Saturday, January 2, 2010

MOVING ON...FROM THE EVE TO THE NEXT DAY

New year’s eve. The three words spell a lot of uncertainty, pack in a lot of anxiety and above all build up so many expectations in our heads. Almost on the lines of another three words I think are over rated: ‘I love you’. You hear it. The cockles of your heart warm up a bit, you feel flattered perhaps or even jump out of your skin with sheer delight, but then? What comes after that?


I love analogies. More often than not, I tend to follow up all my arguments or observations by offering my own queer analogies. This particular one may seem like a rather disjointed argument. So I’ll elaborate a bit more. You go out with someone for perhaps the longest time and more than often after a certain amount of time, you are craving to hear a moment where that special someone is going to lead you on to the perfect next step into a meaningful relationship beginning with these three words. Individually they spell out as important words in the semiotics of English language: I (identity). LOVE (a valuable emotion, a reason to stay sane in this mad world). YOU(vis-à-vis I!!!). But put together it's a whole new connotation. It'll make your head spin or make you cringe. More often than not push you onto a wave of hope where you can’t help but think: ‘Wow! But now? ” Similarly, as your year progresses from hours to days, weeks , months eventually leading up to 31st December, the evening of the approaching new year, your mind and body are in a tizzy with excitement and anxiety. It’s the one evening that is supposed to culminate into a perfect evening ushering a new year in your best spirits. Forgive me for sounding cynical. The truth is that the only ‘spirit’ dominating your soul and body on this one VERY SIGNIFCANT DAY is the quantity of alcohol gulped down in a frenzy in the half hour leading up to the clock striking 12. Before that, your new year’s evening has been spent in wondering how you’ll dress, who you’ll spend your evening with and more importantly what exactly will you be doing at 12 am to make yourself feel happier and optimistic for the coming year. What a whole lot of energy, effort and planning put in to one evening worrying or ensuring you are not alone, crabby or mulling over the losses of the past year. While the truth is that it’s the insecurity of being alone - while everyone else is with a ‘special someone’ or a bunch of friends at a rave in Goa, or hooking up with random new faces they’ve met at a house party - that really makes you run to the next party you can gate crash into.


No of course I’m not haranguing you to sit with your wine and write or philosophise and take stock of your actions and achievements in the year that’s gone by. But please let’s stop making this hue and cry about having the ‘perfect new year’s evening’ or making those who don’t have ‘interesting’ plans for this one evening feel like they ought to check their brains for appearing like the sad loner material.


Instead how about focusing on Jan 1st. Seems to me, if any day is meant to be spent doing things in a symbolic gesture of good times ahead in the coming year and spent in the best spirit possible, it should be the first day of the year. Aren’t all the other 364 days of the year a good enough excuse to call random people over, get drunk, pass out only to realize you are not in your bed and the guy on the floor next to you, was your puke buddy in the loo last night? Of the usual mundane weeks or months we struggle to survive, such randomness is more than a welcome break on any regular weekday or weekend. Why specifically 31st evening?


I have trailed off or perhaps worse repeated my argument over and over again. But my new year’s eve wasn’t that bad, perhaps simply because I was happy to spend the evening thinking of it as another evening spent in the company of some strangers, an opportunity to display my ‘mojhito’ making skills and of course some priceless friends who made sure that my post 12 am experience on Jan 1st 2010 has been the reason to look out for the coming year, not the evening of 31st Dec 2009.


There was :
---The conversation with a long time buddy from good old Presidency College, the ‘spirit’ of the conversation not a glass of whisky or wine but a bucket of Baskin Robins Blueberry shake (the freezer was stuffed with so much ice for our Mojhitos that it resulted in a rather lovely BR blueberry shake, move over BR ice cream!)


---A moment when I realized that my host’s balcony, faced a block of buildings whose one particular flat was responsible for some brilliant times and some very painful reminders of 2009. Here I was, in a new years’ party treating the evening as a decision to mingle with crowd unfamiliar to my previous circle and life in Mumbai, my previous fulcrum point of existence in the city, the one I chose to walk away from. But now? My last day of 2009 was being spent in a house diametrically opposite to my previous home. Ironical and how!


--- My moment of epiphany for 2010 which I shall not wax eloquently about. My later posts shall surely do that.




This last one truly was the ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment. Cliches are nothing but truth often repeated so yes here’s one more. I realized that this year has already begun and will continue to be in search of experiences, adventures and every moment possible to move away from the past towards new beginnings. This didn’t come to me amidst the screaming, hooting , tequila guzzling crowd I was with at 12 am on Dec 31st 2009. It was on Jan 1st, 2010. A day that I can see now was the perfect beginning for the year ahead. There! I’ve risked sounding hypocritical but yes, the word perfect comes to my mind again and again. Jan 1st 2010 commenced with work related to my present endeavours and some very bold career decisions. It also ended with the same. The time in between was interpolated with the company of a great friend, a delicious lazy hour spent over tea after a rather plain lunch and an evening spent watching a film that made me laugh the way I haven’t in the longest time….in the longest time. Next up, the evening had me brainstorming with a writer over my short film and of course finding a rather interesting friend in the process .


It was as the cliché puts it, a day well spent. From the very first hour I woke up to the last few minutes that I spend typing this out. I recall most of my new year’s eve as I was growing up, was spent with my family rather ordinarily albeit a good dinner and wine ending in watching the fireworks that lit up the sky from my window, at which point, I sighed thinking of the friends who were lucky to be out. My first day of 2010 changed all of that. Cheers to all the new year’s ‘days’ ahead of my life. I know those are the ones I’m investing in. And on new year’s eve? Well, I’ll make sure I have a mojhito in my hand. The minty, tangy, effervescent and yes bitter- sweet drink. Its spirit captures the tastes that’s truly significant of all the contrasts that every year brings with it into our lives. It’s a perfect year beginner! Cheers!

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

THE DEATH OF A BIRTHDAY WISH

It's the conflict that refuses to die out, its crazed eruption as chaotic as the tussle between the two emotions - that dominate the mind which is tired of confronting this conflict at its heart: love and hate. Hate being such a strong word and one I'd like to use minimally in my lifetime, perhaps I should say love and animosity.

The fact is, as despairing it is to me and baffling for people close to me, love gets animosity by the throat and swallows up loathing, repulsion and anger. Love chokes up what logic and rationale dictates. And if these conflicting emotions resurface over and over again, then surely it's the brain that processes, filters and stamps out my thoughts. And the brain is supposed to streamline logic and rationale , not the mind right? So what really then would be logic? Listening to the mind or the brain

And so as the clock strikes 12 tonight, the one emotion that seems to stand out like a thread gone haywire - yet unmistakable in its peculiar way of standing out from the remaining threads weaved in logic, in the warp and weft of a fabric - is anything but animosity.

Yes, they were right in saying you can't demonise a certain someone who caused you tremedous grief, you can't demonise that person to fight the angst within you today the person has caused by his/her acts yesterday. The only demon one needs to fight is the bipolar self. The one that lusts to take over all the goodness, calm, tolerance and above all one single prescious emotion within the other half of you. It's the one that helps you survive all the insanity out there. Love isn't lost. It stays within, perhaps a bit quietly, tamed by wisening years and new experiences. But it stays.