can’t afford them. And mind you, there will always be things that you can’t afford no matter how much money you have. Being happy is a different thing altogether. You think if you had more money, your life will be better and you will be happier? No. Happiness is not an attainment. It is a state of mind. If you’re not happy now, you won’t be happy because of money. So my dear Arjun, its not about how much money you make that counts, it is about how happy you are with the money that counts.“

“What is the secret of success?”

“It isn’t a secret at all. A lot of people know it and have been hugely successful. I will tell it to you now, so listen carefully Oh Arjun! Be passionate about something. When you want to succeed at something, do it for passion, not for money.  Work hard to be damn good at something. Focus on the action that you do and not on its fruits.  Build your own ethical system and never ever cross that line. Be persistent and don’t get worried about failures. Because after all, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“One final question. What is the meaning of life?”

“Arjun, do you think life is a mystery, a box of questions that you have to find the answers to? I don’t think so. I think life is a box full of answers. You have to ask yourself what is the question that is meant for you. When you find the right question, you will discover the answer that’s already there. Only then, life would be meaningful.”

“I am getting a bit of perspective here. But I think I have to digest it all before I make a significant life change. Thanks for the clarity, but tell me why did you pick me, of all the people, to give this insight?”

“When I look at you, I saw a reflection of my younger self. That is why. And whenever you find a misguided soul, a soul searching for its purpose, you are free to give them this advice. But don’t force it upon them or argue that only your path is right. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and everyone is free to choose their own path. Always remember that all paths lead to the same destination only. If you have no more questions, you may leave.” Krishna sounded exhausted.

“Sir, I do have one last question. “

“Go ahead”

Arjun was putting his thoughts together. He couldn’t deny that the discussion was very insightful, but at the end of the day he had to leave the room jobless and meet his parents without a remedy for their condition. But it was a choice he made. This time he was the one who rejected a job offer and not the way around.  He might have got his piece of land by the choice of battle, but the story is never complete without redemption. The question burned his insides. He asked it out.

“What should I tell my dad??”

Krishna nodded with an understanding smile.

“Tell him that, this interview, this battle you just fought, was never yours. You had fought it unwillingly for his sake, but yet managed to win it for him. “.

“What does that mean?” asked Arjun.

“It means that I am also human and I understand human emotions. I have all the money in the world but I am still working right? One simply cannot be stripped off his job. I am against such unethical mismanagement. I would value an employee who has given continuous service to my company for 20 years. And I respect people like your dad, who never give up their fight. So, I would like to offer him a top management position at my company. This is my card. Ask him to meet me in my office with this card to receive his appointment letter.”

Arjun was feeling like a mother who just felt the little fingers of her newborn baby.

“Do you remember me telling you that I don’t know what to do with my money? Now I know. I am going to sponsor your education. Study literature as you wished and become a successful writer. You won your dad his battle. Now go fight yours. ”

Arjun didn’t know what to say. Maybe this was the majestic view of Krishna, his Vishwarooba Dharshan. For the first time in his life, he felt he was free.

“Thank you sir. Mere words can’t express what this means to Me.” cried Arjun.

“What sort of a writer are you if you can’t express your feelings in words? Here, take this kerchief, wipe your tears and leave this room. I bloody have to hire a few potential employees. A lot of people might probably be scolding us for wasting their precious time. And Arjun, don’t stop reading good books. They make you a better writer. Speaking of good books, behold. I have something to give you.”

 Krishna opened his bag, took a bounded book that he always has with him, opened its first page, wrote something on it and gifted it to Arjun. “Read this book. It will make you a better person.”

Arjuna thanked him and left the room with a smile on his face. He opened the book to look at its title.

It was the Bhagavad Gita.

Read More

The tale of a ‘booksmith’

Once upon a time, there lived a ‘booksmith’. On the lines of blacksmiths and goldsmiths, a booksmith is a person who forges and makes things out of books. He is a person who spends more time with books than with people. They are the best friends he never asked for. Other people constantly wonder how the booksmith is always comfortable being alone. But he rather likes being in the company of a mind than a person. He finds his bliss in books. He worships writers and the long walk to the library is his pilgrimage. Still upon this time, there lives this booksmith. This is the simple tale of his lifelong romance with books. It could be you, it could be me, it could be anyone, and that is the whole point of being a booksmith.

I was always a curious child; Passionate and inquisitive in a certain manner. I was that weird kid who pesters his dad to get him more books than chocolates. I wouldn’t bother reading School Curriculum but books were my brain fodder. It was Tamil Magazines that first spurred my interest in science. I still can’t forget how I used to cut out the most interesting nuggets and experiments from the magazines and paste them on a note making a magazine of my own. I grew up without Google; hence books were my only source of knowledge. Google is like an elevator. It is faster and easier, agreed. But that doesn’t replace all the staircases in the world. Books are my staircases; they can take me up or trip me down. But they are always there for me, awaiting my journey.

Being curious, I always ask questions: to parents, to teachers and to friends. There was an instance in high school when I was uncomfortable with the idea of ‘pi’ being irrational. The number pi was both infinite and non-repeating. I thought: How could a number go on forever? Who has programmed the decimals that follow 3.141? How is this seemingly mysterious number connected to the fates of any circle of any radius? I asked this question, in a quite persistent way to my teacher who put off my question and also numbed me down by telling I was wasting precious class time. I was forced to give in to the system but I didn’t give up my hope for better prospects. Sometimes later I had the good fortune of learning under Prof.Ravi Sankar who welcomed the spirit of questioning. He quoted Carl Sagan” There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question”  and suggested us to read his books. I then tried Carl Sagan’s books and heard his voice speaking clearly and directly inside my head.

In his novel Contact, the protagonist Ellie is in a similar situation of getting ridiculed by her teacher for asking a ‘stupid question’. I could relate to the character, empathize with her and learn how she handled such situations. She ended up being an astrophysicist. She might be just a fictional character, but she inspired me that it pays off to be curious and inquisitive. And it did. I never stopped my quest towards knowledge and continued asking questions until I got an answer. And that passion to read, that spirit to always learn more, got me into Research Science Initiative- a summer research program at IIT

                 To me, Science isn’t just a repository of facts and definitions. It is a way of thinking. There is a way to approach science and I learnt it, surprisingly, from reading the Harry Potter books. The following is a paragraph from Harry Potter 6.

"Let us ask Potter how we would tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost" said Snape. The whole class looked around at Harry, who said, "Er--well — ghosts are transparent". "Oh, very good," interrupted Snape, his lip curling. "Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. 'Ghosts are transparent."'

Pansy Parkinson let out a high-pitched giggle. Several other people were smirking. Harry took a deep breath and continued calmly, though his insides were boiling, "Yeah, ghosts are transparent, but Inferi are dead bodies, aren't they? So they'd be solid —" "A five-year-old could have told us as much," sneered Snape. "The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard's spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard's bidding. A ghost, as I trust that you are all aware by now, is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth, and of course, as Potter so wisely tells us, transparent. "

"Well, what Harry said is the most useful if we're trying to tell them apart!" said Ron. "When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we're going to be having a look to see if its solid, aren't we, we're not going to be asking, 'Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?'"

There was a ripple of laughter, instantly quelled by the look Snape gave the class.

What Harry Potter suggested is how one should approach Science. He makes a simple but careful observation on whether the creature in question is transparent or solid, based on a physically well defined parameter and makes a deduction from that observation. It is a decision based on experimental observation and not definition or mere hearsay. To me, that is the essence of scientific method.

I write mostly Tamizh poems. I’ve aced the poetry competitions, recited my poems during Independence and Republic day celebrations in school. Strangers have congratulated me on my choice of simple words in poetry. But writing has never been easy for me. It is a struggle I am willing to take. Sometimes I just sit alone in the night and think of all the anguish in my heart and truly wonder if anyone will ever want to make sense of all that I am. Writing is my way of discovering myself. If you give me an ear, I’ll give you a voice. If you give me your heart, I’ll give you a poem

How has reading books made me, me? Passionate readers can’t resist the temptation to try their hand at writing. They want to weave magic with their writing; to paint a picture with words and to convey thoughts with their expressions. To give back to the world of writing that has given them so much.

                                                                                              

If I had not read Bharathiyaar, Vairamuthu or Gibran’s inspiring works, I could never have put words to paper. If I didn’t read, I could never have written.                                     Great short stories kindle the creativity in me. I read a simple short story by Kalki about two friends who get separated due to the politics concerning a village election. The story sunk in my heart, and stuck in my vision for so long that I wanted to adapt it and look at that world all for myself.

I wrote a script adapted from the short story with the necessary additions and modifications while also acting in the skit which went on to win the university level skit competitions. Writing is a hard climb, but in the end, the view is great. It gives me a satisfaction like no other. Now, if I didn’t read, where would I go looking for inspiration to strike me?

Tamil books connect to me on a more personal level than English books. Ponniyin Selvan and Sivagamiyin Sabatham are literary gems. But such great pieces of literature remain largely unknown to the Tamil Audience. I have taken it as a personal mission to translate at least 5 Nobel Winning English Books to Tamil and popularize the existing Tamizh works. That is a booksmith’s bound duty.

What goes into good writing? What makes good writing great?

I remember from a childhood magazine Chutti Vikatan, of a slim, chudidhar wearing Maya Teacher with a magical flying carpet who can take us to places beyond our wildest imagination. She took us to Jurassic Age showing dinosaurs, took us to junkyards and took us to free space. The writer’s success remains in making the reader yearn to belong to the world the author creates. The writer’s success lies in painting the picture perfect visual in our minds. I still remember Maya Teacher and still crave for her adventures in the magical carpet.

Great literature classifies as art. Art should disturb the comforted and comfort the disturbed.  And art should bring about a transformation.

Everyone remembers ‘The Christmas Carol’. Ebenezer Scrooge is a character that is etched in the permanent memory of all people. His name has now come to mean a nasty, anti-social, mean, miser. Nobody could ever forget how he snapped the idea of celebrating Christmas as “humbug” and how he has the capitalist mentality of not caring for workers and how he shows apathy for the homeless by asking “Are there no workhouses?”. It takes three ghosts in the same night to bring about his miraculous transformation.

On the surface, it may seem like a morality tale modeled on the template of Aesop’s Fables. But the ability of a writer to bring in deeper layers and different levels in his writing is his most supreme achievement. Scrooge stands for the typical capitalist entrepreneur whose obsession with money outweighs the need of community and family values. And people like Scrooge are the exact people who Karl Marx stood against. Marx must have had Scrooge in his mind

when he wrote Das Kapital, and Communist Manifesto while suggesting a social revolution to abolish such meaningless capitalism. That is what a good piece of writing can do: it can create unforgettable characters, it can enable thinkers, and inspire generations. While Marx saw communist revolution as the only solution to the problem, Dickens considers the human aspect, that people are capable of change. The Christmas Carol is a tale of redemption and is proof that the pen is mightier than the sword.    

            Books open up the human mind for possibilities. They prepare the human race for what’s coming. Their imaginations have fueled the drive of scientists, philosophers and thinkers. A simple example would suffice. Alice in Wonderland was written before the advent of  

Quantum mechanics and Relativity. And the newly discovered scientific principles defied common sense. Moving Clocks tick slower; faster objects get lighter; and it was quantum mechanically possible for a particle to be at two places at once. How could scientists accept such logic defying scientific truths? It was Alice who taught them to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And they trusted that the universe is much richer than our everyday experience would have us believe. The scientists came down the rabbit hole to find the wonderland of Relativity and Quantum Physics and accepted the truths even when they didn’t make sense outside the wonderland.

 In a world that is so stressful, so cruel and so boring, books are the sole provider of pity, comfort, happiness and love. Books can work magic. It has the power to transform people’s lives. Books are time-travel devices. I have lived with Raja Raja Chozha, took in the same air as Gandhi, Shook hands with Steve Jobs and even walked amongst fire breathing dragons. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what else is.

Forever upon this time, there will be a lot of booksmiths. It could be you, it could be me, it could be anyone, and that is the whole point of being a booksmith. While the whole world is busy waging wars, these booksmiths will transcript their tales and make peace with the piece of parchment they read. And they will live happily ever after.

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G.O.D

Light was rushing in to fill the darkness in his eyes. That was when he realized that he was falling down. His physicist instinct couldn’t resist the temptation to calculate: From a height of 100m, at the rate of 9.8 m/s² he would hit the ground in exactly 4.517 seconds. As expected, he hit the ground with a loud thud. What he didn’t expect was that he would survive such a deathly fall. It eluded even the physicist’s brain.

John was wet with his own sweat. He felt a deep pain through his spine, but he got over it quickly. To his surprise, he wasn’t wounded by the fall. He stood up and observed the landscape he was in. It was a mountainous terrain but he couldn’t recognize the place. Infact he didn’t seem to remember anything at all. Except for the physics that he studied and cherished so much, he didn’t have a clue about where he was or how he ended up there. It was as if he was put on a brand new world with just his past identity imprinted on him. He looked around him and found a person wearing a blue robe, walking away in the distance. He ran to catch up with him.

“What is this place?” John asked him.

“The village name is Shokam” came the reply.

John was absolutely sure he’d heard the word before but he didn’t know any place that existed with that name.

“I’m Sorry Sir! I’m completely lost. I’m hungry too. Do you know a good place to eat?” John asked.

“I am lost too. Do you see any ants swarming by?” he said.

“Yes. There.” John pointed his finger in the opposite side where ants were swarming.

“Why?” John asked.

“We’ll follow them. I am sure they are better in finding the correct route than me. Let’s go together.”

The blue robed fellow now seemed like a crackpot. How could he be lost in his own village, John wondered. But the sun was falling by, and the night was closing in. John had no intention of questioning him further and decided to accompany him in following the ants. He had no other choice anyway.

They walked 3 miles and the trail finally ended in a tea shop full of people chatting around in tables. John had never been so happy and relieved to see other people. He sat in a round table and the blue robed man sat in the adjacent table joining two others who looked just as strange as him. They were wearing robes of red and green colours and seemed to be in a conversation while enjoying their tea. John took a look at the tea master who was wearing a white robe and ordered a glass of tea to him. He didn’t know why but John felt spooky in that tea shop. It was like déjà vu’. He had the strange feeling that he had been to that tea shop before. He decided to just drink a glass of tea and leave the place as early as possible. But he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation in his adjacent table.

“If you were in a spaceship moving at ninety-nine percent the speed of light, how much faster would another light ray next to you be?” asked the red robed man.

“About one percent of the speed of light, obviously!” replied the blue robed one.

 “But according to Einstein, the light ray would still be faster than your rocket ship by the speed of  light, no matter how fast you are traveling.” said the red robed man.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“True, but it is accepted as a fact in the physics world. I don’t understand why” replied the red robed man.

The green robed man remained silent from the start.

John was thrilled. He’d missed such intellectual discussions and never hoped to see these village people indulging in scientific conversation. He wanted to get involved with them and contribute his view before tea arrived. John said “The speed of light is the maximum velocity possible. Its like the outer limit of something, it is a boundary. Compare it with the horizon you observe in the sky. No matter how fast you run towards the horizon, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same distance. You can never reach the horizon, no matter how fast you move. That is the case with light too.”

The blue robed man seemed offended by this. “Yeah but if God wishes, can’t he move faster than the speed of light? This is pure scientific arrogance to put a limit on what God can do!”

This was unprecedented. John didn’t want to get into an argument with strangers, especially with a fellow who follows an ant trail for three miles. So when the master bought him his tea, he started drinking it in silence. The tea tasted funny and burnt the insides of his stomach. He became unconscious before even completing a quarter of the glass. The tea had started to take its toll. His neurons were tickled and his memory was refreshed. He started to remember things.

 Having lost his mother at a young age, John Holmes was raised by his arrogant stepmother. Undernourished and constantly bullied by his stepbrothers, his intellect was his only asset. It landed him in Harvard, his alma mater which made his stepbrothers intensely jealous. It was there that John met his Princess Charming Maya. Born in India, Maya entered Harvard to pursue her Masters in Mathematics. Despite the troubles from his stepmother, they fell in love, truly madly and deeply. It was an inverted Cinderella story. John realized that he could actually love a physical person more than the physical laws that he cherished so much. But now, he had lost her in this strange chaos, and worse, he is lost himself. He had to find her.

He woke up with a start. He didn’t know where he was. But now he has a purpose. He has to find her, and get back home. He understood that drinking that tea somehow brings back his memories and will provide the keys to unlock this mystery. It seemed silly, but he had to drink more tea to know more. He started to walk, determined to find the right route. Suddenly, a person came running from behind and stopped him.

“What is this place?” he asked John.

John replied “The village name is Shokam”.

The stranger asked “I’m Sorry Sir! I’m completely lost. I’m hungry too. Do you know a good place to eat?”

John was flabbergasted. He desperately wanted to find the tea shop and remembered that ants swarm into that tea shop perfectly.  

“I am lost too. Do you see any ants swarming by?” John asked.

“Yes, There. Why?” The stranger pointed his finger in the opposite side where ants were swarming.

John replied “We’ll follow them. I am sure they are better in finding the correct route than me. Let’s go together” and started walking.

 That was when John remembered having the exact conversation already. John looked at himself. He was wearing the blue robe. He was shocked; He didn’t know what had happened. He had become that person he just witnessed; He followed the ant trail and it led him again to the tea shop. He now felt foolish for not trusting the ants before. He realized there are certain things that common sense can’t grasp. Like drinking tea which can bring back your memory and following ants which will lead you to the right path. He now became a genuine believer.

The same people with their colored robes were sitting on the same table drinking a cup of tea and having a conversation. The stranger sat in the nearby table. But the tea master had changed. John ordered a tea and joined their table to see what conversation they were having.

“Science dictates that any theory that cannot be verified by an experiment is not true. Can the presence of God be verified by a scientific experiment?” asked the red robed guy.

The stranger in next table answered, “Of course it cannot be. Nobody has seen god. Nobody has experimentally verified his presence. Your belief system is based on just received wisdom but there is no such thing like that. To err is human, and therefore the only way to understand reality is through skeptical analysis and reducing human error. That is the approach of science”

John got furious. His newfound faith clouded his earlier scientific skepticism. He saw his own reflection in the arrogance of the stranger to discredit a point without rigorous analysis.

John retaliated “Oh yeah? Then why didn’t you skeptically analyze and find out your own way? Why did you blindly follow the ants with me? What was the rationale behind that? You skeptics question everything and the only truth you accept is ‘empirical’ but what about those things that you cannot perceive? Have you seen dark matter? How do you believe it then? There is no room for inspiration or revelation in your world. I mistrust scientists because they mistrust everything else”. The red robe person listened to it and the stranger was about to retaliate. The green robed guy remained silent.

John didn’t want to be there anymore while his faith was being tested and started drinking the tea kept on his table by the tea master. He couldn’t drink more than half the tea cup. While he finished half his cup, he became unconscious.

He remembered having proposed to Maya with the duality principle.” I am Wave. You are Particle. Two manifestations of the same reality. I will become you and you will become me. Will you experiment me?” to which Maya said an instant yes. They shared a wonderful chemistry. They were intellectual equals. They used to solve the daily crosswords and Sudoku in the newspaper together. Maya had a great passion in designing and solving puzzles. So she used to design mazes for John to solve. She would tie the eyes of John and leave him in a maze filled with clues. She will be giving him signs and wait for him to grasp them. She would give him keywords and he needed to unscramble them a bit for clues. She would often say him that she won’t leave him alone in his shokam, meaning sadness. She would say it is just to test his patience. He was tied blind in the maze but she will always be watching over him and guide him.  It was fun. She would want him to solve the puzzle himself and find her and finally embrace her. It wasn’t for anything. They did it because they liked doing it and they were able to do it. She was a terribly real thing in a terribly false world and she was worth the pursuit.

John woke up from his unconsciousness. He started thinking, “Was this another Maze for me to solve? How did she erase my memories? How am I supposed to find her?” and was quite frustrated with her. This was too intricate a maze. He didn’t like being there. He hated her for putting him in this maze. But he started to think the questions on how to solve this puzzle. He started analyzing both fact and faith rationally.

He looked down on him and this time he was the red robed person. He directly went to the tea shop this time. Neither the blue robed person nor the stranger had arrived yet. The green robed person was sitting alone enjoying his tea. The tea master with his white robe had changed this time too. John started to wonder why the others remained the same but the tea master changed in every cycle. He realized that asking the right questions will lead him further into the maze.

“Why is the village called Shokam? How did I get in here, in the first place? Maybe this is an infinite loop. If I were on an infinite loop, would I know that? How am I moving through time? How do I measure time? Clocks don’t measure time; they measure themselves. The objective reference of a clock is another clock. So how do I slow down? Don’t slowing down and slowing up mean the same thing in time? Is my time linear or cyclical like the Kalachakra?”

Being the red robed person, he analyzed everything rationally. He looked at his green robed partner. He smiled silently. He made a toast to him and drank three fourth of his tea glass. He couldn’t drink more and fell unconscious.

Maya was truly a math genius. She was working on a machine called G.O.D. Its working principle was the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. It states that certain systems will, after a sufficiently long but finite time, return to a state very close to the initial state. It is quantum mechanically possible to design and program such a system with discrete eigenstates such that this theorem holds. The machine generates this illusory maze which has both linear and cyclical time simultaneously and as you move forward along the straight line of time, you are also returning to the beginning of time in an ever shrinking spiral. It operates till the Quantum Revival Time when the initial state is reintroduced. The cycle closes when it is destroyed. Generation.Operation.Destruction.G.O.D. This maze is her ultimate test of love. She is wave: Infinity: Poornamadah. He is particle: Zero: Poornamidam. Will you discover her by discovering yourself? That is the question.

He opened his eyes patiently. He didn’t speak a word.

He understood the whole maze. He travelled in a linear time scale, but his surroundings travelled in a shrinking spiral path. Thus in his end, he will be at the surrounding’s start. Every time he drinks tea, the operation is performed and the initial state is restored. He could only drink tea in proportion to his understanding of the truth. And little clues about the maze were revealed in every memory that was recalled. The true challenge in the maze is realizing that it is a maze. After attaining that knowledge, solving it is the final step. John retraced his path. He started as a physicist who thought he had all the answers in science. As he moved forward in the cycle, he became a believer with a blue robe who thought he had all the answers in faith. Then he came closer to the truth by being a rishi with a red robe who analyzed everything rationally. Now he is the Jnani with the Green robe who has discovered the truth in his silence. Now he could attain Maya by drinking the full glass of tea.

 But he had to discover himself first. She would always give him keywords which when unscrambled would show him its true meaning. The village name was SHOKAM. He unscrambled it a bit.

MOKSHA.

Liberation.                                                                                                                                                

He realized that the greatest master in the maze was not the green robed guy who drinks a full glass of tea. It was the tea master who is in the tea shop making tea for others, but never drinking it himself. He was a karmayogi. Anyone who realizes this becomes the master and it keeps changing in every cycle.

After this realization he becomes the new tea master in the white robe and he gets the chance to reach the peak of the mountains in the maze. The straight line bends in search of infinity and returns to its source, to join ends and become a circle which is the legitimate symbol for zero, holding in its heart all the quest of a long voyage.

He reached the peak of it which was about 100m and decided to fall down. Darkness was filling in with an utterance from the voice of silence.

Footnote: This is a hugely metaphorical piece. Maya stands for Paramatma and John stands for Jivatma. It portrays the whole life cycle as a maze and breaking away from the cycle to join with Paramatma is the ultimate goal of life.

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Scriballad: 2 Minute Poems!

Challenged myself if I could write quite something that even vaguely resembles a poem.
With a catch: Alloted myself only 2 minutes time!
Inspired by the two minute noodles,
This is the messy cookery of that unnecessary task I put myself to.
P.S Extremely sorry poetry lovers.

You are gifted with beauty.
Reminding that is my duty.
So stop worrying your brain
And drench yourself in my rain.

You are that truly great song,
To which when I sing along
Makes me sound better
Alone,I yam just bitter.

Individually you are
That tiny shining star.
And whenever you wink,
It makes my heart sink.

I know that stars do twinkle.
But never saw your dimple.
Where did you learn this art,
Of messing with my heart?

Waited all night for this chance,
For you to throw me that glance
Now you may just walk away,
Because I just seized my day!

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Inferno- A personal take

This is my first ever book review. I started reading novels only during my 10th. And the first ever novel I happened to place my hands on, was Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. I think its only fair, if I start by reviewing one of Brown's books. Not that my reviews matter or that my reviews are good. Just a plain old guy who couldn't keep his opinions to himself.

Dan Brown's a different kind of author. He happens to be the Director Hari of the west. He dishes out a masala package filled with action, humor, romance, morality,sentimentality and penis jokes in a mind boggling pace. Not that the work's bad. But you go through so many things at once, that you're confused at where the plot's heading. At last, you find out where it is heading: nowhere.

Let me start by summarizing all of Brown's novels. He uses this same formula, not just for the Landon series.

A popular person is murdered in the middle of the night and it leads to a chain of events with devastating consequences which can literally "destroy the world as we know it". An intelligent but unsuspecting hero is being called for expertise which seemingly only he/she can provide. The dead person has left a puzzle to solve, just moments before his death. And solving it is essential to stop the nature of the ticking bomb.
As the protagonist solves it, he is interrupted by an assassin who belongs to an organisation that somehow relates with Christianity or the Government. As fate would have it, he/she is accompanied by an attractive sidekick who always plays second fiddle to the protagonist. We get to see some awkward romance here, accompanied by long hours of monotonous lectures.
But, every book comes with a twist. The protagonist had known the villain, all this time, but never second guessed it.
And what's worse, the villain succeeds, every little time, in every big novel he writes.
We are left pondering in the epilogue, of many things. Of whether the villain has actually done the world any good, Of whether our thoughts on religion are true, Of whether the government is spying on us. And in case of Inferno, we ponder, whether someone can write something as bad as this and get away with it.

Inferno, Welcome to the gates of hell.

Inferno is no different from his time tested success formula. But only, this time it is less intriguing.
In every novel, Brown has one 'new' concept: antimatter in Angels and Demons, Magdalene in DaVinci Code, Aliens in Deception Point,  TRANSLTR in Digital Fortress, and now with Inferno, its overpopulation.
And by the way, God only knows why he wrote The Lost Symbol and what it is based on.
Inferno is definitely better than The Lost Symbol, but that doesn't amount to much.

Inferno starts on a different note: a suicide, rather than a murder. It's revealed in the next 15 pages that the dead one is the villain. And Robert Langdon wakes up with a start, not in his American home, but in a Florence hospital. He seems to have retrograde amnesia, the usual Jason Bourne story. He is on the run from the start and needs to crack a puzzle, but we don't know what it is yet, thus making it somewhat a mystery page-turner. An assassin from an institution named "The Consortium" is sent to kill Langdon. He escapes with a female sidekick Sienna Brooks, as always. The US consulate also seems to kill him and he doesn't know why. Thus, the novel has a promising start.

Then the part of code-breaking comes. Langdon finds that he has a tiny pen projector in his Harris Tweed jacket which shows a modified version of Botticelli's Map of  Hell. With that, and using clues from Dante's classic Divine Comedy, Langdon and Sienna move from place to place. Just from Florence to Venice. The plot always needs a red herring for it to have a twist. And right where you will expect the villain to appear in usual Brown's books, this time instead, a red herring appears in the scene. But his characterization is too weak that, you will immediately guess he is not the villain's sidekick.

One thing leads to another, and they meet the head of WHO, Elizabeth Sinskey. She explains everything. How the villain, Bertrand Zobrist is a psycho who has planned to release a virus to kill all humanity, and how Langdon was manipulated into believing that he was being targeted. Zobrist has made a disturbing video wearing a mask underwater, and talks of purifying humanity. A decent twist arises in the plot, as to who is the assistant of Zobrist, but I won't share that spoiler as it is the only good thing from this novel.
Inbetween, we have continuous repetition on how global population is on its brink and how humans are destroying themselves. Brown needs to mock The Vatican as a sentiment. So he goes on Vatican's take against contraception, which is a good thing.

Langdon solves the code and apparently the virus is in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. Because Turkey is where the west meets east, it suits the psycho's theories. But all efforts are in vain because, the virus had already been released and the whole world had been affected. Oh, and you can't help but remember Dasavatharam climax when the SWAT team sees swarming viruses in their binoculars. The virus, it seems, doesn't kill humans. Instead it genetically alters human DNA and causes sterility. The humans should accept what the future has in store for them. And in a crappy epilogue, Langdon thinks if Zobrist has actually done the world a good thing.

The book has its Pros, which are meager when compared to its cons. A moment when Langdon is told to have said "Va. Sorry, Va. Sorry" is interpreted as very sorry, but later Langdon realises he has actually said "Vasari, Vasari" an artist's name is quite a good one. The metaphors for overpopulation is good. The twist is decent. But the thing is, this novel doesn't have a plot. It is just a series of moments stuck together, desperately trying to make sense. But in the end, it doesn't.

Why would a psychotic villain want to leave trails of clue for a symbologist to solve? If he just wants to burn the world, then why leave people chasing him in vain hope?
The clues could have been solved by any decent cryptologist, thus rendering Langdon totally unnecessary.
The characterization is too weak. Consider Sienna Brooks, the female sidekick. She is said to have an offbeat IQ of 208, but there is not a single instance where she proves to be an above average person, at the least.
The prose is filled with uneasy metaphors and unnecessary facts.
Brown does his mistake of pretending to understand eastern philosophies yet again. In Lost Symbol, it was about Vyasa. In Inferno, he quotes Vishnu. "I am become death, the destroyer of the world" ,when in fact it was a rough translation of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita.
Did Brown consider the repercussions of the solution he provided? Wouldn't infertility increase the crime rate? People would have no one to attach themselves to, they won't feel the need to raise a family. The total social system could come crashing down the boils.
The head of WHO is said to be "a highly coveted and prestigious post", but I doubt if the post has such high political influences as portrayed.
Brown has no fears when he claims Jesus had a bloodline or when he says NSA looks into every email and taps every call, but he worries about naming a secret institution and changes it to "The Consortium".
This book lacks what made the Langdon series click: a startling revelation about our religious past. There is no centuries old conspiracy to uncover, just a very modern threat, and that makes it boring. In short, Inferno welcomes its readers into the gates of hell.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Brown. Who couldn't love Tom Hanks as Professor Landon and his mysterious adventures? But, this was definitely a let down. I think we have had enough of religious symbologies and code breaking. I think its time to put Robert Langdon to rest.

Dan Brown once co-authored a book named "187 men to avoid" with his wife.
If he writes another book as Inferno, he would definitely become the 188th.

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A Remembrance Letter

From

Me,
Obviously.

To

You,
Where it Belongs.

Dear,

I hope this letter finds you in eternal bliss and perpetual happiness. Every time you read this, you must know that you have made your choice, and a good one at that. Your choice to leave me.

Do you remember falling in love? I don't. But I can't help but remember us falling out of it. I remember. Every little detail of it, completely. I still remember that moment of pain when our relationship shattered in front of my own eyes and my love being torn apart with you walking away.

So here I am, trying to think of what went wrong; Guessing too hard about your emotions which you never show; Pushing myself to analyse if our times together were real. In this letter I will get happy, maybe angry, sometimes even sad. Beyond the veils of these emotions I portray, look hard to find some true facts. You will have some food for thought.
I'm now going through a burden of my past memories.
Because if we treat our past with nonchalance, it will come back hard to haunt us.
That' why I feel I will have to share it with you.

The first time when I saw you, nothing dramatic happened. The sky did not fall over the roof. The ground was still at my feet. But then, you cast a gaze upon me. A gaze which was cruel enough to strike my heart with fierce pain. Maybe that's why you are such a Heart-Throb.
For an year, I never knew your name. I didn't even bother finding out. Because I felt you were mine. And Because, after looking at your eyes, my brain functionality does stop. No, I'm not going to make metaphors about your eyes. Silly, what's the point in comparing beauties?

We all have friends. Some friends for a reason, some for a season. And some for a lifetime. Both of us had such mutual friends. And so, the circumstantial social pressure was the reason for our friendship.
Before I liked how you were. But then, I started to fancy you. I liked everything about you. The way you talk, the way you walk, the way you smile, the way you show style.
We had meaningful conversations. You once told me "Looks are merely a facade. Its the living room of heart that needs to be beautiful." And you mean what you say. I respected your philosophies of life.
Somehow, you unsophisticated my life. It was all plain, easy.

We didn't talk much, but texted a lot. It's always been like that. We haven't spoken much to each other. But the mutual affection between two people could not be measured by merely the number of words they exchange. Sometimes, what couldn't be said in person without awkwardness, can be texted with ease.
I think somewhere between, "Hi, what doing?" to "I wish you stay like this forever", I fell in love with you.

It was strange. I didn't know what it meant, to me, to us.
I didn't know if I had to be honest and tell you that feeling, or hide the fact to save our friendship.
I didn't know if you loved me.
I formulate the question in my head.
I ask myself whether it is something that I really want to know.
I ask myself whether the answer will probably make me happy or sad.
You could have even refused to answer, and I might think of the worst.
So I did what all the brave boys do: drop it like honey, instead of pouring it like milk.
I was dropping you hints. The clues to find out the path to my heart.
But, you were smart. You knew already. And, you were brave. You gave me a green signal before I even made a move.
On that midnight, something unique happened. Nobody proposed. Nobody accepted.
We said we love each other.

Life after that, was on a whole new plane. It was happiness, served in a silver spoon.
It's not just about the love. It's about the responsibility, the respect, the reality of it which makes it better.
We had our share of fights, but we always got back. We had our whole life planned ahead of us.
We had our moments.
I look back at what you did to me.
You lifted me up as a person. You bared my grief. You shared my pain. You were an integral part of my life. How nice it is, to have someone interested in you, to care about you, always, forever.

It was like magic. But sadly, magic can sometimes be just an illusion.

When you are in love, reality doesn't affect you much. You give importance to trivial things, and forget the most important ones. You think its going to last forever, but forever does come with an expiration date.

I don't know what it was. Maybe it was me, maybe it was you, maybe it was your dad, maybe it was our life. Apart from assigning blames, the hard reality that striked me was, you wanted to breakup.
Break-up. Just like that.
I know once you have made up your mind, there was no convincing otherwise.

I had sleepless nights. I wondered how you had the courage to speak those words to me. I thought how you could be so rude to not even tell me why.
I thought about it. Maybe it was something I did. But then, you said I was fine, it was not me.
I didn't know why. It eluded me. It was an Identity Crisis. I didn't know who I was anymore. I felt lonely without you. I felt angry with you, for putting me in this state. I felt sad that it had come to an end.
I need you to give me a reason why I feel so depressed.
I need a reason why I cannot concentrate on anything but you.
My world is turning upside down. I'm spinning round and round.
I want to know why you gave me hope and then took it all away.

There was a time when I was afraid to lose you. I was afraid you may not need me as much as I need you. When my worst fears came true, I didn't handle it well.

I said myself I won't remember you. But every time I say that, I always end up remembering you. Now when you were gone, I realized how much I loved you. I realized how many petty fights we could have avoided, how many perfect moments we could have had. Thinking about you, I always cry. I used to be a strong person who never cried. But now that you are gone, I realize you were my strength.

You feel bad for me now. You say you still love me, but we can't be together. You say we are like parallel lines with a lot in common, but can never join. You have your reasons and I respect your privacy.
And I love you enough, to let you go!
I just wonder if you spare a moment to think of me. If I still mean the same to you.
But apart from that, I'm learning to move on.

Now, why write a letter about things which both of us already know?
Because in my experience, I have learnt that the most common feature in human nature is to forget.
The rate at which we forget things is astonishing.
So, this is a remembrance letter, to remind you of our past.
To remind you of a fragment in your past which you will try hard to forget.
So cheers, go ahead and make your life.

Yours always,
Me.

P.S.  I love you.


Footnote: Incidents portrayed are fictional constructs. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely      coincidental.

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Uglier on The Inside

You look at me.
All dark,coy and small.
Because you see,
I'm not even that tall.

Searching for some style,
You stare at my face.
But it ends so futile
That you won't find a trace.

Moment enough to judge,
When you will all agree.
And I wont hold a grudge,
When you think I'm so ugly.

"Beauty is only skin deep"
That's what they have to say.
But look inside, be a creep
When the sun shines, make some hay.

What is it you find?
If you seek beauty,
Honestly I don't mind
If you find me empty.

For,
I am uglier on the inside.

Beauty is obvious,
Beauty is loud.
It stands out impervious
Throughout the crowd.

And with me as another nameless face,
I am not beautiful.

Every picture, every opinion,
every reflection and every description,
they don't say I'm beautiful.

I can't agree more.
But I am uglier on the inside.
And I am ugly,
In ways you don't know.

I'm scared of people.
I don't always know what to do.
It's not that simple
To make me happy or sad too.

I judge.
I overanalyze.
I procrastinate.
I stumble.
I'm stupid.

I fish for compliments.
I wish for happiness.
But all I'm left with
Is my own laziness.

I always speak back.
When someone confronts.
I ask for feedback
But leave them with disgrunts.

I am
Vaguely insecure.
Irritably impure.

I make mistakes that I don't even accept.

I don't help.
I don't move.
I don't trust
And I can't even love.

I have false hopes.

I'm full of flaws I'm aware,
Striving for improvement,
Can't say I don't care
Of these vices which lay dormant.

I try to change.
But I break.

I do things that I don't want to.

Everytime I push harder.
But nothing ever changes.

You look at me,
and think I am mad.

But I always remember,
You know my story.
Not what I've been through.

I agree if you think I'm ugly.
I smile to whatever you say.

Mine is a tragedy.
It is beauty waiting to happen.

And I have hope.
That you think I'm ugly
But love me anyway. 

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