Run to you

ello all
It would seem like I'm going to blog on the 31st of every month. But I'm not. I could say it and all but the truth is February has only 28 days. I would otherwise though. What?
Last month because I was a bit low on cash, I was walking a whole lot more and amazingly, the long walks down the sky walk or to stations or just randomly walking around at night, were the most therapeutic (for lack ANY other word) moments I've had in my recent slump. As a result I'm feeling a little taller and from being a screw up who did a few decent things, I've started to see myself as a decent guy who screws up a few things. Pretty killer I'd say, it's just that there are still those screw ups.
Anyway before this thing gets anymore alcoholics anonymous, I need to get this out. Walking when you're fucking tired, dry in the mouth and just fucking sick of everything is the best thing in the world. You're completely exhausted at the end of it but not in a groggy pass out way, in a puffy eyed feeling good tonight sort of way. I've realised my hunt for comfort was only fun as long as it was a hunt, because prolonged comfort is just fucking stagnation and I do not appreciate it.
I could never elucidate the way walking works better than Tejas did in one of his last blogs (back when the lazy fucker still wrote) but man, with Franz Ferdinand (THE most trancedental band I know), Bon Jovi and more recently the awesome hootings of Reel Big Fish, there is fucking no problem you cannot deal with when you're on the road. I don't know why and I couldn't be fucked to, but that's how it is. My mum always tells me when you work out and stuff the oxygen reaches your head quicker or something and you do better. Whatever it is, it works.
I've realised most of the greatest lessons I ever learnt, I took for granted and basically forgot. Funny thing is, most of the lessons are the really obvious ones you learn in school. I just sort of waved them off as being too simplistic for this oh so complex life I lead. What fucking shit. The longest lasting compliment I ever got was in the 6th grade playing squash with a friend of my dad's. The guy told me he could never beat me because I ran for every shot on the court no matter how far away it was. I don't know if I have that tenacity anymore, and it's a fucking shame if I don't. There is no logical justification for my 6th grade self being a better guy than my present self. Sure I know what a media plan is and why deconstructionism is a pain in the crotch but how the fuck is any of that going to make me a better writer?
Anyway now that I have cash I'm taking more cabs and blowing most of it. I'm not the wisest guy around now am I? Working on it anyway. I pretend I'm broke and sometimes manage to get shit done. I've started a journal for my more honest, less articulate and yes deeper thoughts. That's right I'm pretentious, wanna fighd aboud it?
Not much else on I suppose. There is ofcourse the very resolute group of over achievers wearing Arsenal badges pretending to be the team I'm supposed to link my existence to, but I don't know what to make of it anymore. I don't recognise or love that club the way I did only 3 months ago and it's a fucking shame. I'm sure our lives still have that bloody relative thing I'm always on about but right now, that is not a football club with the values I could spend hours arguing about. I love the club to peices but someone needs to change something somewhere in the cosmos before this club becomes anything like the paragons who murdered direct football all these years. Samir Nasri though, is in my opinion, signing of the season, and Denilson, Robin, Djourou, Sagna and even Song all deserve fucking medals of honour but it's not enough and I'm already working out the bright sides of UEFA cup football. I don't have to hope they show our game and not United's next year. That's something. Personally, I just hope I can see a full strength Arsenal doing some of the total football GM they're known for, before the end of the season. Even once, and even if we lose the game 5-4 to Stoke while we do it, I don't care. I just want to know that it still exists.
Anyway that's all for now. Rambly blog today. Needed to write. Need to write. Will Write. Haha.

Angles and shit

Christmas and New year posts. Hallmark must feel they've converted another. It isn't true. They're significant to the timing of these posts but not for their intended reasons. Other factors have prompted this.
2008 is the most introspective I've ever been. The most critical and the most cynical. The culmination of which led to my last post. I've achieved nothing and have deteriorated considerably. I've tried to change and regressed. However, regression isn't as straight forward as it seems. I can't have regressed into something I used to be. Because I was never anything with the knowledge and experience I now have. Nitpicking bullshit at the face of it, but it's a pretty significant realisation for me. I'm in Jaipur again. It's comfortable and I've been immobile and silently desperate.
It made me realise I haven't had perspective in one year. A year of self obsession. How motherfucking unbelievable? I have never been so fucking stunned at my own bullshit. Anyway I haven't even managed more than a mention in the New year blog of the only person I've obsessed over more than myself this past year. The single most important person in my life, who I have spent every waking moment worried about or happy for, and I'm a mention. I never thought I'd regret as much as I have, but that ofcourse is only because there is so precious little I have at present to enjoy.
I don't believe in pretentious resolutions and plans for the self, but I'm going to try and climb out of the muddled mess that has become my own ass. I have a book to write and I cannot draw to save my life. I have a lot of money to save and a very dear loved one to hang on to before some famous guy with a roller coaster on his chest can take her away (bad dream- as I said, I'm in Jaipur again).
I'm very very frustrated after last year and 46 minutes into this new one I know I've got to buck the fuck up for this one. Odd numbered years bode well for me. Then again I was born in 88. Fuck. I think I'll blog more. I'm not saying I should or I'll try to. I just think I will.
I do love talking and thinking and sitting and feeling and being and loving and all that, but whether I like it or not I have to, by way of my life's flow thus far, I have to keep moving and changing and I have had a year of that horrible term in economics that everyone always lost 2 marks attempting to define- S T A G F L A T I O N.
Stagnation and inflation. An undue raise of value which is maintained until everything stagnates and shrivels up to fucking die.
I don't want to fucking die, especially not if I am as fucking lonely within the wretched confines of this very nasty head. If I do die, I need it to be known, I am unhappy as myself and I am unhappy as the biggest fuck up of 2008. But I am going to go ahead and try to feel a bit better about myself in 2010. I'm going to be worth more blogs and I'm going to make people happy by just doing my own fucking thing. I'm going to make up terms and live by them for the fuck of it. I'm going to make people happy I was fucking alive and I'm going to make people happy I'm dead. I'm going to write till people see what a snivelling cunt Tejas Modak truly is and I'm going to make a fuck load of money so I can stay home at age 26 to eat well and make babies.
I am going to fucking live and I am fucking petrified. But I'm not dead.

Enough. Enough now.

I'm sitting in a bus heading back to Mumbai. I've just left my best friend and it's Christmas. I owe three people over 3500 rupees. I'm a negative, cynical, holier than thou asshole and I've finally crashed lower than rock bottom. I am at full throttle self hatred. There is a handful of people on this planet who love me for what I am, was and will be. I love them very much. In some way or another, I have hurt them all. I've either not stayed in touch, missed a birthday by 12 days, missed a birthday completely, or been a defensive narrow minded asshole with. I can't say enough, how sorry I am.
I've just spent 3 days with the most perfect couple I've met. I don't know why or how, but after a very satisfying meal with Tejas, I've realised that I'm not in a rut. I'm not depressed. I'm not deranged. I am quite simply disgusted with the creature I've turned into.
When I came to Mumbai I promised myself I wouldn't turn into a cynical, all knowing, all hating asshole, but somewhere along the line, during my quest to live subjectively and not objectively, I've turned into just that. I no longer hope and I no longer dream. I barely have any earnestly positive thoughts in my head, they're either forced or rationalised and they're all bullshit. On the other hand I can complain about anything and generally do. Especially things I don't dislike. I tell myself it's to maintain both sides of a coin. It's that age old bull shit self preservation technique people usually spew, of if you aren't happy you can't get disappointed. It's a horrible sensation and it's driven me into an even worse downward spiral than I was in. I've tried change and new things but the fact is, I'm going to have to work my way out of this without much change until I'm finally different.
I've hurt, repeatedly and ruthlessly, a person who has grown from friend to lover to wife and now to an essential part of my nervous system. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever met and she's the only thing I've never stopped admiring through all the self pity and deprecation. She's the ingredient to a perfect future, the person that makes you go " Fuck. I'm going to live me a good life now..."
I've gotten so caught up in my own doubt, and hating that I've ended up butchering her stability and I'm luckier than the luckiest guy in the world that she's still with me. The luckiest guy in the world, incidentally, is me as well, only I'm that lucky for having her in the first place.
I'm sorry. I'm going to have to fight like a bitch to get out of this fuck all rut, only now I know it's not a rut, it's a fucking grave.
I have all the technology anyone could fucking need. I have a home. Yes a home. A room with facilities, which has been converted into a home with the wave of a magic wand from a certain fairy. So few people read my shit anymore I can afford to be wholly personal and direct! I have a beautiful, perfect wife and some beautiful, perfect friends and a loving family. I deserve none of this shit but I have it so I'm going to up and earn it now.
To everyone I've hurt, I know you'll forgive me, but not for qualities of my own, rather qualities of yours. You guys are fucking awesome. To the wife, I'm going to grow into that George Clooney smile till it fucking fits.
I love you all.
PS It has been real effort not tying this up with the crisis at Arsenal. It fits perfectly but this time I'll fix up before they need to. Let's hope they follow.
PPS Tejas- Wanna fighd aboud id? and Thank you for Love Actually. Undoubtedly the catalyst now that I come to think of it.

In a nokiatic sense...

Ello all,
I'll warn you beforehand, this post is forced. Tonight the Arsenal faces Fenerbahce in a Champions league group match and ordinarily, this wouldn't be a tremendously significant game, however circumstances have made it a rather extra ordinary one.

Ever since the 9th grade when I started supporting the Gunners there's been a direct corelation to events in my own life. 9th grade when I really began my life, socially anyway, in Dubai, was the invincible season and it was a feeling I had right through the year. Subsequently it's a bit hazy, but let's just say Arsenal never did too well during my boards...
Last year, arguably the greatest year of my life for several reasons, coincided with what was considered a revival of invincible Arsenal. Most tellingly, the day we beat Chelsea was the day Kyra said yes. However just as that season started to run out of steam, it seems so did I and by the end I was as crestfallen as Wenger was after that cunt Kuyt tripped himself and won Liverpool that penalty.
I've written a bunch of posts over the last year about how I'm coming back, I've made a lot of promises about the return of invincible hobo and the truth is I'm so tired I don't have the energy to push myself the way I did at the start of first year. My mind is this horrible mess and I don't get brilliant ideas in the shower anymore. I've not burnt out because I've really not merited a burn out, I've just gotten so caught up in how to be and what to be and doubting and trying to be and all that psycho analytical bull crap that I've lost will power.
I saw this episode of House where this girl gets this condition called Abulia. It's the loss of will. So you can't decide and the tension makes you faint. I'm nowhere near that shit and thank god, but I'm so close to it I want to scream, but then again, I'm not really sure I want to scream.
It's taken alot to get me to write lately and other than spewing out acceptable articles for a site bizarre enough to pay me, I've really hit a brick wall on the expression front.
I'm teaching myself how to play the guitar and enjoying the fact that I have a vague control over the sounds of an object, but the truth is I feel winded. I can't get myself to draw and write, two things I love to do. I can't seem to get myself to do much beyond playing an inane video game. I can't even zone out in front of the television.
It's true, this is a pathless rant but after everything I've tried only written catharsis is left really.
My immune system gave away finally and I can't help but feel like it's a fucking metaphor for my grit. If my grit's as fucked as my liver after Malaria then I'm headed for trouble. On the other hand, all the greatest tasks and things ever done have originated in the individual constantly saying 'fuck it' and going straight forward, but that's not something I really have in me right now and it's a feeling I have never till this date had. It's not scary or saddening it's just repressively dull and it makes me want to jump out of my skin just so I can feel fresh again.

I've been trying to get past this and another something I won't get into and I haven't and the dissatisfaction, the feeling of an incomplete task despite herculean effort, has made me miss, more than anything else, that feeling you get when you've left 8th grade or 7th grade or whatever grade, and you have a new school bag, new books, new clothes and sometimes a new hairstyle, and you walk in with this almost clean slate and there's nothing you can't fucking do and there's no amount of Hindi lectures you can't stay awake through.
That's a fucking beautiful feeling. And I fucking miss it. I have everything I need for it to happen. A new laptop, new clothes, a new phone, a new camera, a guitar soon, it's just my fucking outlook is the same boring one of Arsenal with their heads hanging down and that beautiful man Mathieu Flamini slumping because we couldn't put one past Wigan.

So tonight, and honestly, on Saturday when we face the Tampons of Manchester ("Once they get in, they're always going to come out red...") I'm looking forward to and I'm going to make a genuine effort to pump my fists and cheer on the mighty Gunners with every ounce of spirit I have. If they can get through this, then I can't help but feel like I can too.

Come on you Reds!

Missing Monies Making Me Sad

ello all
So college has well and truly begun. Insane levels of stress and stupidity with festival preparations, lectures attended, lectures missed, alien FYs and grumpy professors.
Yes, nothing has changed from last year.
Except for the small matter of a 33% fee increase!
Completely out of the blue, for no given explanation the college goes and ups our fees by no less than Rs. 6000. And the interesting part is, the bulk of those fees come from our very inflated tuition fees.
Now if the books we used and the subject material the teachers used were made out of crude oil barrels I might have understood, but they're not and a rough estimate of how much MORE my college will be raking in because of this is about Rs. 11 Lakh.
11 Lakh. Last year's salary expenses for our department alone was just shy of 10 lakhs. Once again I stress that the figure of 11 lakh is how much MORE money they're taking in.
So you'd figure theyll increase the teacher's salaries right? I mean our professors do work their asses off and it IS entirely selfless for the most part and it's hard to accuse any of them of being anything short of decent.
But the salary increase is marginal at best. So then, where IS the money going? I know for a fact that we're one of the only colleges who actually went and upped the fees. I shan't name names but there are several colleges who have chosen NOT to have such a sharp increase. There's even a college getting ready to construct a sound recording studio...!
And guess what, it's not us!
The Vice Chancellor is his all his transparent glory has uploaded his budget for the year on the Mumbai University Website. I'd link but the site is down at the time of typing this.
It includes provisions of Lakhs of Rupees as 'incentive' to 'attend international teacher conferences.' Fair enough. A few more lakhs are going into researching the possibility of being listed on the BSE. Once again a smart investment I'd say. But then it gets a little, how do I put it- Vague. Several lakhs have been put away as 'incentive' (they do love the word!) to enter the 'top 400 universities in the world' and as further 'incentive' to the new autonomous departments.

Now I've not seen any official documents. I haven't run any RTIs. I've used Google and asked a few very simple questions. I cannot do any more than speculate as to what is going on at the university and I cannot honestly say it's all shady.
All I can say is (and this is where the theme comes in) why is nobody asking?
Why is nobody bothered enough to give a fuck and question the things being done?
If there was one thing I'd change about my college, it'd be the mass apathy of it's students. My college has recently grown anal retentive and decided we can't enter after three because we 'walk around and go to the canteen!' We can't even sit on the beautiful steps we've sat on for a year because it makes things look 'ugly.'
The changes are drastic and horribly annoying. If I didn't know any better I'd say I was in fucking Xaviers! But the student reaction has baffled me even more.
A petition has been signed because the students are unhappy. Several hundred students have signed and the unity is astounding and the fervour of revolution is in the air.
Only problem is- it's against the guards!
A college education, high school, primary school, tuitions, story books, internet, note books, movies, television and every other form of awareness at all our disposals-
And we shoot the messenger!
For fuck's sake.
I feel particularly Indian lately.

Underestimation confession

ello all
So, I was researching some stuff for my next peice (and post) and I stumbled across some awesome sites- based in India!
For Polaris 2008, the Wilson Festival we've taken up New Media as our theme and the one reason I pushed for it, and the new media workshop we're having is because I'm so worried Indian citizens and private entrepeneurs are not paying enough attention to the power of web 2.0. I love the net. The number of random blogs and articles I read in a day are comparable to the number of books I don't read and as my co-ordinator would tell you, it's plenty.

Now I wouldn't dare undermine the use of the net by the people I know. For anyone who's read my blog roll you'd know that with Quaint murmur, view from beneath, mappings, etc. it's fairly evident we've got some great writers out there.
However it is thoroughly refreshing to find blogs and opinions from outside my friend's circle and the people I know. Having looked for jobs and in discussion with this neat lady I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about India's web participation.
As it stands, I was horribly narrow minded and happily surprised to find these sites:
1) PlayCircuit: Kick ass site and a must see for anyone into advertising or marketting. A few months ago I'd found a brilliant blog for management insight by some American student, but this one as well as the Indian PR Forum site are equally awesome for their feilds.
2) Dhi Only One and Churumuri : Two opinionated, seemingly well read Indians giving their schpeal on several things. I don't agree with alot of what is said, but as I mentioned on the latter's blog, discussion and debate is where it's at if we want to get anywhere, and it's always great to see people not leaving it to the men in white over in the parliament.

I am certain theres tons more out there, and please do mention anything worth mentioning in the comments, but it's thoroughly refreshing to find sites like these and I hope to find more.

Trumpets if you must...

ello all
A few posts back I declared my decision to change things up. Since then, I've changed the look of my blog twice, I've written two posts unlike anything I've ever written before and I've shaved my head. I expected all of them to feel fantastic. I expected the change to be instant and epiphanal. I expected a bald head to feel so good after the knotty long curls. I expected too much from a 'one' and I expected too much from myself.
I think I may have delved back into my Chelsea roots in some way. I was looking at results and expecting satisfaction.
It was a hollow, scary, painful and helpless experience and it didn't seem like it was ever going to end. I was living in the eyes of other people. I was living in the eyes of unimpressed professors and dead friendships. And as much as I knew, and as much as I told myself and was told by the only one who bothered to tell, the sheer futility of seeing myself from someone else's eyes never really dawned upon me.
Now I'm not saying one should never look through someone else's eyes, I'm not saying other people don't matter, all I'm saying is living by it and doubting yourself because of it, is if nothing else, dreadfully tiring.
It's not been instant, it's lasted weeks and tears, but the clouds seem to have moved on over now that the monsoon is here.
I'm writing for myself. For what I want. I'm writing for the impact I want to create. If I don't, I'll try again until I do it. The excitement of spontaneity and now-ness is incredible but it's not sustainable. Now the time has come for a far longer lasting satisfaction. Comfort and living.
The leaf is cleaned and it's not turned but the angle's changed a bit. In my right back pocket is a notebook. In my bag there are plans and in my head there's a buzz. Not an insane fuzzy confused buzz but a focused buzz with a smirk.
With a comfort I can count on and a will to not feel like shit, I doubt I can do much wrong.
There are things to be done.