He Knows

The crimson hue relinquished the twilight sky to the purple splendour of the night.


But to me, the nights have been despicably cruel. The blustering winds, unrelenting in their haunting ways do not make me complain. They have been my companions in this long tortuous journey and I have learnt to accept them as they have learnt to accept me. No, I abhor the nights for they serve as a glaring reminder of the fact that yet another day has passed and I still haven’t reached the place I seek. Although, this night affords me a faint smile for I can see the small house perched on the hillock ahead silhouetted brilliantly against the serene moon.


The first time I saw this house it was in a dream and a voice which still echoes in my head albeit stridently had told me that the house was home to someone who could in all his power and might help me rid myself of my ever persistent grievances, who could in divine ways, dispel despairing thoughts which my mind most unwillingly harboured.


For years, ever since, I have been on a quest to locate this house, and have seen and felt the ravaging fury of nature, and have lived through the most harrowing conditions. Blood, sweat and tears to me are all the same now, for bleeding, toiling and wailing are the only things I have done since I embarked on my seemingly eternal journey.


‘No, I cannot rest, the house is too near for me to wait any longer’, I thought to myself as I made my way to the base of the hillock and initiated my ascent.


As I moved up, I heard that domineering voice again. ‘He lives there above, he who holds a key to a life without iniquities and sorrows. He who alone can liberate you, he who alone can help you atone for your sins.’ A surge of unbridled joy helped me relieve my mind of the gruelling exertions I had subjected my body to and with renewed vigour I hurried towards the house.


Finally, I reached the top and for the first time in many years I cried in celebration and not desperation.


The house seemed like no domicile of a man of such unnatural powers. It was clammy and squalid and gave the impression of being liable to falling apart from the most gentle breeze.


I moved inside as the door creaked harder than I had ever heard a door creak.
The wooden flooring, weak and damp almost gave way as I trod over it. I was now in a hall, illuminated by a solitary candle placed next to what appeared to be the back of a gigantic throne.


I looked around, to find that this was the only room in the house. The windows for some strange diabolically intriguing reason did not allow the moonlight to stream in. I felt a lump in my throat, as I wondered whether a place so sinister could offer me what I sought.


‘Go ahead, he is there, he has waited far too long for you’, the voice inside my head now proclaimed.


With all the courage I could muster I walked to the back of the throne.
Wave after wave of apprehension plunged my mind into near dementia. ‘DO NOT STOP’, the voice hollered.


‘I gave up everything I ever had to stand where I am now, I must meet him with the same resolve and with the same intent with which I had begun my journey. He is God himself, he can and will emancipate me from my miseries.’- I convinced myself with these words and I moved around the throne to face the man who I had assured myself into believing would be the only one who would have the answers I wanted.


And at that very moment when I saw his face, the walls of my mind collapsed, the worst feeling of disconsolation incarcerated me rendering me even more lifeless than the very bricks that the small house was made up of. I stood transfixed, sure of never being able to move again.


For right there in front of me was not a large throne, but the biggest mirror I had ever seen.


I heard the voice one last time as it asked me mordantly – ‘How does it feel like to confront him at last?’

You are.......

Disclaimer: This is not directed at anyone at all. I've never tried writing something like this before and this is what motivated this post. Once again, this is not expressive of my sentiments towards anyone or any issue.

You are...

The light of reason which suffuses my dreams with eternal darkness.

The waves of gloom that buffet my tranquil coasts of hope.

The unknown depths of my shallow heart.

The deserted lane in my city of joy.

The rolling pastures of an alien country.

The scalding tears of my turbulent past.

The shrill laughter that derides my present.

The untamed gale that rattles the windows of my future.

The wry smile I see in the crescent moon.

The blood red tinge in every sunset.

The dawn that brings no promise.

The insipidity of my reality.

The tale of a despairing soul.

The melancholy music of the most sombre funeral.

The loss I forgot to mourn.

The love that no lover embraced.

The condemned seeking to condemn.



You are all of this and so much more.

They will write about you too.

They will.

I hope they will be kinder.

Kinder than I've ever been to you.

But I had to bring you out in such light.

Because to me

You were all of this and so much more.

Fizzy Moments

I distinctly remember dinner parties at my house, when we kids were served Coca-Cola while the adults (Some of them were abstemious of course but the count was in most cases negligible) indulged in quaint liquor.

Invariably, I saw to it that I was the one who opened the bottle of Coca-Cola, and like all children this was solely because after giving the bottle a good shake I was thrilled to see the coke whistling and fizzing out . Strangely enough, drinking the beverage was never as exhilarating as opening the bottle and watching the fountain of sweet soda gushing out as if in jubilation.

The most beautiful things seldom have any definite purport.

This is probably why we enjoy them so much more.

However, this is not central to what I would like to address here. The 'Coca-Cola Effect', as I would like to call it, essentially and remarkably depicts how boundless joy is always and unfortunately short lived.

Periods of disconsolation are in contrast so much more prolonged, so much more consuming.

This antonymy should at the very least be even on both sides.
Gloom, despair, grief seem so overly imposing in comparison to their positive counterparts. Why should the world follow this peculiarly awful design?

Now, wait for a moment and clear your mind of the deluge of philosophical thoughts I've implanted.

You might find it impossibly difficult to absorb but this design is in principle very effective.

Ponder over this:

How would you know what to appreciate if you didn't have anything substantial to contrast it against? Why would you ever rejoice if you've never felt dejected?

I mentioned something about despair lasting much longer than happiness didn't I?

Try this:

Add a dash of colour (any bright colour) to a blank chart paper. Tell me if it doesn't look better than before.

One splash of a bright colour is all it took to make a dull, sullen chart paper come to life.

In short, one single ray of hope, one spell of celebratory happiness has a significantly more profound effect than a much longer period of feeling demoralized.

The mechanisms this world employs are so enchantingly brilliant, that its hard to not give them their due credibility.

The best part of it all is the delicate, almost ethereal manner in which life unveils these marvellous intricacies.

Enough said.

I will now end on a grateful note.

Coca-Cola, for all the times you've fizzed out to make me erupt in ebullience, I pray that you continue to bubble your way into everyone's hearts for generations to come.

Pepsi, you were good too, but Coke sounded so much cooler!!! :P

Dear Whatever!!

Recently, a friend of mine suggested I visit the site www.dearblankpleaseblank.com and frankly, I've been hooked onto this site ever since.

The following post is dedicated to this thoroughly enjoyable site and its eccentric but rib-tickling content.

Do check it out.

Besides this blog needs articles in a lighter vein :)

Here goes.

Dear McDonald's Visitors

Can you please not give me disgusting looks? Yes, a guy can have 7 cheeseburgers and still have room for two large sundaes. And I'm pretty sure its not your Dad's wallet I'm using to pay for what I eat. I'm lovin it !!! Are you??

Sincerely,
The Fat Guy who you've been staring at for the past half hour (Seriously get a life!!)


Dear Dumbf*#^ who thinks smoking will make him look cool.

Kurt Cobain smoked too. And other than him being a friggin awesome rockstar who still has millions of fans all over the world, there's not a lot of difference between the two of you. Cobain died a legend. Guess what? You will die too. Not as a legend perhaps but at least you'll die!! You'll always have something in common with Cobain. Hope that cheers you up!!

Sincerely,
Non-smokers who cannot ever be as awesome as you are.

That's all for now. More of em coming soon!

R.I.P: Tintin

'Billions of blue blistering barnacles!!!!'

I loved this line when I was young, when I thought it was okay for me to openly express my liking for a bizarre comic book character, and it was okay to want Tintin comics and not iPods as birthday presents.

Captain Haddock (that bemusing sailor friend of Tintin's) had a certain charm in his way of talking, in his demeanour, a charm that still brings a smile to my stubble sporting, 'Chubby gone rough' face.

I don't read Tintin anymore and Why?
Same as why you don't want people singing 'Happy Birthday' at your birthday parties (Did I use the right term here? Is 'Birthday Party', a ridiculously juvenile term to use?) anymore.

Time has a bewildering way of manifesting its progress. Soon, many other 'Tintins' will be unceremoniously sucked out of my life.

We speak of the relentless pursuit of our hopes, of our dreams but at the expense of what? Life is equally if not more relentlessly unforgiving for it gives you simple, beautiful, joys only to obliterate them in a brazenly cruel way.

Time's march is inexorable and so are the radical changes it manages to implement in our mind sets. Is it then useless to hold on to the things we treasure and keep them close to our hearts?

Only time will tell. (How ironical?)

For now, it pains me to form a picture of Snowy (Remember Tintin's cute dog?) in my mind, shedding tears and wagging his tail in desperation.

Stopping now seems to be the only thing that will stop me from shedding a tear myself.

R.I.P Tintin.

A Little Something: The Tragedy of Every Passionate Reader

This was up on Facebook for quite some time before I decided to post it here as well.

I would like to thank my room, my laptop and my inability to do productive things for creating an atmosphere that was best suited for a pointless article like this one.

Honestly, it’s excruciatingly difficult to come up with an imaginative beginning for something that comes from the deepest recesses of someone’s heart and even if you do succeed it’s even more of an uphill task to build up on it so that it gratifies the reader’s thirst of reading something new.

Well, I’m not going to dwell upon the usual subjects that every other person writes upon in the hope of being lauded out of mere sympathy.

No, I’ve decided to go about things a wee bit differently. Yes, all of you who enjoy reading grim tales of lost love and forlorn hopes will be disappointed but I will try to put in shades of grey into this in a very limited way.

I will, to the best of my ability try to give you a reason to – well, just smile. Not on account of some funny anecdote you may think I am about to put forth but because of some profound truths that are going to dawn upon you soon, most of which you knew all along but have failed to acknowledge.

Please do accept my apologies for beating around the bush incessantly but you see for a writer that’s the oldest trick in the book- to lure an innocent reader into reading something with the promise of it unfolding into something interesting without it being remotely so. (In case you didn’t notice you’re now far into the trap yourself)

Another nasty trait most prolific writers possess is bewildering readers with high flown language which has little or no meaning at all. Their labyrinthine arguments include seemingly endless bombast, which is designed so as to confound readers, are what you would call perfect examples of affectation.

I daresay I’ve been able to drill my last point right into you. :P

I could just go on and on about the notorious side of writing but that would most certainly amount to discrediting a legion of thinkers, intellectuals and ideologists who, besides having encumbered the minds of many generations, have actually at a few instances in history brought about a paradigm shift in the way we look at our world. This would qualify as one such instance. :)

What I’ve written would appall most avid readers but you must admit that even though these revelations are bitter pills to swallow they cannot be truer. A writer deliberately contorts public opinion, instigates them to disagree with their governments over trivial issues and then leads them into believing what he would want them to believe.

Well this article is sure steaming up to be one hell of an eye-brow raiser but perhaps this crude disillusionment was essential for you to be made aware of the sordid scenario in the literary world.

Of course, you loved three college kids getting high on their college’s rooftop, you adored how Ron and Hermione finally hooked up, and you mouthed a ‘wow’ after reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’ but apart from these small things that make you smile each time you think of them, what’s the draw ?

They say the pen is mightier than the sword and the way I’ve talked about things till now you’d be compelled to accept this. The pen gives you time to think and this dear reader is what makes all the difference. Let me rephrase what I just said, the pen doesn’t just buy you time to consider an argument but it does much more than just that, it deliberately directs your thoughts in a preset direction. While the sword would just chop your head off, the pen on the other hand is above such inhuman brutality or is it? You are disappointingly wrong my friends. The pen is but more heinous in its ways because it can convince you to chop your head off yourself.

Well someone had to bring these skeletons out of the closet and as derogatory it may seem for my brethren (fellow writers), I was compelled to do so by a mind that didn’t have much food for thought during a particularly prolonged bowel emptying session. An ignoble setting for an unquestionably honorable task- Oh the irony!!!! But you see that’s the way life is –you didn’t know a thing about writing did you? And you had a languid dreamer in a stench ridden latrine lay the cards out for you........

Ahoy!

Well, this post should have been my first post but I must admit I didn't think of a welcome message when I started off.

This blog, like all other blogs is a (or would be a ) collection of emotional, humorous, 'Don't know why but I decided to post it' outpourings from my mind.

What it will transform into in the days to come is as vague a question as asking Obama 'What will become of the United States in a few years?'

A sense of uncertainty pervades both (the US and this blog) and this, I hope, will be the only similarity between the two.

Life is like a little 'Tug Boat' that takes you around through a veritable sea of experiences and this is what inspired me to christen this blog as 'Uncharted Waters'.

All of us have set sail already, some earlier than others, some much later, but we will meet somewhere under the brilliant blue sky. The sea borders on being tranquil and turbulent, shifting between the two like a smile on a newborn's face. To come to think of it, we appreciated our voyage better when we were young and our minds were unpolluted and unadulterated.

As we grow, our minds become a play-ground of sorts, with our desires playing hide and seek with our conscience and our thoughts assume horrifying forms, and no such thought can ever be dispelled completely.
Each of them leaves a trace, littering this playground, before vandalizing it irreparably.

Every one needs that special space, a space that wouldn't mind being burdened with whatever our thoughts have left behind.

This is my space and I look forward to knowing about yours.