Can you imagine?

I can’t. You can’t. Nor can anybody else.

Imagination is not a facility that we were born with.

Before you raise furor over my ludicrous idea I plead you to spend a moment in serious contemplation…

When we imagine we actually put together several ideas…all of which have been previously encountered by us. However the final idea can be unique in its entirety…and this uniqueness leads us to the illusion of imagination. The recipe can be yours…but the ingredients were already there. We can NEVER concoct something that is new in every little detail. Have you ever been able to think of something like that? Or seen somebody else do so? Unlikely and impossible…

Am I refuting to acknowledge the talent of myriad poets and scientists and other accomplished people who have helped us to graduate from the brutality of the caves in the yesteryears to the security of the present day abode?

Not at all.

I am just saying that they are great composers… (My sincerest salute to all of them…)

It’s like mixing colours in a palette…we have a restricted spectrum of colours at our disposal. When we want a new shade we have to mix the already existing colours. When common people mix colours they generate a drab brown…when great people do so they find a delightful violet!

Anyway…so what if we can’t imagine…we can compose!

Also let me know if you can imagine…because that would mean you are none other than GOD Himself and I would really like to meet Him. (No…you don’t have to suggest the obvious way to do that!)

Cynic beauty

“You adore her/him because of her/his looks? How shallow are you?”

Is that not a pretty common sermon?

Beauty is always considered to be a vain quality. On the contrary intelligence is a highly acclaimed trait.

People generally use the following argument to consolidate their ideology:

“Beauty has been gifted to a person by God and hence a beautiful person does not deserve any praise.”

And we make our brains ourselves?

Another popular logic is:

“Beauty is transient…intellect develops with age.”

Wrong! Never heard of anything called senility?

If you are smitten by the tantalising beauty of a flower…so be it.

If you are besotted by a spell of blinding acumen…so be it.

But there is no need to denigrate somebody else’s object of affection. Either way we are hallowing something/someone for a quality which they have been blessed with. It is a matter of personal preference. If we want we can also think of our admiration as devotion to a higher power...a way of expressing humility in front of the supreme power that created something so enchanting. (That'd be a terribly pretentious effort at being spiritual though...)

I was equally enamoured by the machismo of Aragorn and the razor-sharp wit of Sherlock. I know they are not real…however you can cite real examples and set the trend.

Inside jokes

Jokes are supposed to make people laugh. They don’t make us cry…some exceptionally good ones and exceptionally bad ones do though. But there are some jokes that can make us intensely sad and happy at the same time…

When you spend a lot of time with a certain group of people you are bound to share some special anecdotes, invent some strange mannerisms and scheme some diabolic dialects that even the wittiest of the outsiders would not be able to unravel. While using such evolved maxims rarely do people realise their true worth. It’s when you have to be somewhere else away from that gang and you suddenly make a classified remark and others stare at you with puzzled countenances that you realise their value and …a pang shatters your heart…

School days now seem to be a distant past…yet the casual banters of those days will never go stale. Two very popular phrases were “mone ku” and “consult kore insult”. “Mone ku” translates to a “devious mind” but we used it to refer to a secret (and not so sacred) soft spot for someone! “Consult kore insult” was our equivalent of ganging up on someone.

In college “nongra chaat” and “full out” were very much in vogue. The original phrase was not “full out”…we had to tone the original phrase down! (I won’t tell you what it was.) “Nongra chaat” does not have any vulgar or salacious innuendo. It just means that someone has brewed up an outrageous and somewhat preposterous story. The meaning of “full out” is very hard to explain…it’s an intuitive phrase…you have to be there to get the essence!

I have seen my mother often use some strange phrases when she’s talking to her brother and sister. They rampantly say “dosh minute rest and dosh minutes bisraam”. I’ve also heard them say “detept” for defect and “harach” for harass and laugh over it again and again. With some prodding I got to know that they had picked up those words from the gardener who tended the garden in their childhood. His every mispronounced word and outlandish phrase had a bizarre appeal to the young minds of my mother and her siblings. They have long left behind their childhood days yet in each other’s company they often tend to use those phrases which had caught their fancy a long time ago…and each time I have seen them successfully recreate the lost aura of their childhood.

The inside jokes are a unique breed... At their inception they gift us unadulterated mirth and glee and they continue to be with us long after they go out of trend…to bring a smile to the lips…a tear to the eye…

A lost strain of music…

Long long ago…once upon a time…there were two people in my life who had always made me happy…who had not ever hurt me in any way…who had never failed to bring a smile to my face.

They were my (toy) gun and my doll Stella.

My red and black gun had two bullets…not exactly bullets…more like two darts. Our most conspicuous victim was a bottle of pickle which I had shot out of the window…the man living downstairs was not much amused…we were (my gun and myself). Ma had told me off for the unsavoury incident…but it was worth the fun.

Stella used to be a lovely blonde whom I had turned brunette. She also happened to have an enviable wardrobe which she never shared with the rest of my dolls. She looked materialistic and snooty…I am assuming she had had a lovely time. Stella may not sound as interesting as my gun but to me she was equally captivating.

They made me happy no matter how much I abused them…and yet one day I chose to trash them in a lonely corner…I kept ignoring them…and now I don’t even know where they are…to be true I also know that I would not really bother to get them back…

But sometimes I wonder…

Abandoned by me…are they happier in some other child’s loving and caring arms? Or are they pining away in a dark corner thinking about the great times we have had together?

"Boyfriend"

Why do people mangle and distort this word and use it to refer to almost anybody?

A boyfriend is someone (male) whom you are romantically involved with.

A friend who is a boy is NOT a boyfriend…he is a male friend.

An acquaintance had once introduced me to his friends saying, “I’ve always been a good boyfriend to her.”
God-oh-god! When I had felt offended he was taken aback. According to him there had been nothing wrong with his way of talking and I was simply overreacting!!!

A gentleman had once been invited to our college to hone our “soft skills” before the recruitment season.

In the mock interview session this gentleman chose to ask a girl the following question...
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
To which the girl nonchalantly replied, “As a matter of fact I have many.”
The gentleman-“So who/what is a boyfriend?”
The girl- “A male friend. But colloquially we often use the term to denote someone special.”

The gentleman could not have been happier with the answer.

And I could not have been unhappier to witness the painful travesty.

And why did I not object? I had felt it would be disrespectful.

Also they could have argued that they had meant boy friend and not boyfriend since the former term can be used to refer to a male friend. How could I have explained to them how jocular they sound even though their apparently flimsy logic could not exactly be disposed of?

There was a time when people would say, “Repeating a lie a 1000 times doesn’t make it the truth.”

But now if you keep repeating something wrong…sooner or later it probably would be accepted.

Just as "boyfriend" now has a secondary meaning in some dictionaries… “a male friend”.

Do you accept it?

I know I don’t and if any of my friends dare to disagree with me I’m telling you... I will take the ‘r’ away from friend.

Who’s in your dream tonight?

1. The charismatic cashier from the cafeteria
2. Someone who sometimes fills you with strains of revulsion
   
3. A gorgeous and much-married celebrity
   
4. The stunning teacher who taught your class for just 6 days
   
5. Some magnetic character out of an arresting fiction
6. A long lost love
7. An intimate (but platonic) friend
8. The domestic help
9. A total stranger

So who visited you last night?

Irrespective of who did…your reactions after waking up are more interesting than the dream itself.

How did the dream leave you feeling?

Did you feel...

Mmm…nice dream...could have lasted a little longer (wistful)…

or…

Bless my stars…it was only a dream (livid and then relieved)…

or…

You couldn’t have waited a little longer? (silently shouting at the alarm) I was about to snow skate with whoever-visited-you-that-night (indignant and enraged)…

or…

So you’ve managed to invade my dreams? Nice move! (impressed and applauding)...

or…

It wasn’t a romantic dream…then why do I feel that way? (confused)...

or…

Man! Never knew I’d dream about whoever-it-was (shocked...pleasantly?)...

or…

Are you left feeling distraught...wishing it was true…wishing you haven’t had the dream...wishing you were dead (devastated and shattered)…

If you are one of those people who cannot recall their dreams (don’t say you don’t have dreams…of course you do…you're just unable to remember them) then you are missing a lot…I feel sorry for you…dreams are like free movies (all genres) resplendent with life...which thrill you at night while resting and the best part is that you often get to star in these.

Advice gratis

Today at first I shall share an incident that had happened long, long ago…at a time that seems like ancient history to me now.

A dear friend of mine was insanely in love (or so she thought) with a ‘wine’ type of guy. (Read “Types of men” to know what a ‘wine’ type of guy is)

One fine day…
My friend: Do you think he likes me?
Me: I don’t know…it’s really hard to tell.
( I actually thought that the guy wasn’t even remotely interested in her but saying that in her face was not very appropriate…honestly I took him to be her passing fancy…turns out I was wrong…very wrong.)

A month later…
My friend: Introduce me to him.
Me: What? But how would I do it? I don’t know him myself.
My friend: You have to find out a way.
Me: All right. I’ll try. But I hear that this guy is a serial heart breaker.
My friend: Stop it...I won’t hear anything against him. Just do this for me as a favour.

I used my reliable connections but could not arrange an episode of casual introduction.
Me: I’m sorry…I can’t pull this off without making you look desperate.
My friend: I don’t care…just give him a hint or something like that.

I used my reliable connections again and got to know that I had been right all along. This guy was not interested in my friend but he wouldn’t mind adding one more ‘victim’ to his list. So that explains his sending silent misleading signals to my friend.

My friend: What did he say?
(I had a long chat with her and told her that this guy was leading her into a trap.)

A month of depression…

2 months later…
My friend: I’m going to tell him about my feelings.
Me: What??? Don’t!

After an hour of the most intensive and grueling session of bargaining we decided that she would mail him instead of telling him on the way to school.

[Pointers…she meant to tell him about her feelings during the rush hour near Swinhoe street…when the rest of the school would be there as well (on their way to school). You would realise how important it was to prevent her from making an ugly scene in front of almost the whole world…in the school days school happens to be the world for us…most of us.]

So after 2 more hours…
My friend: Listen to this… This is the exact mail that I’m going to send him.
[I sadly listened to her rantings.]
Me: Ok…

Next day…
My friend: (sobbing vehemently) He replied that… (some very cruel and utterly humiliating words which I would not repeat here.)

I started to bash him up and told her how she deserved a much better guy and all those clichéd consolations which never work…but after sometime had nothing to do but lend my shoulders for her to cry on.

This was a random example. The advice does not necessarily have to be along similar lines. It can be advice about love life, about career, about which haircut to sport, about which present to gift, about which storybook to read next, about how to kill (never happened to me…just suggesting)…

You must have come across such situations too. People ask for your advice and seemingly your (fully solicited) advice is panacea to them.

In the beginning (sorry for lifting the opening line of the Bible) it felt great to know you can help someone out. But now each time someone asks me to advise them I feel wary. The truth is that they are asking for your opinion and not advice. And don’t feel hurt and responsible when you see a loved one ignoring your advice and choosing their doom. You had never been given the power to protect them or to guide them to serendipity…accept it.

So do they not value you at all?

No! You have a very important role to play…read on…

Few days back I was asking for some trivial advice (yet of supreme importance to me) from ma.

Me: Ma, should I wear the beige outfit or the royal blue outfit?

Case 1-

Ma: The beige one.

My reaction: No…why didn’t she select the blue one…

Case 2-

Ma: The blue one.

My reaction: Good! So that settles it.

In my subconscious I was all along aware of which dress I wanted to wear.

Ma’s advice helped me to get in touch with my own wish.

The reins of our lives are always in our hands. Nobody is that confused (ever) that they would need to employ the service of another person to figure a way out of any dilemma.

At the end of the day people will believe what they want to believe, people will do what they want to do… When someone asks for advice our real job is to help them find out what they want to do.