Law of attraction

The time period taken by a subject to fall in love with another subject is exactly equal to the time taken by the former subject to get over them.

Explanation:

1. T=1 second:
You see a person and fall in love. Soon you see that person with their lover. You perform a mental comparison of yourself and the lover, emerge the clear winner and turn away with a complacent sneer. (What? You lost? May be you had been aiming too high.)

2. T=1 week:
You can’t just think of anything else but them. You decide to gift a chocolate then change your decision to a flower and then back to chocolate (since flowers don’t come with the safety valve of ”I think of you as a friend”). You are just about to present the chocolate when she/he starts to babble about her/his boyfriend/girlfriend. You eat the chocolate yourself, bless yourself for the judicious decision taken earlier, eat some more chocolates during the course of the week and move on.


3. T=4months:
You were so in love with this person and now you have to move to another place. You know things can’t work out. You turn to songs for comfort and they croon about your lovelorn self. You take to reading books and find that the stories are woven around your love life. You run to the movies for solace and again find the movies have also been made about you. You curse the world and rush to your friends and become the talking point for one day. Then find that almost every one else has had one or more such experiences. You realize that there is indeed more to life.

4. T=4 years:
Hmm...trust me and give it 4 years...you will get over them. If you don’t you can kill me. (You have to find me first...and I hide well!)

Aberration from the law: Let’s call this aberration the case of swinging interest.

Say there is someone whom you have liked for 5 weeks and then the person makes an appearance in green and scarlet. You immediately get over this person and find a new interest. The trick is that your liking for that fashion disaster returns when you find that the adoring qualities are still existing in that person. Again you like this person for a year and one fine day the person chooses to criticize you about something that you are insecure about. You take the insult bravely, save the tears for the night and again find a new interest the morning after. Basically, this person acts as a buffer. Nature abhors vacuum and so does your heart. So whenever there’s a lull you can fantasize about the buffer. So this continues...until one day you find that the person has turned you off and you are not willing to find a new interest. In fact you are finding the annoying qualities adoring too. The buffer needs to be buffered!!! Or...may be it’s time to take your swinging interest seriously.


Thin ice...buddies...thin ice...tread carefully.

PS: Some real life examples would have made my article more delectable but that would have caused a little inconvenience to some people and a lot of inconvenience to my very existence...so...

Illusion

“Dur ki cheez hi kyun laagi hai haseen
Paas ki cheez ka kyuh nehi hai yakeen...”

The apparently shallow lines evoke an absolute truth. Now you'd say nothing is absolute, everything is relative and I’d ask you about the statement you have just made and this would go on for a while…so coming back to what I wanted to say: Things appear far more appealing from a distance than when you approach them.

Instance 1: Nature. The verdant forests, the lush wily pastures, the pristine saintly mountains, the meandering coquettish rivers, the silent celibate deserts, all look to be beckoning us, enticing us to give up mundane daily chores and to join them in their salubrity. But before you give up your life…let’s take a closer look…everywhere you would go you would have to live among muck. Yeah…I know birds and animals look so happy and free. But would you be ok to live in unsanitary (yuck yuck…) environment without the amenities that you are used to?

Instance 2: (Apparently) timeless songs. You are sitting in the window seat of the bus…a gentle breeze is wafting through your hair...the background music is a beautiful song (the lyrics of which may well have been written keeping you in mind)…you are completely lost in your fantasies… And then the bus starts to move…you strain your ears to catch the fading tunes…but the song fades away in the chatter. What happens next? You go home, download the song, listen to it a thousand and one times, get your eardrums fatigued and replace the song with a new one.

Why do we inevitably do this? Why are we hellbent on killing the aura? Is it not better to observe from a distance and pine away for the surreal charm rather than possessing it only to plunge into the smothering monotony?

PS: Alternative title for the article could have been “Commitment phobia”.

Cross roads

Screeeeeeeeeeeeech...and the car stopped one femtometre away from me. This has happened to me with an unhealthily high number of times. The glance and the words of the halting driver range from unadulterated apology to unabashed fury. But that’s the way I have been...clumsy in crossing roads by myself.

Luckily for me I have escaped all those what-could-have-been-a-fatal-accident scenarios unscathed. I had once jumped out of a running train (it was yet to gather full speed) after realising that I had boarded the wrong train. A severely bruised elbow (a bruise that my sister had labelled as a “movie bruise”...apparently she had seen such a bruise only onscreen and believing such bruise marks to be unrealistic had ridiculed the ineptitude of the make-up team) and a scratched knee was all that I got out of the accident. And yes...some questioning looks about whether I was trying to commit suicide. (Always a bad idea...even if your life gives you the extremes of pain there being no guarantee about a rosy afterlife suicide is a stupid, high risk and of course irreversible project) Anyway as I was saying...every time I escape an accident I look at my life line smugly, secretly smiling at death...why I feel this way is beyond explanation since neither my life line is my artwork nor is there any glory associated with being careless while crossing roads...but I do it.

Crossing roads at night becomes more like a challenge for me. Way back in childhood I had read in a book that while hunting the prospective prey is flooded with a strong light that dazes them. Somehow when I look at the headlights glaring down at me, almost urging me to move I stand transfixed much like the lower animals.

Life has strange twists...I now have to cross a national highway 10 times (no exaggeration) each working day...all by myself. This is exactly the kind of thrill I was NOT looking for. I still chicken out whenever I have to cross a road (pun intended)...but what to do...just as the life line on my palm is not my art work so aren’t the several other lines that call boardroom meetings to decide upon the course of my life and always conveniently forget to include my opinion...sigh...sigh...

SMS

I wanted to start this article as “Are you texting?” written as “R u txtng?” But I could not bring myself to do it. Why? Simply because it looks UGLY. Hey…take no offense. I have nothing against people who like to use the sms lingo. It just bothers me…a lot. Once I had shared my distress regarding this grotesque travesty of the English language with my alumni association. While most people saw my point an elder member had thrown some bitter (and somewhat amusing) sarcasm in my way. This person felt that only filthy rich people can afford the luxury of typing out entire words since the mobile services allow only 160 characters per sms. [ I didn’t care much about this person’s opinion. In another discussion this person had said Rafflesia was this person’s favourite flower. Reason? It emits a vile odour similar to that of rotting flesh. The day has not come when I would start valuing the opinion of such wack jobs.]

Some crusaders of the sms lingo might say 'Who has the time to write “r”, “i”, “g”, “h”, “t” when just an “r” followed by an “8” serves the purpose?' A thousand other reasons could be offered that would sound perfectly sensible and yet it would continue to bother me. The time factor is indeed a relevant point. And one day when I would lose out on some plump offer because of my lust for unadulterated spellings people would come to sympathize with me while secretly thinking, “Serves her right.”

As far as the cost factor is involved the mobile services did listen to the prayers of the sms addicts. New schemes have been launched which allow us to send texts for free(almost). Yet people keep on using contractions… It did not eradicate the prevalent evil and introduced a new one. Flurry of forwarded texts! Every one is succumbing to it. Me? Of course. I forward every text that I find a wee bit interesting (but not before I edit out the grammatical errors and expand the annoying spelling contractions.)

Gone are the days when we sent the exceptionally clever jokes to the ones with a quick wit, shared the “best friends forever” messages with the dearest of the friends, saved the mushy romantic messages for the latest crush (and deleted the drafts after getting over them) and forwarded the classic insults to the ones who had the humour to appreciate them. Now every body sends out every thing to every one (may be the names of the prude ones are left out while sending out crude texts).

Another new trend is sharing overwhelmingly romantic texts with every one…the sender has in mind the picture of one face but where their mind is blessed with brilliant picturesque clarity their guts lack the zeal to the tell the “face in mind” about their feelings. The way out? Resort to bulk texts! Send the lovey-dovey sms out to the entire group. That way one gets to express his/her feelings and she/he does not get the liberty to reject him/her.

And of course there are the immensely irritating texts from some dubious companies. Yesterday one sms actually asked me to send my name followed by a certain code to a certain number to know whether I am fake or real! If you want you may doubt my integrity but to ask me to doubt myself… Inanity has indeed achieved new levels.

Not that I complain about the huge volume of texts…makes me feel good actually. (Not the ones from phoney companies though) [And also if my mobile is silent on a particular day I get to know that something is wrong with the handset…no kidding…this has truly happened.] But I do yearn for the days when people meant what they wrote in an sms.


PS- Man might worry his head off in pursuit of progress but there would always be cribbers who would enjoy all the luxuries bestowed on them dirt-cheap and yet find excuses to laud the olden days when they had been cribbing to be in possession of the same luxuries.

I scream for you!

The fragrance: The tantalising scent of the air filled my senses…long buried instincts churned in my heart.


The music: The chatter in sweet language felt so soothing to my senses …even the most prosaic lines seemed like poetry.


The view: The grace and the enchanting beauty of the place seeped into my senses…I felt satiated.


The taste: The splendid flavour excited my senses…the long suppressed hunger resurfaced.


The feel: The overwhelming feeling flooded through my senses…am I dreaming now? Or had the past 6 months been a nightmare?




There was a wisp of doubt in my heart…some people forget easily…the most familiar places and faces seem new to them even after a short gap…I am one such person. The feeling is excruciating…to feel like a tourist in your own city is like…well I just realised that there are no words to express that rare feeling. But then came the gift…a cool and windy evening in the month of May. The open arms were welcoming me back…yes…the feeling sunk in…I am home… I am happy to be back in your loving arms…