The stupid heart skips a beat in vain...

If I happen to love someone, am I supposed to love everything he loves? What if our choices contradict?

Today I had a narrow escape, a really narrow one. I spent all night yesterday lazing about and didn't prepare for the class. I thought I'd get up early, I couldn't. Over that when I did get up I started chatting with my niece. Finally I could barely reach the university on time for the classes. I still tried thinking on my feet. "Hey guys you know what? Let's do some hands-on - instead of listening to my one way boring lecture..." - alas the machines, most of them, refused to boot up. Some problem with the UPS. Otherwise, correcting errors in the first hands-on class would have been cakewalk. Sigh, I began taking my classes impromptu.

Thank God that I understand computer science. Otherwise any teacher would know how it feels taking a two hours class without any preparation.

That apart, let's get back to the topic I had begun with. Intolerance. The very word. Something I have never understood. You don't like something. Well and good. Stay away from your object of dislike. Why criticize someone who likes it? Why impose your ideas on the other person? I remember from the college days the sheer anger when a friend laughed at me for listening to Yaadein songs. What is your problem man, if I listen to my favorite songs using earphones - how does it bother you? Similarly yesterday someone on my Facebook feed wrote (in that terrible chat shorthand) that she likes the Hemanta version of "Jabar belay pichhu theke daak diye" because supposedly Lataji's (she didn't mention the ji part though) voice is shrill. Please, anyone is free to like any version of a song, does it really, necessarily entail criticizing the other ones(s)?

Similarly for the Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Coke Studio version of Afreen Afreen. I am a huge fan of the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan version. But the argument that's going on is on who's better. Why do we need to compare? As for the lady, she's sweet and has a certain freshness in her voice. I kinda like RFAK too, even if I didn't, I wouldn't have commented on his version. I shall never cease to be a fan of NFAK, Lisa Ray, the Afreen Afreen song that I have grown up listening to, the making of the CS version will not change any of these facts. So why disrespect someone else's honest attempts?

So am I devoid of intolerance? NO. I am on a blocking spree on FB - particularly people I don't like. People who are hollow and too much of a show off. People who try to portray themselves as great beings by doing apparently lame things.

But otherwise I am feeling extremely sad. Terribly dismal and lonely. A girl with a logical mind cannot dream of stupid things. Yes the heart skipped a beat for a moment - but how can he care? And even if in my wildest assumption, he does, how will he follow through?

I was walking briskly for the class this morning. I suddenly had this thought. Remembered the song "Tu jahaan" from Salaam Namaste. The part that says whenever it's sunny, I'll be your shade, whenever you're lonely, I'll be your shadow...fact remains that I'll never get that lover. Way my sister died out of her grief, even after having such a beautiful daughter - I'll also be forced to face the same consequences. However much I love you, however much romantic I be, things will never change for me. Such thoughts tire me so...

Bliss, punctuated... ;)

Today I went to Garia bus stand after a long time. That too by bus. I dismissed the driver yesterday. He was being extremely audacious. I am not an oppressive person. But I don't tolerate insubordination. Whatever. Traveling by bus was relaxing and liberating. And a 10 minutes wait at the bus stop brought back a surge of childhood memories. Doesn't that straight road ahead lead to Molly's house? My visiting the place as a child - those S-14 rides that took forever and covered half of Calcutta. So much has changed since then. The place is so congested - that one wonders how the huge buses fit in...and so many memories - the shopping for our housewarming, the movies with my friends or my brother, the eating out, the cheap dresses I used to buy, the 4-5 days' experience of studying in the general stream - when I got admitted at Dinabandhu Andrews College with Electronics honours. Ah, that was yet another struggling period of my life.

Why am I writing about such mundane things? Because I can't write about what I want to talk...expression of positive emotions is definitely not my strong point. I can't write and tell the world that I am happy. My happiness is positively cursed, it never stays and while going away, it takes the other good things I had. I am prejudiced about this...

But how can I deny that I experienced sheer bliss this afternoon. That one soul connection with a person you love can take you to the seventh heaven in a moment. I don't know. All I beg from God and fervently pray to Him is about just a few days of stability. Just don't desecrate this wonderful time with something heart breaking. Let me live my dream in silence. Afterwards, I can live this life in the usual zombie style. It's gotta get easier. :)

OK - disclaimer: If you are reading this, this is madness, please don't take it seriously. It was my promise to myself that I won't stop myself from indulging in any madness whatsoever...there is nothing more to this. Honestly...

The lost case...

https://youtu.be/oXLzfldeDcM

This is how an immortal creation happens. If you analyze you'll see there's nothing less than perfect in this song. The music, the singing, the visuals and oh the expressions.

He inspires to revive
What has long died in me,
That I'd rather bury deep,
If only he'd let me be...

But he won't let me be. Some attractions are born in heaven. We mortals don't even understand when we fall in that whirlwind. Never in my life will I forget that first clammy handshake with my bossie wishing him happy birthday. I was a dead person then too. So far as my psychology went at that time, it was an impossible relationship even then (looking back it doesn't seem so impossible, had I tried he'd have responded, I was way too proud to ask). But that didn't stop the attraction from taking root.

So it is the same story repeated. It gives me goosebumps. Because finally I am a grown up woman - I have been a child all these while. Imagine a room with four people, both of us included. I drop something. He's the one sitting farthest from me. He stands up, approaches me, bends down very near my feet, picks it up and hands it over to me. I mumble a vague thank you. The Gertrude in me beams, what a well-mannered boy. The Ophelia in me blushes. The woman in me is skeptical. She'll go mad soon. She knows. Yet she gets goosebumps. She almost enjoys falling in love one more time. That romance. The intensity. I want to die. I want to clutch the walls of my room and cry. I want to hide myself. The melancholy is so palpable...it chokes me.

I stopped myself today from doing anything foolish. I won't do anything foolish in the future. But the love is there. I am not mistaken about it...the surge of sexuality stings.

And this is the maximum madness that I can do...

And oh that face!

I don't think I have ever been more fond of a face in my life. I can stare for hours at his photo. That one photo in particular. And the other photos too, in general. Thank God I have so many photos of him. It was unthinkable for me a while back that I would be in such a strange kinda love, so basically there was no reason for me to preserve his photos. And I am apprehensive and reluctant in strange ways. In getting his photos from other people or sources. Won't even download. I don't understand this well, i.e. why I have this reservation...it feels strangely encroaching to download someone's photos from the web. I don't have any right over the photo. In fact that's why I never downloaded Rito's photo as well. I just have that one photo of his which came in my Orkut dump. Best friends for years, inseparable in college, yet we don't have a single photo together. It was not the age of the camera phone na? I don't have any proof to tell the world that I knew him once. Only that image (and many others) permanently etched on my mind - that evening when I realized I loved him. I realized, I wrote 10 pages, made him read it and yet never bothered to pursue it. Tell me how I can ever deserve to get any happiness?

Yet the face. Oh the expression. The nose. The watch. The jeans. The dressing sense. I can never ever love a man with a sloppy dressing sense. He has to have his own style statement. But again, there's a contradiction. I can stare for ages at his face, but couldn't gather courage to copy the image file to my laptop or tab. Doesn't my tab have incriminating things? It has, lots of. Screenshots that say everything. But no, not a photo. A photo is not mine if it is not explicitly permitted by the other person. Like my bossie did. "Girl, you like my photo? Have all you want..."

Once upon a time I really loved Anand. No, it's important that I confess that to myself. I used to have his photo as my desktop image. He himself ruined that love. Yes it got ruined, but it couldn't get killed na. That love probably haunts me. This guy could have been him, this guy could have been our son. His posture, the white in his eyes, these things are so terribly like mine. Ah, let's not enter into a discussion on Hamlet once more. You know what D'bhai? I don't think I need anything like a time machine, a time turner or a time cruncher. All I need is a time organizer. Just one more chance to organize my life and undo few things. Oh D'bhai I am getting into an incurable depression. I am not able to help myself any more. There's no one I can approach, no shelter, not a single friend. My attempts to live tire me D'bhai, I am scared.

Oh that face, and oh the heartbreak, at not being able to do a single thing that I want to do...

Saying goodbye to a soul mate...

And then he kissed, right on my lips, and I welcomed that kiss. There was nothing more to do, there was nothing else. I was empty from within, like a scorched leaf in summer, and he tried to bring back life in me. An impossible task, I wanted to tell him as much. But his lips didn't allow me to speak, and I gradually melted in him...

After a while, he had just one question for me.
"Why do you love like this? Doesn't it kill you?"
"It does", I said. "You'd know, because you love in a similar way..."
And we sighed together.

Under the blue sky, two gray dots parted away...two star struck lovers, never to meet again...

PS - My ode to the beautiful things you read. Maybe some day you'd read this and won't even realize that it's dedicated to you...in this life I am too weak and too prejudiced to love you with an open mind...but yes, love like what you dream of is possible, a girl who has everything can love a man who has nothing, except wonderful thoughts in his mind, and an undying passion towards everything he cares for...

The wrong world...

"I don't hope for a relationship at this stage of my life" is what I had written here, but I the mad girl I have been lately, that's what I started imagining in my heart of hearts. Because I am non-conventional by choice and by practice. I don't like conventions and stereotypes. I hoped he'd be different too. He'd also be attracted towards me in the way I am, because of our sheer similarity. Of thinking, of preferences, of passions. That he made me smile every time we met, and I made him smile too, led me on. Happiness is such a rarity na, like a good cup of warm chocolaty coffee?

Last night I finally decided to give up on the madness. To step back from the world of "major data consumption" to my old world of storybooks and movies. Because that's not me. Outspoken is not me. I always had opinions. Crystal clear and logically strong, well analyzed opinions. I am just not expressive in public. He was all set to break the barrier. But if I start speaking about India and it's oddities, the world and it's hypocrites, I will not be able to stop. Because I have had a pretty eventful life, I am quite well read and I think deeply and have a lot of free time to do these things. I am not a "my two cents of wisdom and opinion through a tweet full of half-words" person. Moreover, I am open minded, I call a spade a spade, call off bluffs very easily these days and having met the extreme kinds of people throughout my life, I kinda know human nature by now. I know the sheer value of life too and the suddenness yet everlasting effects of events, that most others don't. So despite the fact that I am tired of fighting my depression and feel extremely rude in my mind and want a secluded life at times, if I start expressing my opinions even twice daily - that'd make an impact. I don't want that limelight.

Having said that, why I stopped is not my obsession with silence. I was making a fool of myself. I was a puppy who was eating out of his hands and would look forward to it all day. I had started being irrational...thoughts that'd come to my mind would be typical lovers' thoughts, that we'd run away and have our own world. I had to put an end to this. There is no love. Between us. Period.

My life will never be a normal life, I wish it or not. Expectations just increase the amount of depression I have to deal with.

If time had gone a bit differently, Ron and Hermione wouldn't have been married. Ron would have been married alright, but the awesome, ever-so-talented, fiercely-supportive-and-protective-of-her-loved-ones Hermione - what kind of a life would she have led? No personal life, neither at the pinnacle of her career, not even realizing her full potential. But yet, in the other world, it's Ron who says that he can't imagine an alternate world, any world without Hermione. Because it's his loss entirely. Losing a lover like Hermione just because of circumstances...I am being that Hermione - knowing full well in all my wisdom that I am in the wrong world in this life - I won't get my Ron...no point dreaming...

The unanswered question...

BC: (beaming on seeing me and then quickly making a sad face) So girl, you forgot our love story in a jiffy?
Me: No, I love you...only you...
BC: I won't do it for you girl, you're smitten, totally smitten...
Me: That's the spirit my love, you said you won't...you didn't say you can't...that means you can, right?
BC: No I absolutely can't...time traveling is allowed by statute, time crunching is a crime...
Me: Don't be influenced by the new Harry Potter release...
BC: Honey, you think it's easy? Changing the axis of life? JK Rowling is an extremely talented author, she has really portrayed the repercussions well...
Me: But what about my life? Will I never get to live it? Like Cedric or Moaning Myrtle? Simply be the "Bubble Blogger" forever?
BC: Come with me then, I shall give you the life you want...
Me: (Sarcastically) Thanks but I have my own preferences...I'd prefer someone real...
BC: What's the big necessity of losing yourself so much in love? Don't you realize that you are hurting yourself?
Me: Love is supposed to be obstinate...
BC: Don't blame love, you're the one who's being obstinate...over impossible things...time crunch, my God, what happens to the people and memories that thrived in between? Have you ever given it a rational thought?
Me: (Laughing aloud): No you missed the point, time crunch and a back somersault over that...
BC: Please, no more gymnastics...
Me: Yeah, I almost became an expert...
BC: (with a serious face) don't honey...
Me: I know, I will fall sick...
BC: Worse still, someone around you will work out the details, it'd be a mess I tell you...a real scandalizing mess...
Me: Everyone will laugh at me? Even he?
BC: Honey don't, it hurts me... I wish I'd have existed for you in reality...this loneliness does things to you...and over that your imagination...
Me: (innocently) Why don't you exist?
And I find myself all alone, talking to the wind...

Nonsense like never before :(

This is one time when I really truly miss my diary writing. I could have been totally totally candid there. Which I can't do here. Ya I make it immensely more melodramatic, oh those pitchers full of water (you know, that saline water from my tears)...God, isn't there enough reasons why I stopped writing my diary entries?? :D :D - I could never bring myself up to read them again...(I can half hear my blog readers crying - "save us, we're in the same boat", but trust me that was worse)...

Crest and trough would surely be among my all time favorite phrases...given my perpetual state of mental instability. But last night was...oh my! That shout of "Behave!" must have been the loudest I said to myself in what? 20 years...Of course I am feeling 16, else I probably couldn't have been doing this...that's obvious...

So, no, no, no, that's not the end at all...I imagine myself actually "behaving" after the scold...you know, with that typical duck face look...(nobody loves me, I'm not allowed to show my ecstasy, ok I will behave)...I start imagining myself...quiet (ROTFL right there...me and quiet, it'd be so unnatural). So I try to practice being quiet, disinterested, hurt, emotional...averting my gaze...you know, doing exactly the things which'd tell everyone that I am being unnatural...

But you know, nights are good for me...I mean I can never ever be myself when I am in company. I just can't. I won't be able to enjoy myself...even if I am listening to songs...using a headphone, I won't be able to maintain a continuous flow of songs. Among many other things, I can't think clearly when I am having people around me. Moreover I have this typical Sagittarian honesty - I can't relax fully when I am supposed to work...

So I had around 300 MB of data which I had to finish last night...or else it'd expire anyways...And I managed to exhaust around 280 MB just by listening to songs...it was a marathon of my favorite songs...non stop...at 3:30 in the night I was so tired, I slept off immediately as the tab switched itself off (it is set to auto switch off at 3:30 to allow me some sleep)...

And the morning was depressing...depressing to say the least...it is not easy na, living with an impossible and unfounded dream...it's not easy even if there are a thousand sparks trying to ignite your imaginations...you are still hell bent to convince yourself that the sparks are just random glittering elements in reality which are no where near gold...

Meanwhile life's really not a bed of roses...it is full of uncertainties and worries...I don't live with young people...I live with old and frail ones...who are suffering from various ailments and frustrations...it's not exactly easy to dream in such circumstances...the reality stings...

Yet I am happy...blissfully happy...love tends to do that to you...love is the most unreasonable thing on earth...happy sad, but happy...

So did I change my behavior? No, I tried, honestly, I tried, but it seemed a long shot...seemed very artificial...I am lost though...my eyes widening...if I suddenly come across some lady colleague on my way from the restroom say...you know, I am really not expecting to meet someone on my way...it is my world, right?

Thank God that a romantic like me didn't marry...how would I have felt dealing with reality? Husband turning out to be a non-romantic...that'd have been worse than death, na? 

So happy sad me takes an oath...no more "following my bliss"..."Don't READ", "I hate readers"...what not...you know why? Because people who read, at times happen to read some incredibly sweet and awesomely witty thingies, which you can't really help loving...

I want to love, I in fact want to spend my entire life loving things he reads (though I am sure that will cease with time...with responsibilities...with the need for other spices...God, what am I? I can't even write a word I fancy, that connects me with him, that we'd always remember about each other and laugh aloud...but no, I can't allow myself even that kinda liberty, what have I got myself stuck into?)

So man, it's costing me a fortune, "reading what you read" and I am a poor person on a budgeted existence. Here's the proof, and I can't afford this expenditure...Vodafone data is expensive...you know...

What do I do, where do I go? I know I won't be able to keep my oath, and that means recharging my internet for the third time this month...

I finish with the make up part...
Rings? Yes, two gold and two diamond ones please...
Earrings? Yes, two pairs please...
Nose ring? Of course...
You want to wear the gold bracelet? Ya, and why not the gold chain?
No make up? No thanks, just a red bindi would do...no kajal for me, no loud eye make up, no face touch up, no lipstick...I am this natural beauty you see...

After eons I am getting that musical shock...you know...a word or two in a random song, tells your mind so perfectly that you get goosebumps...have you ever seen that happen? That's what I call musical shock :) Such a kid I must be...such a kid...and such an idiot...

That other world!

I like the way he's easy to understand...and because he's my mirror I understand something more - I am easy to understand too...and hence probably so easy to manipulate...

I spend hours stalking him, he has no idea...I am a smart stalker you see...ok relax if the word stalking makes you uncomfortable...I am just observing or...maybe simply following my bliss :)

He's very confused and direction-less
If he loves something, my God how he loves!
Implicitly, it's easy to know what he loves
He doesn't try much, he's not exactly laid back, kinda given up on life...
He's kinda frustrated and sex starved :(

Now read the same things, aren't they true for me? Well, I still keep on making an attempt...in fact several lame, lame attempts to live...but they don't really yield results...

But at night our lives transform...they transcend the past, present and future...history and geography...he becomes Asoka, the king of Pataliputra while I become Karubaki, the princess of Kalinga...or we live secluded lives in some modern first world city, apparently, but actually spend time together...he calls me mad, I call him mad...

There are several things I tend to dislike about the real him...but then I tell myself that it's not the real him who I love so much, it's the unreal him...the morphed version of him which my dreams will have ease accepting. Even dreams should have some basis, this one doesn't...

I leave you with this - there should be some place where I tell the truth...yes, in another world, another time pocket, theory of relativity having been suitably applied, you'd have been my ideal match, and I'd have told you just how much love I am capable of giving...

In this world I must hold myself back, there's no other alternative...

https://youtu.be/jabKEhOmbZ4

Discovering the mirror image...

What is life except being true to your innermost feelings, the things you like to do, or say or think about...

To be honest...to be lost, broken, withered, yet to be truthful, at least to yourself...despite everything you face...

I like the little bit of fact associated with every fiction, every dream...

I like Harry Potter - and the way he handles his inconsolable grief. If I know anything about grief, it makes you apprehensive, weak in the knees, always skeptical about probable, yet-to-come calamities...

I, no, not I, the bubble girl, with her imaginative mind...I, the woman with her analytical mind, has been finally able to solve the puzzle behind this sudden, strong, unfounded attraction.

It's simple...and I was blind. Opposites don't attract, similar people gel. And he's so like me...

But the matter should end there. It doesn't explain my teenage-like crush and craze, my virtual stalking, my occasional sulking...in short, my madness...this is a never-to-be, can't-tell-anyone-on-earth fantasy, why am I even letting it influence me?

I'm afraid of myself when I am in love...I tend to tell the world. Even when it is a silly, perceived, stupid love story that I'm simply conjuring up and convincing my mind to believe in it, when it doesn't even exist...

So...does this exist? Yes, because I've been him once...trying in vain to find relevance...if it's a mirror and I can see through it, he also just might be able to...

I am scared of ever letting out the secret - I've always been so boastful of my love stories...but I won't be able to handle more humiliation...why can't I let a bubble be a bubble?

Ohh, I am scared...if possible I'd lock myself down without connectivity...