Rules of Engagement

As social beings, humans have become accustomed to controlled environments, civilized behavior, order and balance - anything beyond the realm of the regular, is absurd and well unnatural. At first, the comfort of knowing how one's day will go is quite welcome. But i believe as people we have taken this sketch pen and gone into territories that should have been left well alone.

The reference here is to such books as - "Learn to love", "Get the love of your life", "Love for Beginners". There is an entire sub culture of authors and groups that are dedicated to giving you the 'dope' on getting into the relationship of your dreams. To make matters worse, there is popular beliefs, fueled by Movies and Television, a whole industry that is pushing people to believe that holding your gaze a certain way, or befriending her best friend will get you your girl.

Any scientific rule or law is prefixed by a disclaimer - "Under ideal conditions" or "All other coditions remaining constant". The application does not hold true if a variable is introduced. When you think about it, with regard to love, every element is a variable, nothing is constant and there are way too many influencing factors.

So why do we buy into these fantasies, that if we follow a given set of rules we should get our love. Its back to the original thought, we(people, human beings, morons) cannot surmise a world without control. A world that doesn't run on rules, least of all ours.

I say enough of this crap, these rules of engagement be,

open your eyes and truth shall set you free,

the treasure you seek has no bloody map,

just fall with abandon in to the god forsaken gap

Patience...dear friend....patience

Just missed it.......

Awww......you just missed it man.

These words set off a really queasy gutteral feeling within me, i can feel the acidic taste of bile in my throat and all i want to do is sit down till the moment passes. "If only you were here a moment earlier!"

IF ONLY

The words keeping hitting me like a Spitfire machine gun on a metal fuselage of a Messerschmidt.....ICH WERDE DOWN...................AUF WIEDERSEHEN

This is an all too familiar feeling for me, its been there forever, i find the perfect gal and i go up to her and sum up all the courage in the world to ask her if she would like to go out and grab a drink. BOOOOOOM - she is already with someone else, or she is thinking about someone else...or the best.....SHE IS WAITING FOR SOMEONE ELSE......

This someone else is always around the corner, one step ahead of me, just taking all my girls away. NO FAIR GOD!!!!!

One of these days i am going to meet this SOMEONE....bash his fucking head in......but i am going to JUST MISS HIM aren't i?????????

FUCKING INSANE

Catholic Fever

Ever since i saw a movie called Baton Baton Mein (Loosely translated In a matter of words) , i had one fixation in my head - the fascination for Catholic women. In the movie Amol Palekar tries to woo Tina Munim, a young Catholic girl from Khar.

Since then i came to be attracted to catholic women like a moth to a burning naked flame. And thus began my affliction to a phenomenon i came to know as - Catholic Fever . This is not a physiological condition, well for the most part, it is a state of mind.

What is interesting to me is why i came to be afflicted with the condition. Sure the movie is an obvious answer, but it is much more than that. Its the Catholic attitude, its the what men? what you saying? balls to you ! confidence that they carry around.

It is the carefree attitude towards everything fun in life, its the want to experience new things at the cost of sanity and social decrees. Its the food, its the smell of sorpotel and calamari on Sundays, its the beer in the fridge and whiskey on rocks....its all of it and more man.

Wait a minute, this says nothing about the women you say? Of course not, the women are more or less the same, but then its about the lifestyle, its about the way of life. Its actually my way into her family life than her, she is of course a bonus, but i think i like the family more.

I would like the brother who knows somebody, who knows somebody that plays with the famous Bandra band. Or its the father who just loves to talk about Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers band or the good old days in the 70s . Or its the mother who just loves to make you happy and content with the delicious food. The invitation to the Christmas Dance, and all the other wedding dances.

So i guess for me its not just the women, they are more or less the same anyway, its what you get along with them, that should be a concern.

I am still wishing for my Catholic Fever to subside, or at least come to fruition. Either way....i am fucked right now!

The Seeker

I've looked under chairs
I've looked under tables
I've tried to find the key
To fifty million fables

They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

-------The Who

Many years ago, i was introduced to the concept of true love, eternal happiness and of course world peace. Novelty concepts, which really do not have basis in the real world, but the sheer magnificence of these concepts have made me a seeker.

Eternal happiness & World Peace always seemed a bit stretched to me, but true love was quite realistic. All you had to do was fall in love, isn't it interesting how the phrase has been termed, falling in love. It is almost an accident, it happens, out of the clear blue sky. There is no pattern, no essence behind what just happened, it just happened.

Fairly simple no? Quite possible, you just have to go about your daily life and you will FALL in love.

WRONG

After 23 years of living, and over a decade of believing this load of tripe i have come to the conclusion that there is no falling in love, you have to free fall in to the stuff. And just like any other professional free fall, you can't not do your research, find the spot, go the right height and take a dive. You don't want yourself splattered all over the footpath do you? DO YOU?

Now i am a seeker man, i am looking for the good stuff, i am out there scowering the streets, the high and low corners of my beloved city. Then i go on to cyberspace, countless hours of searching, looking and just basically doing the prep work.

This place (the world) is about people who go out there and get what they want. Well i want that, the eternal love, the soulmate, mon cherie - i am going for it man.

The search has been on for the last 23 years, and guess i will still go on until....well i find it right.

I told Mr. Reaper only one thing, don't you get in my way old man, i will be right with you....i just have to find this thing...have to get to it

I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

We shall see about that.....won't we REAPY

Movies - Love - and me

DISCLAIMER - Friends, well wishers, viral visitors - this is not your everyday, thought provoking piece of literature on the world wide web. These are the renderings of the soul, not to be confused as a light read. Here it goes....

The guy looks at the girl, their bright eyes meet each other and they are locked in a passionate kiss which seems to last for an eternity. As a kid i would shy away from the screen and look away, as i was taught instinctively that this was an act of lewdness. Blame it on the middle class, quasi - conservative upbringing, but we were nice kids then. Later on when we were taught that the stork is a big freaking lie, we learnt that this is only natural. I got hooked on it, the imaginitive perfection of it all, mesmerized by the beauty, locked onto the Movie magic. People want to believe in fairy tales, well i want to believe in Cinema.

Confused? I want to believe that Cinema is a true portrayal of life, that Cinema only captures life as a record of what happens in the real world. Sure, the stories maybe fictional but they are true accounts of someone elses life. I am still convinced about this.....and i still want me some of that.

Romance is all that i dreamed of, falling hopelessly in love with a beautiful maiden who would reciprocate my adoration. The cutie from school, pretty college girl, the stunning colleague. The first look, the meeting of the eyes across the room, the cosmic connection felt only by the two souls. The first conversation that lasts for an eternity and yet is not long enough. Time stands still when she smiles, and the heart can keep up with a drummer from a speed metal band.

School ended, college whizzed by me and then came work, i still haven't found what i was looking for. Oh sure i complained that i couldn't find my kind of girl, that is not a very compelling argument, not anymore anyway. Celluloid dreams shattered...i had to think about my life...where was i going

You see i had by now put a lot of currency into the whole, love, romance, relationship, marriage deal. Now the core value that i based my life around was basically torn down. I am a religious bigot with the fundamentals of my religion proved wrong. Its as if they proved that Jesus Christ did not exist, and the Kaba was....well you get the picture.

So what exactly happened? Why did i lose the hope? Why did i let go of everything?

It just turned out like any other religion, you believe and you keep your faith, and nothing happens. You keep waiting for that one day when everything will be tossed and you will be there...just you your partner....and the world.And nothing happens.....

Sure this is pure frustration, but i want to share it with whoever will want to take a listen. You start doubting yourself, and this is the point when you have clearly run out of excuses, the ego has been shattered and the veil of denial has been taken down.

List of excuses always thrown out there :

1. There aren't enough women to try and work something out you know

This is clearly a dead duck now, i am surrounded by women, good looking women at that, and they have their friends, and their friends. There is no dearth of women, not anymore anyway.

2. Awww... i just haven't found the girl for me

This is bullshit and you know it better than anyone else, out of the myriad women you get in touch with, its a statistically impossibility to not having bumped into someone you truly like. And its happened to me 3 times so far....so that one is out too

3. The girls are still too young man....they need to like me for me

This is so much bullshit, i do not know where to begin on this one. Some of us, mostly me, was waiting for the women to come around, believe that they have had enough of playing around with the boys and start hanging out with the men. The more silent, intelligent, serious types.

Women do not care about any of that - there are enough women dating both kinds.

4. The.....

Okay i have run out of fucking excuses, and i have to face the facts don't i ?

I just don't have the Mojo man, it breaks my heart to say it, it truly makes me feel like one of those people, who i did not want to end up like. But i did.... no Mojo man....no panache, no personality to carry it all of.

Think about it, i have basically invested my whole life into this thing of ours. And now i dont even have the requisite equipment. Its a shame is what it is.

But then like a smooth fountain of cold sweet water comes Hope...hope that none of this will matter.

PLOT - Cks life

Ck the loser who could never actually get a girl, finds his perfection, the one the only - Ms. EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED. She sees through the no mojo, no game no nothing and sees the heart full of goodness and just gives in. And after a brief fight with her boyfriend, or some action sequence like that he gains her respect and admiration.

They walk away into the sunset holding hands.

SHUT UP! It could happen

The smell oh the smell

Aren't pigeons we?

The state of the city scares me a bit, I am a bit worried, how fragile we have become that the scare of an invisible and quite non – existent monster can drive us out of our wits. I had decided that I would not validate this fear by writing about it on a public forum, or speak about it otherwise. The sheer ignorance of my brethren has made me very afraid.

It is a norm that people as a group are always foolish, but I thought that we as a people were different. All right, I have to admit, I was hoping that we were a cut apart, guess we are not. What will become of us when we are faced with a devastating blow? What will we do then? Throw ourselves of buildings, give our children poison?

Have we desensitized ourselves from the real tragedies and calamities that when something such as the Swine Flu surfaces, we scramble for cover. Leptospirosis, Dengue, Malaria take the lives of hundreds each year. It is offered a two – column story on the third page. Yet open gutters and utter disregard for hygiene and cleanliness are rampant. Deaths caused due to these diseases in Mumbai are staggering, ask anybody these figures and we would not know them.

Mumbai is not strong, it is not resilient, it is plain stupid and scared shitless.

We have neither the capacity to withstand a real attack, or any general threat….we are just pigeons looking for a warm place to nest and the next attractive mate. Anytime there is a perceived threat we flutter off. Another similarity to pigeons is the short memory, we do not remember the various bombings that happened over the last two years, we do not have a clue where they happened, nobody even cares about the lives lost just this November. The Mumbaikar is losing his sheen, he is becoming a callous runt of a person, devoid of humanity and feeling.

“A city full of people, not a soul around”

Yet there is hope; we wouldn’t be humans without it now right? There are a few even to this day, who keep their heads held high, use rationale and reason to live, don’t bow down to statistics and big typefaces. Live each day as any other, die a little each day to the machine that is the city. But you can be sure that you will see the resilience in their uncovered faces. For if the city can’t kill them, swine flu will not.