A cloud, and then a dream

How would it feel to live among the clouds?

Like float all day. Like look down and yawn at the grub and grime of the world. Like stay asleep among tons of compressed flowery mist, wake to the pure bright rays of a nude sun. Like live. Like dream on.

I have had a strange desire for years. Actually since when, I don’t exactly recall, but its into a farther time than any number I can quote.
There is a moonbeam, only, it isn’t a moonbeam. It is a starbeam, maybe even a strange walkway to a far away, yet close to the heart galaxy. Its multicolored. That will suffice, than it resembling the rainbow or any other set pattern. It is a kaleidoscope, one that is studded with crystals, just the way I like the light to get scattered and hit.
There is someone beside me. A someone whom I can describe. Tall, not exactly dark, very handsome. But does that matter as much as that string of discerning conscious familiarity? Of knowing? Of seeming to have shared eons of springs, summers, autumns and winters? Anyway, a someone who holds my hand. Like a friend. A friend who is yet more. And yet forever. And we walk down the ray of scattered brilliant light. Smiling, as though this walk was what each of us ever desired since the eons that have passed.

And yet, as that walk hasn’t yet materialized, I can be given to dreaming about living on the clouds. Watching dreary people drag their days out of the mindless sense of the multiverse. Watching someone somewhere, unaware of impending journeys, waking, existing, sleeping. And playing computer games.

Down the Highway of the Past

Talk about memories!

So much to say… And yet, no words ever form. I can only just smile as I gaze at all those papers, my eyes getting all glazed, a thousand memories flooding back, breaking all possible barriers. Time is after all transient. May be time does not exist. Like Einstein said, time is past, present and future. May be it is all one fluid point, where we keep flowing around, but reaching nowhere in particular, starting from no where with destinations all blended and separating, yet non existent.

I was sitting in the middle of heaps of exam papers, questionnaires, letters from friends, slam book sheets that were in the same visual state as of tattered bus tickets, merit cards, report cards (!), loose sheets from notes and texts, not to mention the little hillock of note and text books that were occupying the 4 corners of what is supposed to actually be my room at home.

I was cleaning it up. Bad idea. But it occurred to me as impossible only after I pulled down the whole mess that was dormant inside the cupboards, down onto the floor. And found that the only way I could get out of the room was by clearing at least part of the heap around me. I had to reach the door after all.

And so, there were tons of paper, stationery, confetti from ages ago, broken pencil boxes, rubber that had worn out and stuck all over, old calculators… (I had a whole collection of them, small ones, big ones, scientific, normal…), key chains (This, I pounced on in glee… I love collecting key chains ), old locks, keys, wires (!), and money. The money was like lying around everywhere… coins, notes, even 20 paise and 10 paise ones…. , old bags, new ones, and ones I never remembered possessing. I was struck by awe. Believe me, I really did not imagine that so much stuff was actually there inside those meek cupboards. Even fireworks, 100 walas and mathaapu…. and a single lone bijili vedi.

Funny. I came across chalks, whisked away from school. There were apology notes, most of which were “I had headache/stomach ache/gone to relatives house…… yesterday and hence wasn’t able to attend class” letters to Srimathi ma’am. Seriously, I seemed to have one for each day ever that I had attended her classes. I don’t remember much of ever learning what was supposed to be learned there… mostly I would have been absent, or engaged in more serious time passes (:P), or plain asleep at some back bench at those ungodly hours.

And two mounds began to form around me. One, of the things that I was planning to throw away, and the other, of the ones I wanted to retain. It did not take me long to figure out that the latter was mounting in megalithic proportions. That was when mom entered. With hardly a care for my whines and winces, she threw out what she saw fit. I mean literally threw them into a bag and out the house.

I did manage to sneak out a few “very valuable” things… But I just can’t seem to guarantee them much scope for sustaining within my cupboards. Simply because mom said she isn’t going to trust me further with cleaning stuff. I seemed to her rather puerile, rather I-won’t-part-with-my-stuff kid.

Anyways… it left me wandering through the past, and as they say, now that its past, it seemed a very nostalgic and wonderful place to be in.

The garbage still isn’t cleared, in my mind.

The Mad Rush to get to NOWHERE

Its very frustrating to hear people cry over the phone. I mean literally weep, sob. I try my best to keep listening, sometimes all I want to do is cut the call. But you see, they have already been in enough trauma, and a trusted friend not pitching in to listen to their woes would put them in their coffins.

True. Yesterday was meant to be a day of all-sleep, little work for me. It went fine till the afternoon. I slept, worked, ate, slept, read, worked, … and then the phone calls started. And so did my headache.

You see ( am I repeating the phrase ?), it was because, yesterday was the D-Day for my friends, who were appearing for the Infosys selection procedure…. what we call as campus recruitment. I was supposed to be there too, sweating my way through to the college, sporting worried eyes, ( more like dark circled, anemic, nauseated, swollen…. face ), frowning, writing the aptitude with my hands shivering, waiting for the results with not just bated breath, but with the very soul drawn in and tortured with the idea of not getting through……… and attending interviews, staring into space, looking like I just escaped the black plague… and developing a full blown migraine at the end of the day (something that comes easily to me ).

So, naturally, I decided to bunk the experience. It was not worth it. Am completely not interested in software, did not want to throw away my dreams and become a worthless software engineer. ( All you computer scientists out there, please don’t take offense at that, I mentioned worthless because I know am seriously useless at computers. I can write up some pretty good algorithms, yes and can even code when needed, but with computers I become bored before beginning, that I would rather not ).

Whew. So here is my point. Am a mechanical graduate. Why should I rush into a domain that has absolutely no kinship whatsoever with my area of interest? Why should I rush into a job for the singular reason that I may like to earn what it offers? Sometimes, thinking back, I am confident that if ever I land in a situation of not ever finding a job, I can very well make my career out by becoming a professor at any obscure engineering college. Or become a English teacher (!) anywhere, because I love the language. Pathetic options when what I want to do is so much out of the usual. But still, realistic options that I can fall back on any day. If the fall should occur.

So why the hell then are my fellow “core-subject” engineers falling into a massive mental retrograde where they consider any job option as wonderful, as long as they get their hands onto a job, get a hold, and grip it tight as though their very lives were hanging onto the few-thousand-rupees-per-month that was offered.

I don’t have much to say about those who got placed yesterday, who are into a stream different from the computer sciences. I just hope that they know what they are placing themselves in for, because some day, if ever they happen to wake up one fine night, ( nightmares occur then ), and find that they have wasted, say, half a life, then they may find that the way back to change things is just so out of reach… just so lost.
Good Luck, you guys.

But the others, those who called me up to cry their pitiful hearts out, because they were ousted from the procedure, I do have something to tell you.
Do you really want a career in your lifetime that pays you what you think will keep you satisfied? Do you want to just earn and not wonder or worry about whether you are doing the thing that makes you happy? Aren’t there better dreams for each of you? At least one dream each?
Because if there isn’t, break here and exit, (computer science style).
If there seems to be something, continue.

It is better that you “lost” it. You have been given a chance to think it all over. And convince yourselves that this is what you want. Or, there is something else.
There is always something else.
In life, as you pause to contemplate if what you are doing is right, then you will find your answers change. It always does.

Because thousand others do it, you don’t need to. Remember, the majority are always fools. Period. No second thoughts on that. It is pure, self-contained wisdom. You are an individual, born to walk this Earth, and to fly these skies. You can choose to crawl, you can chose to run. It is your choice, only yours.

I may not be telling you all this over the phone, sadly because tariff rates are considerable. But I have told you here, and it depends on whether you realize, reform or retreat and rewrite those tests, because you chose to.

Whatever, remember, life isn’t a big rush. Because, in my perspective, such mad rushes to get placed and get jobs and earn… slog… earn…. are ironically, mad rushes to actually get nowhere. Because you get in, get trapped, stagnate and suffocate, if you aren’t meant for it.

Meditate on these lines.

Sometimes, dreaming about the stars, and trying to let go of all holds, flying high high up above, without parachutes, without trails to the ground, reaching for the wonder of skies above, just because you found the twinkle of the stars fascinating, can be just what gives meaning to your lives. When you imagine such wonder,’Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter-Pan’nish style, anything else will seem…. well…. will seem non-exist able.

And getting this advice from a ‘all-grounded’, ‘totally down to Earth’, seemingly ‘afraid to let go of terra-firma and soar’ Capricorn like me, has more value than possible.

Flying can be exhilarating. And flying without destinations, making them along the way is what makes a life.

P.S. One more thing. Next time one of you decide to get placed, and don’t make it completely, please don’t call me and cry. I just can’t stand that anymore. And it gives me huge migraines. If I cut the calls then, head in here again and go through whatever I would have wanted to tell you anyway. ( Like infinite loops ).