Life Goes On.... :)

ஷவரம் பண்ணிக்கரதயும் உத்தியோகத்தையும் உட்டுட்டா, ஒண்ணும் வராது நோக்கு. மனச உட்டுட்டா மகா கஷ்டம்! Life goes on...– Bhashyam Iyengar, in Hey! Ram

Staying Alive!

“The harder you desire the farther it seems to grow away from you.” And that exactly is the most superficial and colossal guise life takes to keep you going at endlessly….GENIUS!

You don't have to be a perfectionist all your life....if you are a mediocre planner trying to pull things through on time whenever and wherever, that should let you sail through decently if not exceptionally -- One of the very FEW things that make me believe there’s a bigger brain sitting out there crafting all this in his own sweet pattern! His work is more than the most complex mainframes computer invented on this earth!

And the way he gambles with it is much more challenging and incredibly intriguing than any of those slot machines that is jabbed by frenzied people at the Casinos' world over.

On those awful-bitter days, despondency settles upon you like vestibules of white fog covering your mind as if it’s a dark warm blanket you've been desperately waiting to crawl into, on a cold night. 

In a trice, everything seems doomed to failure, you wonder if you will ever while away the time with your friends again, you wonder if you will ever partake in that alien concept known as a social life. You chafe at the notion of a single rational thought, of the will to just pick up that God forbidden cellphone and call your mother, of the simplicity of dressing nice, of the effortless intricacies involved in just brightening up a little by washing your dull & dreary face, you wonder at your ghastly inability to do the things you used to do and take for granted.

You feel the parasite within you getting stronger as the awful gnawing beast refuses to go away. Suddenly you feel dreadfully alone. But paradoxically, you tremble at the thought of social gatherings and any form of interaction with other human beings, and you start avoiding them like an affliction. You retreat even further into yourself and feel the miasma of loneliness strangle your senses. 

This obnoxious feeling clutches your gut so hard like an effluvia from putrescent organic matter left lying in open for ages en-route to your destination.

You realize that you have created a vicious cycle of avoidance and paralyzing seclusion. You realize that you are fast disappearing, disappearing into a twilight zone of your own creation, with no possible exit looming vaguely in the distance.

It has to come to an end one day. I think you just need to shackle out of it all and calm the beast inside you with a blow so hard that it curls-up in a nook and never dares to come-out again into action. Also, do make sure to seal that savage-nook that influences your weaknesses and lack of rigidness pushing you hard every time into this eternal door of sacrilege.

I am kicking hard with my 80+ kgs of weight to stay alive! :-)

A tree full of screeching monkeys!

The recent visit to RTO (DMV in U.S) for getting a duplicate copy of my driver's license since I had lost my original, made me wonder if I was in the middle of a tree full of angry, screeching monkeys.

Yes, I say so because I spent 3 full hours bandying about the RTO office at least a dozen times from one desk to another and repeating the already visited desks while doing so wondering who would actually get down to helping me for real.

People who worked there looked upset, angry and agitated. The officers were yelling because they were not happy with the documentation or the exact numbered rectangular papers that are a strict mandate  to  sign and approve the forms that sat fat and smug inside an ageing/smelling file.

I didn't want to use the middlemen who were loitering around with a revolting stench of unwashed clothes wrapped around their rancid, stinking, perspiring bodies and grinning with teeth smeared in cigarette or cheap chew-able tobacco tars.They came around once in a while scratching the sides of their heads and asking me "Yenna venum meydam?" (What do you want, Madam?).

Needless to say I was super frustrated and waved them off.

I stood in what appeared to the middle of the bay and clapped 5 times as loud as I can and yelled "Excuse me, Can one of the employees here help me out?"

For a few seconds there was silence and a smile curved at the ends of my lips at my accomplishment ....but it diminished almost immediately as the prattle continued as if nothing at all happened after a brief pause of 2 seconds.

Defeated and Humiliated I wanted to give-up when I heard a voice behind me saying.... "Good try madam, I think you should do it again this time louder and longer. Don't give-up!"

So, I did the same.

Two officers can out of their desk and approached me. One of them said "Hello Lady, this is a Government Office, I don't appreciate fun activities or inspirational speeches here. You need prior permission from our senior official for doing so. It would be nice if you leave this place immediately before I call the guards."

I was appalled and tried to explain that I wasn't attended to for the past so many hours and it was my act of trying to get help. He gave a long lecture on the ethics of workplace and how I should not have disturbed the Government Officials during their busy working hours.

Eventually, after his painfully irrelevant lecture he did pay heed to my request and said that it will be taken care of.

I was also asked to pay more than required without which processing my request will be postponed indefinitely.

I was exhausted when I came out, overloaded with a feeling I couldn't quite place between frustration, anger and helplessness.

I mean, to think of the fact that I was once the woman who slapped a guy across his face when he misbehaved with me in a Public Transport............. I think it's a blatant fact of resigning the courage and accepting hypocrisy as a mark of a typical middle-class-middle-aged-woman-attitude.