Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies...

You know you’re going through a withdrawal phase when you start listening heavily to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham aka Fleetwood Mac.

It was surreal. Rediscovering, clarifying and lecturing all over again. It was like that night in my room. But this was more impersonal, more forced, more of a struggle.

I knew that things would never be the same. We had drifted too far apart, too much had happened, too much had been said. I would never listen to those songs in the same way I had before. You know how when you’re in love, it seems as if every single lyric, every single verse is talking to you, and the song was meant for you.

Now, the songs have changed. From ‘Iris’ I’ve moved to ‘Outside’. She, however, doesn’t give a flying f**k. And it is at this point that you know that this can never go anywhere but hell.

I had dreams, I had plans. I wanted to do a lot of things. All of that had changed 45 days ago.

Now, I thank the lord that its all over. Now, I can go back to my dreams of world domination.

You did not deserve me, my brothers in arms...

When I start my car at 2:00am and prepare to pull out of the office parking lot, I don't know where I'm going that night (morning if you want to be puristic about it). The car drives itself, and in less than 15 minutes I'm on the same road again, the airport road.

The airport road is not an ordinary road. The lights of the Allama Iqbal International soothe me everytime I look at them. The gentle curves are very reassuring, and the fact that I can find traffic there at 3:00am makes me feel alive.
Chotay loogon kee choti choti khushiyan!

Dire Straits.
The stereo-cum-iRiver blasts 'Brothers in Arms' with the volume at 28.
"There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
We have just one world
But we live in different ones..."

Fast-forward a hurl down The Mall at an average speed of 100kmph in an 800cc car. Arrive at the milkshake shop. Drain two glasses of banana shake (the second one comes free with the big glass at Nukar 54) and its back on the road. Take a right on The Canal and turn the volume up to 29 (it maxes out at 31) and all four speakers blare:
"And have you any dreams you'd like to share?"
None of any great consequence I'm afraid.

It just haunts me. I don't know why, even after saying goodbye that night, it comes back to me. It's becoming very disconcerting now... so much so that I can't even listen to those songs without breaking down.

As the sun begins to com eup at about 4:15am, I turn towards the Main Boulevard, pull into my driveway at 5:00am, go upstairs and remove the songs from my iRiver.

Afterglow - INXS
Annie's song - Joh Denver
Everything - Lifehouse
I dare you to move - Switchfoot
Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls

And the tragedy is, I love these songs.

"What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way. What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you."

Chris Issak I'm not (sometimes I think that if I was, this would be so much easier), but I guess I'll have to make do.

People I meet usually think I'm very content with my lot in life, which, spatially speaking, is quite large, but actually very inadequate. They're not completely wrong, but they're not completely right either.

I would never, not in a million years, do things differently if I could, and even if I was handed a time machine, I don't think I'd (a) use it at all, or (b) even if I did, would actually CHANGE anything.

Human beings are not supposed to be perfect. Our imperfections are what make us human. Andrea Del Sarto (wrote Robert Browning) was called 'The Faultless Painter'. Leonardo, Michealangelo and all the other Renaissance greats were envious of his ability to draw to perfection. He could 'paint' photographs. But he admitted, quite openly, that the only reason his work would not live on and that of the others would was because his was too cold, too accurate, too mechanical, too perfect. The artisit's responsiblity, Ruskin says, is to convey not only the truth to the viewer, but also his/her (the artist's) own feelings, emotions and passion. The work of art must necessarily embody something of the artist him/herself, otherwise it is mere imitation.

Perfection is not a human atribute. It was never meant to be, nor is it supposed to be. The only perfect human is a dead one, because perfection implies absolution. The only absolute in this life is death, and that is the only certainty.

If we were drawn to the perfect, we wouldn't be human. And if we were satisfied by the perfect (in this world), then God have mercy on our souls.

That is why.

Written to the sounds of Live's I, Alone

Well, that's that. I lay all my cards out on the table, and lost the pot. But it's not that I wasn't warned. And I have no one else to blame but myself.

This is all a little too cliched.

Interrogation
Does the word 'unconditional' not mean in real life what it does in the dictionary?

It'd just be easier to pretend that it never happened, but then, that defeats the whole point of the entire exercise. Those 24 hours were among the best I'd ever spent, and the ironic part is that I was miserable throughout, but it didn't matter.

Revalation
The word 'perfect' is illusory. There is no such thing as perfect in this world. It there were, it would create a paradox and the world woudl come to an end.

The lie
Somehow, lying comes more naturally to human beings than honesty, but does that mean that we can never tell the truth, ever?

The resolve
It's easier to hang my head and cry. The challenge would be to hold my head up and live, even when I know what I know. It's not that I don't care what happened, I do. I know that it will haunt me forever (forever is a long time). And of course, I can't let it go, because then I will be doing what I hate most. To remember is my responsibility. It is the curse that I must live with.I still love you, and every time I say that, I drive a stake through my heart. But its easier to regret something that you did rather than something you didn't do.But I do not regret it. Not now, not ever.

The end

Three is just one person too many...

Somewhere between the androgyny of Virginia Woolf, the intertextuality of TS Eliot, the pesimistic forebodings of Orwell and the incorrigible wit of Shaw, it happened.
"I'm in love, I'm in LOVE!" She shouted as she leapt onto my bed, the place which had been their meeting place for the past week or so, the bed that she had begun to prefer to her own, the only bed in the world where she could actually sleep without having nightmares, and indeed, as I watched her lying there, in a state of passionate reverie with a blissful smile on her face, occasionally muttering romantic nothings in her sleep, I knew her dreams were all good ones.

A little too good, I fear.

Rewind 10 days. Literature is a hateful thing, especially if you have to prepare for a series of exams that you know have no relation to testing your understanding of it, only your empirical knowledge of a certain number of books. Who in the name of all that is holy, unholy and everhing in between, pray tell, would care if Virginia Woolf was a man or a woman? Tell me, did her writing have a point? Was she commenting on a socio-political truth, or was she a feminist, or a Marxist, or any other -ist for that matter? Was she, above all, worth teaching us for 3 months about? NO! So why the f*** should I sit here and worry my ass off about something which she wanted to say but didn't, and something she did say but didn't mean!? Now it might strike you as strange (if you are intellectually anything like my novel teacher), but writing a novel, I think, necssarily entails that you say what you want and don't say what you don't want to... there is no third way of doing it.

But that was just our (read 'her') excuse.

*R-R-Ring*

Hello?
Hey, what're you doing?
Trying to study.
Yeah me too, but I can't seem to get anything done. I just can't study alone. Is it alright if I come over to your place?
Ah...er...ahem...well, actually, the thing is that the thing... is... Yeah sure why not?
Alrighty then, can you come and pick me up?
Alright.
Can you drop me off?
Alright.
Can you help me?
Alright.
Can I fuck with your head?
Alright.
Can I mess up your chances of getting a career anytime soon?
Alright.
Can I use you to get to your friend?
Alright.
Can we call him over?
Alright.
Can we 'all' go out for dinner?
Alright.
Can he stay the night?
Alright.
Can I stay the night?
Alright.
Can you take the couch?
Alright.
Can we have the bed?
Alright.
Can we...
ALL THE FUCK RIGHT ALREADY!

WHAT?
WHAT?
WHAT?
WHAT?
WHAT?
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

Why have I spent all my life helping people solve their shitty little problems when no one in this godforsaken hellhole has the courtesy to ask me "How was your day?"
Why should I let all of you parasites drain my sanity to refill yours and suck on my soul to fill your hopelessly empty existences. Why should I let you emotional lepers eat away at my body to satiate your appetite? And why should I let you intellectual vampires feast on my brain, drain me of all my original thoughts, dreams and aspirations, and let you leave me filled with the same emptyness that you carry around in those hollow shells you call your bodies. WHY WHY WHY?

Her: I'm not feeling like myself today. I don't know what's come over me. I can't think straight. It seems everything I do is wrong. I just can't seem to catch a break. My life is hell. I am the lonliest person in the world.
Me: Look, you have to be your own person, you have to stand up for yourself. If you let the world walk all over you and let them have you and use you and abuse you in any way they want, you will never be able to look at yourself in the mirror without breaking down at crying. It's time to stop running away from your problems, face them, be strong, be brave, you are better than everyone else. And above all, remember, as long as you have freinds like me, you'll never be alone, some one who cares about you, who loves you and to whom the most important thing in the world is your happiness.

Sometimes, when I think about what I tell them, I think to myself "How can YOU look at yourself in the mirror and not break down and cry? YOU are the lonliest person in the world. People call you when they NEED you. You have never needed anyone, or anything, because you have fought, worked and laboured to get whatever you need, and all for what, to turn around and give away your happiness to a bunch of self-obsessed wannabe-interesting pseudo rebellious types who think that by putting on black nailpolish they can be gothic and dark and mysterious and interesting? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU KIDDING!? Do you even know how many people in this world would care if she was depressed because her boyfriend broke up with her and was cheating on her? It'd be you, and the rest of 47 men who find her attractive and want to fuck her. And do you know exactly how many people would care if you went insane worrying about the problems faced by her and the rest of the 19,267 people you have so conveniently assented to adopt as your own personal problem? ZERO!
YOU DO THE MATH, IF YOU CAN STILL COUNT THAT IS!

I don't even remember what I was talking about...

The Bermuda Triangle

Horse's ass, shit-head, dip-shit, billions of blue blazing barnacles in ten thousand thundering typhoons (for all you Tintin fans out there).

Adjectives that pop into my head like a running commentary whenever I talk to her. I know what you're probably thinking: Boo-Hoo a**hole, you and the rest of mankind. But what makes my case unique (HAH!) is that she is not just one particular person, neither is she a generalisation. She is, in fact, every single woman I have ever cared for, liked and been attracted to. It hasn't been all that many times, in fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of women I've felt this way about.

You see, I am something of an oddity. I am not the most attractive person in the world (so I lose out on all the better looking women), neither am I the worst-looking person in the world (so I lose out on the sympathy-chicks too). I am also not especially enigmatic or charismatic, nor do I have what may be called an 'appealing personality'. Don't get me wrong, I am interesting to hang out with, but the word 'interesting' is really starting to piss me off.

So, where were we? Ah yes. Now another thing that is inherently wrong with me: I cannot bring myself to treat women (especially girls) as 'women'. I don't mean that I'm an abusive person and that I treat them like dirt, no (actually people who do that get more girls than I do, it's true!). No, my problem is that to me, all human beings are equal, and hence, I treat all women or girls that I meet just the same as I would treat any man I met... Hi... Hello... Nice to meet you... (insert small talk)... and by the time we come to regard each other as good aquaintances, I'm telling them the same twisted jokes that I would tell my guy friends, sharing a good laugh and generally not really being too concerned with what their opinion of me would be or is.

Now this way, even though I have made tons of friends (male and female), I am in a bit of a pickle. You see, I have entered what men like to refer to as the 'friend zone'. Any guy will know that this is one place where you must never be if you ever want to make it with a girl, because even Dr Phil can't get out out of this place when you get into it (maybe Jerry Springer can, but I'm not too sure about that!).

Being a 'friend,' it is virtually impossible to look attractive to a woman, except maybe if she's stoned out of her skull, and even then its a 50-50 shot. You do not count any more, or better still, it's like you've ceased to have a penis. Now in all fairness, men do that too. I know not all men, but some, like me, have a problem (a major problem) imagining having relations with some of their female friends. It's like it is with your mother, with some people, you just don't go there. But these are only exceptions to the rule.

So, having entered into close contact with any female who is reasonably attractive, or has a brain bigger than the size of her eye-balls, any man would not take long before he developed a liking for her. This, more often than no, turns to attraction, which in turn turns to 'feelings', which finally becomes obsession, and of course, the cause of several nightly self-help (read flagellation) sessions.

So coming back to my problem. I think by now you have realised what the problem is. Now lets move on to something a little more crushing. Imagine that you have actually worked up the nerve to pour your heart out to your 'intended'. The first thing you do is that you try to ease into a conversation the subject of a relationship, that is assuming that you know this person well enough to know whether they are already involved or not. This conversation, mind you, does not need to be about relationships. It can be about anything, the weather, her car, or even sexually transmitted diseases (that one is easy). Essentially, men can divert any topic of conversation away from its original flow to a discourse on sex, women or food (or in the case of the more conceited ones, themselves).

Now having steered the conversation in this direction, you begin fishing for clues. What's her idea type of guy (actually means am I good enough?), what does she want in a guy (actually means am I what you're looking for?), would you prefer if you were friends first or start off as a couple (meaning that I'm standing right here!), or finally, and this is the best one yet, would'nt you want to get to know someone and trust them before getting ivolved (meaning, essentially, with apologies to Roxette, "Hello, you fool, I love you!").

So imagine what an average man, with average self-esteem and average looks, goes through when he's told "No, I don't think I could ever picture myself dating a friend." Now imagine that man is me, suicidally low self-esteem, highly unsatisfactory looks and clinically unbalanced.

Now imagine if this all had happened to a girl.

A plate of Nihari is a joy forever...

Going through a blog today, I was hit by a realisation which had hitherto eluded me. You see, contrary to popular opinion (the use of the word 'popular' is, I think, highly suspect in this context), I am not as big on technology as I appear to be, and the last thing that I would ordinarily have done was to take out time from my self-inflicted business (read busy-ness) to read someone's blogs.
Please allow me now to introduce myself. I am the most conceited, hypocritical, selfish and evil bastard ever to inhabit God's Green Earth. You know how sometimes you see someone walking down the street and you think to yourself "Wow! This guy's cool," or "He must be nice," or a multitude of other pleasant things. You might also see people who, from the very sight of them, disgust you, send shivers down your spine and make you physically sick. I am one of those people. But the tragedy is (and this is my tour de force of Iago-istic duplicity) that people do not see that in me somehow. All I am to them is a harmless buffoon. I mean, how blind do you have to be to figure out that this is guy who's going to screw me over tomorrow, or day after tomorrow, or next month even?
So coming back to the question of blogs... I did not read them, and as such, had no idea what went on in such places (I'm trying my best to make a 'blog' sound like a 'brothel'). But, being the conceited shit that I am, I must necessarily to have an opinion on everything. And one of the more cherished opinions that I nursed was the fact that the journals and diaries that people oftentimes should not be private, because that negates the very purpose of having a vent for your emotions. Since a person's diary or journal represents their take on other people and how such and such situation affected them, it is more logical (HAH!) to make the account public, so that others can read it and either learn from their mistakes or the mistakes of others (Yeah right, as if that's going to happen!), or, as we are wont to do, take offence, fight and be told to piss off!
So imagine my surprise when I, reading the blog of certain individual, realised that these blogs are the culmination of one of my most cherished ideals. Now, since I have been a vocal proponent of this concept for so long, it would seem pretty darned lame if I were not to have a blog of my own, wouldn't it. After all, that's me, always keeping up appearances, trying to fool people into thinking that I'm somebody or something that I am, in fact, not.
Hence, ladies and gentlemen, here it is. My version of Mr Hyde... the place where the real me is finally unleashed upon the world. It's a crying shame that no one will be around to read it.

Oh, and by the way... my titles for all my posts have nothing to do with the content of the article itself, ever!