I'm not here yet

Everyday I walk into the world with a profound lack of confidence in myself.

The quintessential question being 'Am I Good Enough?'.

Am I good enough for today?

Am I good enough for my job?

Am I good enough for all the people I'll meet?

Am I good enough for my past, 

for the life that I live now, 

or my destiny that awaits me?

Am I good enough for this world?

I must confess,I am a man of many faces, 

of many masks.

These different faces of mine, the masks that I hide behind are not fake, but only reflect all my possibilities...some good, some bad, some in between.

Everyday I put on a grand show for the world and for myself...the actor in me plays his part-the silent warrior,cocksure,supremely confident, unharnessed intelligence...and these roles come easily, almost unrehearsed-for the actor in me has been playing the same role for years.

But I fear...

I'm constantly paralysed with fear that one day all my faces will be gone and all my masks will be stripped away and I will have nothing to hide behind but my core self...and that this core self will be judged and found lacking in all respects, that my core self will be outed as being not good enough.

Maybe that's the only reason that I hesitate to open myself to anyone else, instead longing for loneliness and the safety of solitude.

I remember a life of solitude, lived a few years ago...where I convinced myself that I was happy, and justified it with meaningless structured routines and a hollow day to day existence.Bits and pieces of that former life came floating by as I was zipping across the night sky with the silhouettes of trees and skyscrapers passed by me.I saw you lift your arm and wave as your face lit up with the sense familiarity that I must have evoked.I saw your face drop as I passed without even a hint of slowing down.

I saw you.

I just didn't want to stop for you...

I promised myself a different life when I realised that my past happiness was nothing but a lie...but the dangerous path of self examination might tell me that even this happiness that I possess so tenuously might be nothing but a mirage.

Then is this what is holding me back, not letting me go completely, not letting me surrender to the will of something far more superior...because of the belief that this is not where I'm supposed to be? 

Life is elsewhere...or it seems like that.

These days there is more of a void in me than myself...and the lacuna keeps growing, sucking my essence into it and into nothingness-leaving behind husk, a functioning shell of my former self.

If you miss me while I'm with you, its not your fault.

I have to tell you this because its not your fault that you miss me...for I'm not here yet.

I keep holding onto the belief that life is elsewhere...and a part of me is out there, roaming the great unexplored else-where's searching for what it can never find.

I'm not here yet, because another part of me is still stuck in the past hoping that the good old days were where life is(or was).

I'm not here yet...parts of me are just as lost as what you see in front you.

I'm not here yet...but if you care to wait, it might give me the strength to return to myself.

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Holy Crap! You mean, I can no longer steal all the good bits from other people?

Exercise your power to Vote!

 

Tomorrow is the elections.

Although I've turned eighteen a long time ago, I could never vote as I was never around, never in the same country to exercise my rights.

This time though, everything has come into place...the planets have aligned favourably,the wind is blowing from the right direction.

So I'm going to vote this time.

 A good friend of mine had stumbled upon a theory that practically explained the unexplainable...well at least it made it palatable.

Stephen Hawking would have died to know that someone could come up with a theory that was so simple, so elegant.
Freud would have waltzed across Vienna in joy for his question was answered in such precision and sparse economy.

Four words that would make history (and her-story to all feminists)
Four words that would resolve the irresolute.
Four words that needed no proof just as we need no proof of the invisible air we breathe or  for that matter the non-existent god we believe in .
Four words that spoke the truth.

Four simple words that got you going  AHA!

"All women are crazy"
Proof:Just look around you.

                   Recently my uncle stumbled upon another universal theory, which again defied conventional thought, yet in its simplicity reduced everything to ground zero and explained the unexplainable.

This theory did not deal with women, but with snakes in the grass and wolves in sheepskin, and it made your choices simple and the bitter truth just a bit palatable.

He said "Ellaru Kallare.Nimage yaawa kalla ishta awaranne aaike madi"

He said this with reference to the upcoming elections.
Simply translated it meant "They are all theieves...simply choose the one that you like"

A cynic forever, he said that it didn't matter who it was.They were all theives.Simply chose which one you want to rob from you.

He says further that this applies to everyone...mega corporations,brands,politicians,god-men et al.

Kurt Vonnegut said"Humour is a way of holding off how awful life is"

or making you realize its inevitability.

"They are all thieves...you're gonna be robbed anyway.So why not get robbed by someone you like?"

 

Lonliness and Surrogate-Relationships

                                     Illusionary relationships with characters and personalities on favourite TV shows can provide people with feelings of belonging, even in the face of low self esteem or after being rejected by friends or family members, says a new study.

 

                      The research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, has been described in four studies published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

 

                                   "The research provides evidence for the 'social surrogacy hypothesis,' which holds that humans can use technologies, like television, to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced," says one of the study's authors, Shira Gabriel, Ph.D., UB assistant professor of psychology.

 

                      "We also argue that other commonplace technologies such as movies, music or interactive video games, as well as television, can fulfill this need," the expert added.

 

                       Shira's co-authors are Jaye L. Derrick, Ph.D., postdoctoral associate and adjunct instructor of psychology at UB, and Kurt Hugenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Miami University

 

                              The first study, of 701 undergraduate students, used the Loneliness Activities Scale and the Likelihood of Feeling Lonely Scale to find that subjects reported tuning to favored television programs when they felt lonely and felt less lonely when viewing those programs.

 

                              Study 2 used essays to experimentally manipulate the belongingness needs of 102 undergraduate subjects and assess the importance of their favored television programs when those needs were stimulated. Participants whose belongingness needs were aroused reveled longer in their descriptions of favored television programs than in descriptions of non-favored programs, the study found.

 

                           Study 3 of 116 participants employed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and an eight-item measure of feelings of rejection to find that thinking about favored television programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.

 

                                       Study 4 asked 222 participants to write a 10-minute essay about their favorite television program, and then to write about programs they watch "when nothing else is on," or about experiencing an academic achievement. They were then asked to verbally describe what they had written in as much detail as possible.

 

                           After writing about favored television programs, the subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness or exclusion than when verbally describing either of the two control situations (essays about programs watched when nothing else is on, academic achievement). This is evidence, say the researchers, that illusionary or "parasocial" relationships with television haracters or personalities can ease belongingness needs.

 

                                          It remains an open question, say the researchers, whether social surrogacy  suppresses belongingness needs or actually fulfills them, and they acknowledge that the kind of social surrogacy provoked by these programs can be a poor substitution for "real" human-to-human experience.

 

                              "Turning one's back on family and friends for the solace of television may be maladaptive and leave a person with fewer resources over time," says UB's Derrick, "but for those who have difficulty experiencing social interaction because of physical or environmental constraints, technologically induced belongingness may offer comfort."

 

When in Doubt, Seek Opinion of Others

                    ( Stumbling Upon Happiness-Daniel Gilbert -is one of my favourite non-fiction books, eventhough his first chapter titled 'Prospection' was recently proven to be wrong by an ape in a zoo. and in other places.)

When in Doubt Seek Other's Opinion

Other People's Experiences Help You Predict Your Own Happiness, Study Says

 

 

The next time you’re having trouble deciding whether this or that will make you happy, don’t fret too long - just go ask a stranger.

His or her experience may be more informative than your own best guess, says a new Harvard University study.

“If you want to know how much you will enjoy an experience, you are better off knowing how much someone else enjoyed it than knowing anything about the experience itself,” Daniel Gilbert, PhD, a professor of psychology at Harvard, says in a news release.

The study, which appears in the journal Science, notes that previous research has shown that people often have trouble predicting what they’ll like and how much they’ll like it.

Gilbert and a team of researchers set out to eliminate that kind of fickleness from the calculus of the question by asking people to predict how much they’d enjoy a future event that they knew nothing about -- except how much a total stranger had enjoyed it.

Those people, it turns out, made extremely accurate predictions, say the researchers, who included Matthew Killingsworth and Rebecca Eyre, also of Harvard, and Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia.

Do strangers know the best?

Undergraduate women in one experiment predicted how much they would enjoy a “speed date” with a male student.

Some women read the man’s personal profile and saw his photograph; others knew nothing about the guy. But those who didn’t see a picture or read a guy’s profile did find out how much another woman they’d never met had enjoyed meeting him on a speed date. Women who learned about another woman’s experience did a much better job of predicting their own enjoyment of the speed date than women who reviewed the man’s written personality profile and picture.

Both groups of women mistakenly expected the profile and photo to lead to greater accuracy. They also said they’d strongly prefer to have the profile and photograph of their next date.

In another part of the study, two groups of participants were asked to predict how they would feel if they received negative personality feedback from a peer.

Some were given negative personality feedback presumably from a peer, and others received a stranger's report of how it felt to have personally received a negative report. Again, participants who were given information from a stranger describing their own feelings about receiving a negative report more accurately predicted their own reactions to negative feedback, the researchers say.

Gateway to Happiness:Learning From Other's Experiences

“People do not realize what a powerful source of information another person’s experience can be because they mistakenly believe that everyone is remarkably different from everyone else,” Gilbert says.

But the truth is, “an alien who knew all the likes and dislikes of a single human being would know a great deal about the species,” he says in the article.

Gilbert says people “believe that the best way to predict how happy they will be in the future is to know what their future holds, but what they should really want to know is how happy those who’ve been to the future actually turned out to be.”

Mad Mad World

Its a mad mad world out there.

To be a part of it , you have to be mad as well.We all live in our own reality bubbles.We all suffer from tunnel vision where we see the closest approximation of our own realities.It is not the eyes that see lies but the mind's eye that conjures fantasies.

Its a mad mad world out there.

To function, you have to be insane to a degree as well.

I don't agree with the 'Fake it till you make it' dogma.This new age philosotainment is nothing but wishful thinking...where we are willingly hallucinating .Suppose you are a soldier stationed in Iraq (pronounced Eye-rack by yankees worldwide), and you have a deep gash across your chest thanks to an exploding shell, then thinking that you have no gash will not stop you from dying.Miracle stories abound everywhere tell you otherwise...but somewhere down the line you know that they are lying, that they have lied by omission or distortion.

Everything in this world is distorted by our perceptions.

Its a mad mad world out there and Its a crime not be mad as well.

(To all loners.)

You see the madness as it is.Which is why you choose to distance yourself.But that is madness too.Sometimes you don't understand it.The madness and the general blindness and the conspiratorial complicity bewilder you.

Here is a possible solution.

Immerse yourslef in the madness, if for no other reason but to simply understand it.Don't worry.You will retain your objectivity,You will retain your unfiltered vision.You will retain your loathing for the smoke and mirrors,all the bells and whistles.You will not be swept away by the madness.

But if you are,then who will know better? 

Are you a man or a mouse? (Check out hitler cat!)

Its downright humiliating when you are being taught lessons about Manhood by a woman.

Apparently apart from cockroaches I'm petrified of dead animals.

Strangely enough,dead people don't faze me.I have a morbid fascination with death in human beings.In fact I experience cognitive dissociation and dispassion.When I see a dead body My mind is immediately off the dead body and upon imponderables pertaining to the soul,karma and other heavenly concepts.

Overfed cats pose a significant problem in urban areas.

A cat is a cat is a cat.

And that is that. (sorry I have a compulsion to make words rhyme, often for no reason)

No one or nothing can change their feline nature.Their keenly honed senses and instincts cannot be denied.Their feral nature cannot be denied.Even when fed, they have to hunt simply for the thrill of the hunt itself.

Our cats usually bring in dead mice and rats and on one occasion a dead bat!

Remember Hitler Cat?

 

Yeah! All cats are Hitler cats...

What I mean to say is, all cats are sadistic in nature.Believe me, I've had 8 cats so far.

My cats usually bring a mouse half-dead and then toy with it till death.Chubby, one of my cats,is usually the one with the brightest disposition amongst all,but when she catches something, then she gets transformed into a bloodthirsty monster!

The torture has to be made into a spectacle.She will wait with the half dead victim until we arrive and then she will lead us towards it.What happens next is a very grim danse macabre.She will repeatedly toy around with the captive and inflict just enough pain to keep it alive, and then finally when bored, simply eat its head(so that its really dead?), crunching and munching all the way leaving the rest of the body to us.

You should witness the twinkle in her eyes when she has caught something.She is proud, and she wants to show it.She usually stashes her victim in some prominent part of the house where it is easy to be found and then she'll lead us there.She has left dead mice on my bed,the kitchen table,the living room sofa and on every carpet of the house.

Of course, I cry for Mommy every time,

I'm scared of the mangled bodies, the headless corpses of rats and mice and other dead creatures.Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary' comes to mind.                                                What if the apparently dead mouse springs back alive for one last hurrah with yours truly?

Brrr!

Today, I found another dead mouse...but Mommy wouldn't help.She said that it was time I became a man.

I tried to explain genetics...Mom...an 'x' chromosome and a 'y' chromosome combines and results in a man...and then cultural and gender stereotypes are imposed unfairly on the child during vital stages of development and the child's true potential is lost...OH MOMMY MOMMY I DON'T WANNA DO IT...PLEASE MOMMY...PLEASE!

Nope! Didn't work.I can't melt her heart like I used to when I was ten.

Since it was in my room , I had to clean the mess...she said

...like a man, she added at the end.

Yes I did it.

It was scary but I threw the mouse out after poking it several times to confirm its death.

I was a man.

Yay! (is it manly to say Yay?)

But minutes later  I was screaming like a girl when Chubby carried the same dead mouse inside the house once again.

Shadow

"At any moment that you find yourself hesitating, or if at any moment you
find yourself putting off until tomorrow trying some new piece of behavior
that you could do today, or doing something you've done before, then all you
need to do is glance over your left shoulder and there will be a fleeting
shadow.

That shadow represents your death, and at any moment it
might step forward, place its hand on your shoulder and take you, so that
the act that you are presently engaged in might be your very last act and
therefore fully representative of you as your last act on this planet."

-Carlos Castaneda



One of the ways you can use this constructively is to understand that it is
indulgent to hesitate. When you hesitate, you are acting as though you are
immortal. And you, ladies and gentlemen, are not.



You don't even know the place and the hour of your death.



And so one thing you can do... to remind yourself that not to bother to
hesitate is not to act unprofessional... is to just suddenly glance over
your left shoulder and remember that death is standing there, and make death
your advisor. He or she will always tell you to do something representative
of your full potential as a person.

You can afford no less.


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:09 UTC
Message-id: 713514223S121

Waiting

                       (NOT !)

Its been a running gag for almost a month now...I've told all my friends that I'll be leaving soon... sailing soon.
We've exchanged goodbyes and forget-me-nots and we-will-meets-agains and so on and so forth...

But I'm still here.

Waiting...waiting to be called.

My documents are with my office.I'm half packed and mentally fully prepared.

I'm waiting.

They have changed three ships so far...Lavender Passage, Oriental Queen, and now I'm supposed to go to Mill Reef.Formalities and paper work will take a few hours.Mandatory medical testing will take half a day.

But I'm still waiting.

I feel the same as I felt the first two weeks after signing off and coming ashore.

Un moored.

Afloat without direction and purpose.

An idle mind is the devil's workshop , they say. (Don't ask me who!)

I feel the same...I shy away from human contact, don't make calls, don't interact

too much with people...It's begun again...

I want to go .I hate living in uncertainty .I hate living in a suitcase.
What I hate the most is the waiting.

I'm not able to make any long term plans.I don't know when I'm leaving.

I'm sorry I couldn't , but I wanted to spend some more time with you.

You are a very interesting person.

Yes, this is how I communicate...

I don't know if this a goodbye now or another extension of the current running gag.

Goodbye !

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind...

I want to forget everything I know . I want to start all over again.

Ignorance is bliss.

I weel dreenk your blaad !

How does one walk against gale force winds at sea ?
Watch and learn.
First , you grit your teeth.(like this)
Then you clench your jaw(like this)
Now muster up the most manly expression on your salt chapped leathery mug ,replete with a masculine grimace of masochistc pleasurepain (like this)
Now you are ready .
The rest is really simple.
Pray to whoever you want to protect you from the gusts of wind that knock you off your feet.Pray that you are not swept crashing  overboard by a giant wave , never to be found again.
Pray once more and hold on to something solid with a rigor mortis grip , and never let go.
And then trudge ahead grudgingly , pushing and fighting against an invisible barrier made out of intangible air, swearing uselessly at the winds for howling past you like screaming banshees out of hell .
It's that easy.
Trust me.
I know.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEAK MORTAL FOOL !

HOW DARE YOU EMPTY YOUR INNARDS IN MY PRESENCE ?

Ah ! the perverse pleasure of seeing someone heave and retch and puke his guts out and then gasp for air.

THY WEAKNESS DISGUSTS ME !

I WEEL DREENK YOUR BLAAD ! BWAHAHAHA !

Ah ! the immense feeling of relative superiority you feel at that instant...

Every ship has six degrees of freedom when freely afloat at sea.
They are :- Rolling, pitching , surging, swaying,yawing, heaving.Let us collectively call them rollingpitching for the sake of ease.

A ship undergoes all these six types of motions  when out at sea, in varying degrees of severity depending on the wind , waves and swell.

When the weather goes bad at sea two things happen.
1)The ship rolls and pitches in a degree that is directly proportional to    the inclemency of the weather.
2)People get seasick.

                                              It takes a lot to get a seafarer sick.
Your everyday garden variety rollingpitching will not get him seasick .He is used to that sort of thing.Take the inclemency a notch or two up (Visualise "The Perfect Storm") and then see the fun.

("Sick as a seasick seafarer ,sick as a seasick seafarer".... say that ten times very quickly )

                                     A family of lows(low pressure areas) loom north of us nearly 300 miles away.The resultant effect is huge 20 foot waves and swells relentlessly tossing the ship like a weightless ragdoll.
My colleague, the seasick seafarer, the poor fella , has to keep his navigational watch on bridge for four hours , and the ship is rollingpitching helplessly at the mercy of neptune's fury.
"Vikas , dont talk to me , dont even look at me " he says , looking miserably spent , awfully wasted
"Vikas, dont even look out, I can't ...OOooorrghhh...AAaaaarrgghhh....hwaaaack gaaack"(Thats the best I could capture the sound of retching)
And then he covered his mouth with both his hands and ran towards the nearest toilet to empty out his stomach juices and half digested food .
Poor guy .
I felt pity & revulsion at the same time.

Me ? I thought ...I'm different.
I belong to the sea as she belongs to me.

Forever , made for each other.

I 've been out at sea since I was an infant(I embarked on my maiden voyage was when I was 3 months old , I'm told, where I was yanked onboard by my hair by the boatswain, when  he nearly lost his grip on me as the ship had unexpectedly rolled at anchor).

       The proof of my seaworthiness in my salty bones and rusty blood  & sea chapped leathery skin (Which I moisturize daily ).
                            In fact , my parents like to remind me every once in a while (much to my embarrassment) that I was conceived out at sea , somewhere near Romania.( No wonder I aIways feel like saying I weeel Dreeenk Your Blaaad ! Bwahahaha !)

                                         Romania ... Dad winks at me repeatedly when he tells his version of the story.The wintery chilly romance (wink , wink), the lonely lonely locales(wink, wink)..., the splendidness of sensual isolation (wink, wink, wink)...  
 DAD ! Stop winking ...I GET IT, I GET IT !
You and mom , mom and you , I GET IT !  
(God ,  don't make me visualize it and be traumatized for the rest of my life)
                     Mom has her own version.She goes into nostalgia mode. Mom's eyes go misty and glaze over.They go blind to the present and open the windows to the past.
                          Memories of the first sight of snow, memories of walking on slippery ice , wearing long johns and layers of sweaters, silly snow boots,slipping and falling hard and laughingcrying at the same time, memories of her first snow fight, the taste of snow...the rambunctiousness and the  warm hospitality of the rosy cheeked romanians,how they liked her bindi, and how they all sang their favourite raj kapoor hindi song...

             Although these shoes are japani...
              this pantaloon englishstani...
             this red hat that is roosi...
             My heart remains hindoostani...
             Phir bhi dil hai hindoostani...
             Phir bhi dil hai hindoostani.

Some memories are meant to be forever.

Perhaps it was their stories that  laid the foundation for my untethered life , my quest to find solace in neptune's abode.
I can only surmise...
             
The proof is in the pudding.
Here's some pudding.
 When the weather goes bad , two things hapen to me
1) If the ship rolls I get sleepy.(possibly due to natal memories of the soothing rocking and rolling)
2)If the ship pitches I get ravenously hungry.(I don't know why).I eat a lot. A  LOT !
Its physics actually.
The free surface effect of an empty tank  is large and potentially destructive.When you fill up the tank with ballast or cargo , the free surface effect becomes nil.
So this is what I do. I fill up my tank of a stomach to its bursting limit when the ship begins its danse macabre of rollingpitching and then watch the sea in her various moods .

                                                           So today , when the ship was rollingpitching , like a big bucking bronco out of control , I just made sure that I had a heavy meal (today we had chinese noodles and biryani) so that I can enjoy the ride for the next four hours.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I up and realized the malleable nature of dreams...the subtle ways in which they are altered by external factors.
The ship was rollingpitching violently , shudderring and groaning and fluttering in the most  unhuman ways, and there I was asleep and dreaming  and knowing that I was dreaming (it's called lucid dreaming dumbo !)
As the ship pitched violently , In my dream our ship had capsized (Much like in the movie posiedon) and I noted sadly that I did not panic.My first reaction as the ship capsized was to grab a lifejacket and head for high ground , in a totally calm and detached manner.
What was weird was , I always thought I'd panic in such situations, maybe even shit in my pants.I don't.I'm surprised .I'm impressed.

I guess I don't really know myself as well as I think I do.
But then , who really does ?

Stultify

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept. - Bill Watterson

These days I don't know if I should laugh or cry at myself .
I feel like doing both.
No one is legally allowed to stultify himself.This was the premise from which the novel Catch-22 (and the subsequent phrase)  was born.
                          But I think I'm going crazy...gradually.I never thought I'd be a passive observer in my own ascent to lunacy, but it's happening.

It's those voices in my head(C'mon , don't lie , you  got them too, I can hear them).

No , they aren't speaking in tongues...not yet ,but they have a tendency to speak in accents.

                               These accents range from the lazy texan drawl (howwwdie paardner !) , to ghetto hip hop    (yo !yo ! ma man ! wassup dog ?)  to limey green  irish brogue(that's cricit innit ?) to the silly count dracula faux eurotrash english(I weel dreenk your blaad !) to apu indian accent (Iyyam very sorry , oh dear lord ganesha !)

I'm also in pain.

Physical and mental anguish.

My wisdom tooth erupting in my lower jaw has been the source of a low and continous throbbing pain for the last three days.
It feels like a minor ...uh...uh...dammit , I can't find the word I'm looking for ...uh...oh yeah , right , gottit ...it feels like a mild and continous ...dammit ...I forgot the word again ...uh...it feels like a mild hangover...Yeah , that's what it feels like...a perennial hangover...and I keep prodding my gums with my tongue, trying to pry them away , hoping to make some space for the new wisdom tooth to erupt.

I guess one has to pay for wisdom with some pain.

No pain , no gain , that's what they say...

Hey ! what was I talking about ?

Ah , yes , tis the season to stultify thyself...
But guess what ,
I'm not suffering from insanity.
I'm enjoying every moment of it.

Aspire

What are your hobbies ?
Um...er...well...
                    I can't dance ! I say.

She finds it funny and somewhat expected.Women somehow expect men to be bad at dancing.
Hey ! Glad to fit the stereotype !

                                                 Lets hear what other people have to say about my stellar dancing skills :  People have said that when I dance I look like an armless man with an itch up his crotch .
(Take some time to digest that and visualize an armless man with an itch in the crotch.It is not funny.At least not for the armless guy)

                        I've heard one even saying that I dance with all the grace of a thousand one legged scarecrows, and he claims he was putting it mildly.
                            I can sing though .
                                        I sing and I badly play my guitar.People say I'm okay , that I don't make them run screaming in pain (like when I blinded them with my crotch-itch-one-legged-scarecrow dance) ...and then I've broken my wrist once , punching a punching bag filled with sand...
                                            (try sawdust numbnuts !...its what others fill it with !)

 ...and injured my achilles tendon delivering a spinning heel kick to the same punching bag...and in my defense , I was practising karate , or whatever I knew of it.

...Aaaaaaand sometimes I write.

Her  eyes widen imperceptibly.

You a poet ? she asks.

No No , I'm not a poet, I say vehemently denying such an allegation.

                          I say  I write short stories , try to make them funny , add in experiences that might be unique to some people, and basically write stuff that people would like to read to pass their time, but no , I don't write poetry.

Nosirreebob!

(Its better to lie that you don't write poetry than to admit that you write crappy poetry, atleast that's what I think.)

What do you aspire to be ?

I aspire to be an aspiring writer.

I know , I know , it sounds so smart alecky , but that's the truth.

                                          Hey ,I want to keep my day job honey! It's an honest living , and I make decent money and best of all I get to say "Arrr Matey , down the sails and avast those landlubbers ! "

 Now that's a job worth keeping.

Arrrrrr... matey !

I enjoy writing.
Writing's not the way though.At least for me.

Why ?

What I lack is the discipline to complete.

After the initial burst of inspiration , somewhere down the line, everything goes pfft ! like moisture dampening  a cracker fuse.It is almost impossible for me to  continue and complete after the pfft ! point.

The pfft ! point is not something new.Everyone goes through it , but some see through it by the sheer force of their will.

For me though it is hard to sustain enthusiasm for a long time .

But hey , I'm not strangling my dreams by  choosing this life.I write whenever I want to , I sing whenever I want to and ...well I don't punch and kick whenever I want to, because there was this incident involving the drunk longshoreman and the doberman pinscher and...well , I'll tell the rest of the story some other time.

I guess , if I were a writer , I'd churn out stuff like this , just to keep some bank balance.

"Thank you for choosing _ made only from premium quality fresh milk .
 _ comes from happy healthy prime dairy cows living in the cool highlands of East java on one of Asia's most technologically advanced dairy farms.
This milk is prepared using modern automatic milking technology ensuring the quality , freshness and premium fresh milk taste.'

In other words -A COMPLETE SELLOUT .

What a load of crap.
"Happy Healthy prime dairy cows ?"
 Call no cow happy till it has a milking machine sucking it's udder off.
I know ...what a load of ...but that's the kind of writer I'd be if I wanted monetary gains , but by selling my soul.
I can't do that.
So for the time being , let me aspire to be an aspiring writer.

Male Bonding:Yellow Monkey

Fact :Yellow Monkey exists in reality .It is a small bar situated in Yosu , South Korea.Try Googling it sometime.
          No yellow monkeys were harmed during the making of this post.

Fact: The Author does not smoke.Hates it amongst other things.

Fact:The Author is a self confessed compulsive liar.This is true, If you choose to believe it.

Fact:All the above are true ,
          depending on what reality you choose to accept.
           It's your drug of choice.
          The blue pill or the red pill.
           It's your drug of choice, your choice of reality.

So here we go again ...

The thing I most hate about alcohol is the company I have to endure.

Give a drunk a sympathetic ear and he'll tear it off and keep it for himself , my uncle used to say.

No , not really . My uncle said something in the lines of ' give a drunk a sympathetic ear and he'll bore you to tears'.

My uncle wasn't much of a writer, or a thinker .
Not much of anything really.
He died recently.
I hate him for what he did to his family.

As I was saying 'give a drunk a sympathetic ear and he'll tear it off and keep it for himself'.

(I may not be much of a writer or a thinker or much of anything , but  I wont be dying of liver cirrhosis and abandoning my family,at least).

Open the inebriated pandora's box at your own risk.
The outpour results in a ridiculous deluge.
Accomplishments-real and imagined , regrets-for things done and not done , usually not done , rage against slights and offences when there were none, empty boasts stacked upon a pack of lies- all come out of the previously constipated , now alcohol laxated sphincter of the mind .

But this is where real male bonding takes place.
But this is where macho men break down and weep , hug each other and exchange' I love you man' s with each other and mean it .
As the old joke goes , drinking makes you talk more , weep , feel bloated , drive badly, argue pointlessly etc....
i.e it makes you a woman.

So why do men enjoy such routine emasculation ?

I don't know.But I hate the entire experience.

What I hate about alcohol is the loss of control: physical and mental.I hate not being in control of myself and being  under someone else's influence.

So I do what I best know.
I fight .
I fight really hard to regain control over my motor system , my senses and my impulses - effectively ruining the intended effect of intoxication.

So there we are , me and him , in the Yellow Monkey.
That's the name of the lounge bar .It was the strange name that  made us venture into this place.It is slightly upmarket.(No yellow monkeys to be found anywhere.)The clientele are wearing buisiness suits and stylish blazers and everyone looks like he or she has had a facial , manicure and pedicure recently.
We on the other hand are wearing our standard jeans & T-shirt combos, are un-shaven , un-combed , possibly smelling bad: like the bourgeois  crap we are.
                                         We are the only foriegners there , the odd couple - a self professed teetotaler and a self confessed alcohol abuser ,  seated on a comfy lounging sofa overlooking the busy streets , busy smoking and drinking ~ imbibing one poison after the other and spitting out pure venom tinged with bittersweet nostalgia.
The world has betrayed , hurt and deceived us many times and therefore we imbibe large amounts of noxious fermented liquids that make us giddy .
This is how we get back at the unjust and uncaring world.
Up yours Universe ! Yeah !

Its cold.
               My hands are so cold and numb that I wince and fumble every time I urinate.

I notice I've got goosebumps all over.Dotted for pleasure ;)

My life is a transient one , in a constant state of flux.A few days ago it was so hot , humid and sticky that you had peel your dick off your balls(if you had one) before taking a leak.But here it is so cold that it has been many days since my last hard-on and then there's that famous shrinkage...No one will believe what a whopper I've got thanks to shrinkage !

George Costanza was right .
You never want to get caught with your pants down when you've got shrinkage.

                                               Yet we see brave (vain ? fashion conscious?) young women in impossibly short skirts and almost nothing else (with that I mean 'No stockings').Here we are wearing three layers of winter wear and still shivering miserably and there they are : unflinching and unusually comfortable.

The drunk mind is the devil's workshop  .Also an idle mind ,the crazy mind, the overly ambitious mind and so on.
It seems that the devils sets up her workshop everywhere possible.
(What ? You think the devil is a man ?Think Again. God on the other hand is a man.If he were a woman , all the men in the world would have been destroyed long long ago , leaving only asexually reproducing women ,  using mitosis and meiosis to proliferate)

I have to remind you ,my friend and I are LUI.( Lounging Under Influence).
(I'm also WUI, i.e Writing ...)
It is certainly not a crime , but sometimes the devils workshop in the intoxicated mind creates strange concoctions of weird hormones and chemicals that tend to give to imbiber what they call ' liquid courage'.
My friend is almost out of control and I am fighting to gain some of it.
He's staring at her  bare thighs while shivering.
She is wearing an impossibly high skirt , has an anime doll face that looks deadly cute.She's sitting in a corner drinking what I believe to be Steaming Hot Cocoa and minding her own business .
My friends eyes were following her all the way from outside .She is not even wearing a coat , he remarks .
An evil grin creeps slowly across his face .(No doubt , he's under the influence of the devil).He whispers to methat he has some questions for her and that he will go to her and feel her thighs and find out if those yummy thighs are generating any unusual amount of heat which enables her to be comfortably warm in such cold climes.

I'm afraid he'll actually do it.
And get beaten .
Korea's national sport is Tae-Kwon-Do.
The last thing he'd want is to molest a tae-kwon-do expert and get knocked out by a roundhouse kick to his alcohol soaked head...
But lucky for him,he wont feel a thing for he's comfortably numb.(and dumb ?)

But he'll get me beaten up too , I'm afraid.
I'm not that numb that I wont feel a thing.
And I don't want to be beaten up nothing.
I didn't eve tease nobody.
Atleast let me feel her warm thighs if you are going to beat me up.(She does have a great pair of legs , worthy of showing off in whatever weather she feels like showing it off) (Atleast Give me something if your'e going to beat me up !)

So I'd rather run away and live another day.Die a hero , or live as a coward...many men have come across this rubicon that decided their self worth , character , their future , their everything...

A 100 watt bulb flashes on top of my head. TING !
That's not the sound of the bulb.That's actually a toaster I'm using to make my toast .It's smeared with peanut butter and jelly fish.mmmmmm.....yummy.

As the bulb flashed , I knew what I had to do to avert a potential disaster.

"Quick ! Yellow Monkey ! " I said pointing nowhere in particular.
Alcohol is a depressant.It took him some time to follow what I said.
He slowly turned his head towards where I pointed .
"Huh ! Wh-What , where...?!" he said.
"You gotta be quick man .You just missed it."
"Huh , You shitting me man ?, I'm nosh thasshh drunk "
"Yeah sure ...Whoa , look at that !, There it is ! " I pointed elsewhere...
He turned slowly"Wh-where...?!?!"

While his eyes were off her , I had to do something to avert the crisis.

I knew I'd hate myself for what I was going to do next,but it was for everyone's best.I'm sure she'd forgive me if she knew the circumstances.I'm sure she knows I'm a decent man acting under unusual & dire circumstances .
I'm sure she'll like for who I really am.(Tell me , who's more drunk , me or my friend ?)

 l positioned myself in her line of sight and locked my eyes onto hers.(It was the devil making me do it, I swear).

I made a clucking sound , grabbing her attention.

She saw me see her .

I had to act fast.
I clucked again , making sure I got her full attention.
I gave her an exaggerated wink , and mouthed silently " YOU AND ME GIRL ,YOU AND ME " and made  silly pouty smooching faces at her as I  took a huge swig of beer and grinned lasciviously.

Please God (Devil?) , let this work ...Let this work...

Sure enough , she got up , her face filled with disgust ,  left in a huff.

Whew !

"Hey, hey She's leaving , she's leaving ..." My friend said ,"I had sho-o-o-o many quessshuns" he slurred.
"I'm sure you did .Hey ! Want another beer ? Its on me !"

"Hey , where's the yellow monkey ?" he asked , still remembering.
"I think it was the Yellow monkey which made her leave " I said  trying hard not to smile.

Happy Birthday To Yourself Dude !

Time:23:59 (Somewhere in a loo)

19/11/2007

 

Urrrrrrggghhhh !

Plonk !

 

Huarrrgghhhhhhhhhh!

 

Bloonsh !

00:01

20/11/2007

Wow ! That's a new personal best !

 7 Inches !

 Happy Birthday to yourself Dude !

Now I'm done with being 24 ...25 here I come !

A teenager asked me today "How does it feel to be old , pops ?"

 "You'll know soon enough son !", I said .

New Year's resolutions :

1)Expectations hurt.So if you expect , expect to get hurt !

2)Learn To let Go .

3) I promise to be better than what I was yesterday...

                                                            AMEN

What is emo?

I hate emo-kids !

The trouble with being a 'Nice Guy'

"You are beautiful , did you know that ?"

"Ok , what do you want ? I'm not going to sleep with you ...You're not my type, I never thought of you in that way, you are like my brother,lets just be friends "

"Hey , Hey ! I just told you that you were beautiful , thats all...I didn't want anything in return "

Why are women are distrustful of "Nice Guys." ?

Ans :How does she know he isn't just pretending to be nice in order to get into her pants?               Sure, he's buying dinner and telling her she's pretty.. .but is that what he's really
              like? Or is that just what he's like when he wants something?

To women , nice guys are normal guys who lack the balls to take the first step and actually do something manly like ask her out.
Instead they remain forever in the "friend" zone, and constantly compliment them and be there when they need them and do all other things that basically emasculate them every other day !

Therefore this lack of trust is  a natural defense mechanism that ensures that only strong men(men who have enough balls to make the right moves ) get any chance .

Nice guys are losers...nobody wants to mate with a loser !

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Trust me ; She is not a Princess.
Love , infatuation or obsession makes us wear those rose tinted glasses which make all imperfections disappear like celebrity cellulite under a photoshop knife .(filter)

Trust me ...even if you think a woman is a goddess or a princess , she doesn't think so.

Even though she may look like a goddess or act like a princess she knows she’s no goddess. Her self-image is one of imperfection and incompleteness.
That’s normal.
                     Only insane people think they’re perfect. She knows deep down that no one deserves instant adoration. Adoration has to be worked for. She respects you for not telegraphing sexual or romantic intent when she has made little effort.

Remember : She is not perfect and it simply drives her crazy when you act like she is.

Oh yeah, If she is perfect , then what is she doing with you in the first place , huh ?


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I recently asked a friend "How would you like to be wooed ?" or alternately "How would you like to be seduced ?"

And I did get an honest answer for my question.(Which will not be discussed here)

But here's the problem...
Women will continually tell you what they want(not just about how to woo them ), and a lot of them are very good people, but break through the mask of who they consciously are, and they want the opposite of everything they just told you.

Think you can break through the mask? Think again. That’s six layers of a specialized reinforced concrete known as mental makeup (cosmetics for personality). You’re not getting through anything, because she will not let you .

So here's the answer...Women have no idea what they want...well... they do  have a vague idea...but nothing concrete really.

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Love, let us also talk about love :
                                                      We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever .But love isn't like that.It's a free flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases .Sometimes it stays for life , other times it stays for a second , a day , a month , or a year.So don't fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable.But don't be surprised when it leaves ,either.Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.


It’s often said that love is self-hypnosis; a beautiful psychosis that takes hold and prompts us to act in ways that we would otherwise not even consider.

Love cannot be forced or enforced nor can it be demanded.
When you demand or force or enforce it , all you get is fear and hatred.

Because the idea of love can also be destructive for some people,it can be a self-deception that they can focus on as a way to avoid facing their shortcomings.

There are people who will fall in love with anyone who will have them.People with no standards.

I'm one of them.

I fall in love too easily !

Why, just yesterday I fell in love with Betty Soares , because her character had the ability to make me laugh.





A Good sense of Humour is very attractive in a woman .
And beauty is truly overrated.

Like me, There are people eager in love with the idea of being in love.

There are other people who fear falling in love. They are jaded, and create emotional barriers to prevent themselves from being hurt in the future.Ultimately, people process their experiences through a fog of emotions, and create and intensify these occurrences in their own minds.

Is it possible, that it is only when you don’t need love that you will find it?

Well , here's an experiment well worth a try...

I declare that I don't need love anymore !

Bombarded by Words :Hypergraphia

           We now know that 'writing makes you smart' , but there is a dark side to writing called Hypergraphia too which writers sometimes knowingly exploit to get their job done.

                Hypergraphia , the unstoppable and overpowering desire to write , is commonly known as 'The Midnight Disease' , as this itch to put pen to paper becomes unbearable when sleep hormone melatonin starts pumping , post midnight.(I've personally woken up at 2 AM and have started writing at times !)

      Words nag hypergraphics till they reluctantly get out of bed and compulsively jot down the phrases or sentences that are waiting
 to be written and if this urge is ignored , then the words taunt their victimised host and the person can forget about a sound sleep.

            While on one hand , hypergraphia can be a tormenting condition , on the other , aspiring writers take drugs to induce hypergraphia , but this does not always succeed because the fact is , hypergraphia does not promise talent.Not all hypergraphic writers are skilled and some produce senseless volumes like one word or sentence written over and over again , indicating an abnormal repetition of thoughts.

                      There are many criteria that have to be considered before calling someone hypergrhaic , but if you feel the unstoppable urge to jot down a well-framed phrase as soon as you hear it , if you underline and make countless notes in novels you read , if you write in margins and if at any time , a bag check reveals bits of paper on which you have scribbled words that are more precious than the money in your wallet(Guilty :)  ) , then you just might be a hypergraphic.Another fact is that hypergrahic writers never edit
(Phew ! what a relief !  I edit a lot !)
They write and are unable to part with even those lines and words that they , themselves
 agree are unimportant or unnecessary.This yearning to preserve every literary piece of work that 
one has ever produced is a symptom of 'Manic Writing'.

Writer's Block

                The much talked about and often romanticised Writer's Block is the polar opposite of hypergraphia.The block is loosely correlated anxiety and its span varies along a continuum ranging from a few hours to several decades !This could account for author-typicality's like gaps between one book and the next or mysteriously giving up writing altogether.However the prevalence of the block is overestimated due to the desire of people to come across as 'talented but on a tentative creative low' .So , don't miss the difference between blocked and talentless writers.Also , if an individual hates his assignment topic and thus cannot produce anything worth reading , it not indicate a block , because there is a possibility of words flowing if he's given a topic he likes .

The Muse Theory

                The muse theory purports that an artist is at his creative best only when allowed to select his own topic.Thus every dip in creativity is not necessarily an indication of the block  and could in fact , signal lack of talent or a need to change in topic.

Some additional facts.

1)Some hypergraphics write because they do not trust their memory and feel like important facts are slipping away.

2)Both hypergraphia and Writer's Block , by virtue of being linked with creativity , are allied with brain wiring and hormonal regulation .Both conditions are known to arise from abnormalities in the basic biological drive to communicate and hypergraphia in particular is coupled with alterations in the frontal lobe , temporal lobe and the limbic system.

3)Artists who hover on the brink of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) tend to be blocked only during certain months of the year.

4) Famous hypergrahics include R.L.Stevenson , Isaac Asimov , Van Gogh , Leonardo Da Vin ci , Henry Miller and sometimes even me !

5)Remedial measures include cognitive behavioural therapy and contemporary treatment involving 'attention  deficit ' areas of the brain.

But on the other hand , both these conditions are also looked upon cynically and there exist people who feel terms like 'Hypergraphia' and 'Writer's Block' just serve to intellectualise and categorise phenomena that might be harmless and transient non-issues faced by anyone liked with writing as a hobby or vocation.

Ghosts are Real

Excerpts from "Ask The Barber "

I like her. She doesn't like me.Please help me...

If this is the case, either one of you has made a mistake in assessing your
intuition, or she is a neurotic mess who doesn't understand her feelings.
If you have ever found yourself drawn to someone who felt nothing for you, it is
most likely because you were hung up on her universal appeal, or you had an
experiential bias, or she had personal appeal but there was no biological connection. A
woman has fewer distractions so she is more in touch with the lacking biological
connection than your average man, so this type of relationship is unfortunately common
between a man and a woman.
And you must learn how to avoid this.

Experiential Bias

The concept is simple: Human beings cannot experience things properly without
an appropriate frame of context. So in any given situation, we are drawing on our past
experiences in order to understand the current one.
As a result, it's no wonder we find ourselves drawn to people who remind us of our
biggest heart-break, or attracted to people on television who resemble a painful crush.
Though this type of attraction may feel very emotional, it is only our memory at
work, and sometimes our logical mind as well. It is the part of our mind which searches
for context in order to experience.
In general, it is probably best to avoid people who remind us of former loves and
even to avoid developing types. This is a chaotic world filled with billions of individuals.
Once you start oversimplifying and categorizing the people to whom you are attracted,
your logical mind will begin interfering with your instincts. Do not trust your attraction to
people who resemble your ghosts. That is most likely a ghost issue, not an attraction
issue.

Conversely, you may decide for many reasons that you refuse to date women who
are taller than you, or who are white or black—or whatever. It is just as important to let
go of these negative preconceptions as well.
The "woman of your dreams" may look nothing like you expect her to look, nor
anything like the homeroom crush whom you always thought you deserved to marry.

Read this guy's story...


Beware of Ghosts
A number of years ago, I dated a crazy woman with
amazing sex-appeal. To make a very long story short,
it didn't work out and we had to break up. But the great
sex and the intensity of the thing left its mark because
our affair ended before any of the passion died down.
Since then, I have to watch myself because if I see
anyone who looks like her, I am immediately drawn.
A few years after she and I split, I met a much younger
woman who resembled that crazy, sexy ex-lover. I had
to work with the younger woman on a project, and felt
myself incredibly drawn to her. I couldn't get over the
resemblance—when I was around her, I had a really
difficult time maintaining my cool.

After a few weeks of working closely with her (and
luckily maintaining my cool), I finally noticed that this
woman was actually pretty uninteresting, nothing like
my crazy ex-, devoutly religious (and even a virgin),
and I'm sad to say she was as dumb as sack of
hammers. Beyond some of the physical characterised
this younger woman shared with my ex-, there was
absolutely nothing about her that interested me.
My brain was playing tricks.

The Sparrow and the Cuckoo:Guilt and Redemption

Weboids :
"When immersed in a liquid , a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby. "

I felt sick as soon as I read it.This all seemed like a cruel joke of some large magnitude.God's own joke on me !

There lay a dead sparrow on the window sill.I desperately wanted it to be undead--for it to miraculously fly away , unhurt .I also knew the chances of this sparrow coming back to life were pretty slim.

I killed it.

Yes , I am a sparrow killer...and I feel terribly bad about it...

In my defense , It was an accident.
Honest.

Somehow two sparrows had flown into my apartment.I wanted to open the windows and release them.Fate had something else on mind.

The sliding window panel was stuck.I had to apply a great amount of force to open it.When I opened it , it flew.
At the very instant the window pane slid to the other side , the female sparrow flew towards the wrong end.

I heard a muffled crunch.I was afraid to see what I thought had happened.

The male sparrow flew out , towards freedom whereas the female lay dead , its body crushed between the window pane and the sill.The window had opened on the other side.It was just a matter of bad choice for the  female sparrow.

Not willing to believe what just had happened , I walked away, hoping against all hopes that the sparrow would just fly away from the window which I had kept open.

Then I read my morning newspaper.

Weboids :
"When immersed in a liquid , a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby. "

Are you tempting me, God ? Is this your version of a prank ?A sick joke ?

Ha Ha , Gotcha !
Now lets see if our self-professed animal lover satisfies his scientific hunger by verifying the data claimed in the weboids?
Will the dead sparrow cry like a baby ?

(Wont you try ?)

(You'll know once and for all )

(C'mon , you can do it ...there's a bucket filled with water ready in the bathroom.All you have to do is pick the sparrow up and dunk it .)

(C'mon , be a sport !)

I was in denial.I was still not ready to believe that I had killed the sparrow.I read the entire newspaper twice before coming back to the room .

It was still there.Quite dead.No doubts about it .

Such a tiny little being .So full of energy.The two sparrows were probably mates , in search of a good nesting site.She could have even been pregnant.
This was worse.I was a pregnant-sparrow killer.

I was reluctant to go near the body.I was reluctant to touch it .But I had to dispose it before it got too late .

I searched for some kind of gloves.No luck.All I could manage was an old dish cloth.I was actually shaking when my hand went near the body




(BOO!)



No , it didn't jump up and grab my throat for revenge.It was dead.To quote a cliche "It was dead as a Dodo"

The body was so light!
Its whole body was feather light and compact enough to fit in my palm.Its eyes were thankfully closed.I wouldn't be able to bear the accusing eyes staring at me in my nightmares.I'd be doomed,  never able to sleep again.

There was nothing left to do.I wasn't going to dunk the sparrow in water.All animals deserve our respect.Even in its untimely death , the sparrow deserved respect.

"From dust to dust , from ashes to ashes , from earth to earth " This was the way of the nature.The dead would nurture the living.I took the sparrow down and dug a grave , a small hole in the soft wet soil and buried it .That was the end of the sparrow, but it would be an endless night of guilt and shame for me .
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                                                                x-0-x


Love requires infinite patience.
There are times when one has to wait for an eternity for his love to be accepted.Especially when the recipient knows not that you are giving love or when you don't know how to love in a way that can be understood by the other.


Our family gets a lot of injured and abandoned animals at home.We are known around the neighbourhood for our efforts in animal protection , treatment and rehabilitation.

In the past , we have dealt with innumerable kittens , pups and sometimes even cows ,monkeys and eagles.

However this was the first time we got a cuckoo.A friend of ours found a baby cuckoo on the ground , with no apparent injuries.He waited for a while , but saw that if he left it in its state , the crows would probably attack it.He promptly brought it over to our house.

Cuckoos are from the order Cucliformes .Many of theses species are notorious for their habit of brood parasitism i.e laying their eggs in the nests of other birds and foisting on them the responsibility of hatching and rearing the young.

Our baby cuckoo or the common Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea) was a male with glistening metallic black all over , with a striking yellowish green bill and crimson or blood red eyes.The female cuckoo is brown , spotted and barred with white.

I watched in awe as mom patiently tried to feed it.She had a lot of patience.(I think she got that from  taking care of me all these years :)  )The cuckoo's diet mainly consists of banyan and peepal figs , various berries and hairy caterpillars.(source : Common Birds , Salim Ali &Laaeq Futehally ).We couldn't find any of these.Also this was a baby .It was probably used to eating what its parents had regurgitated out.How the heck were we supposed to regurgitatehairy caterpillars?Instead we tried to feed it other fruits viz. ripe banana pieces , guavas , and papayas.

Mom handed over the responsibility of feeding the cuckoo over to me.It had to be fed every 2-3 hours or so.This was my first time handling a bird.I prayed for patience and strength.Maybe this was my chance to redeem myself for the sparrow I'd killed.

A right to lessen the burden of a wrong.

Yeah , we were coming to a full circle now , God and Me .

The cuckoo had never seen a human before .Naturally it was afraid.I too had to patiently follow the cuckoo , while it kept hopping away from me .Soon I had made enough progress to touch the cuckoo.I was allowed to stroke it while feeding it mashed bananas.It also sipped water from a syringe .
Soon , I had to acclimatize the cuckoo to my presence and touch.I held it lightly...as lightly as possible.It showed its dislike by opening its mouth gaping wide soundlessly and showing its blood red mouth...

Patience is the key.
Gentleness is the key.

Focus .

Do not lose concentration.
Do not squeeze.It is only a little  bird.

Then came the papayas.
I'm glad to say , our baby cuckoo likes  little bits of mashed papayas and it ate plenty of it and made my family smile .I think it will survive.
It's still kept in our unused bathroom.There is no other place , because we have four cats, who like to catch a mouse or two every now and then..But I think it will survive !

This is not over.
Its not so easy to end an incomplete story.
Well , this is not a story.
This is real.And I don't know where this ends .

Only time will tell where this will lead.
Maybe there is still hope for me.
Maybe I can get rid of my guilt .