“Don’t tell me what I can’t do”

John Locke keeps saying that throughout L.O.S.T. And with such fire in his eyes, it’d give anybody the creeps. It made me think he was psychotic! I guess I’d forgotten what it is like...

I don’t need to be told what I ‘can’ do. I can do without the usual morale-boosting, adrenaline-pumping “you can do it” routine, doesn’t penetrate the surface much. But that’s what you get more often than not (and it’s a good thing! It means people care for you).
Try telling me what I can’t do... that I’m incompetent, I’m not good enough; it sets off a wild fire through my nerves. In that one moment I’m no different from John Locke. I might not make it, but I’ll die trying.

I don’t want to launch a feminist diatribe on how girls grow up discriminated against or how we lose our identities amidst all the morbid generalisations, but if there’s anything that keeps women going it must be the seething frenzy set ablaze with every ‘ladki hai...’ and the laughter that follows the bitter mockery.

I maintain that I’m not a feminist. I’m an individualist. And laugh as much as you want at that, but imagine for yourself what it must have taken for an individualist to change her stance from almost- anti-feminist individualism to dangerously-bordering-on-feminism individualism...

Lost & Found

There are a lot of things I’m fond of; many that I’m crazy about. But somewhere on my journey from childhood to being a twenty-something( :-!) these things that put idiotic grins on my face have faded out of memory, stumbling out of my happiness-basket one after the other.

I used to be crazy about reading books. I started reading in kindergarten. I remember I used to hold my library books like trophies (it was after all the first time in my life I got to choose anything). Later in school, I started gobbling books. I’d scout for fat books, so I could wander about in my parallel universe longer and I’d mourn after every single book got over.
And then I stopped reading books for the same reason I loved them so much. I’d drop everything and anything to get back to them.

I used to be crazy about computer/video games. Some of my happiest memories are those of me and my brother playing for hours together. The Prince of Persia gave way to Tetris, and then a bunch of others till it finally stopped at NFS. And then they evaporated out of my life. It’s been quite some time since I played any of those games. But I remember how the joystick would be my ticket out of the real world.

I still have that little diary of poems and snippets I spent years collecting. I’d actually thought I’d get my collection printed some day. I still read the diary. It still makes me smile. And I still wonder why I never continued. I can’t even remember when that journey hit a roadblock.

Of all the things that got washed away with time, I never imagined sports would be one of them. My idiotic grin grows in direct proportion to my proximity to the sports field. And when I’m on it, you’d probably think I’m on morphine. Incredibly, I gave up sports for some 2 years. And a part of me died without my realising it. Fortunately for me, it came back from the dead after 2 years and my frayed memories turned into a new Technicolor movie.

I’ve decided I’m going to find those missing pieces of me some day. Maybe they will show me the way back to my lost parallel universe – my childhood Utopia.

I’m working!

I wanted to call this “A 101 ways to pretend to be working”, but I realized (and quickly enough) how disproportionately ambitious the task was. It was like aiming to land on the moon after having invented the bicycle :D I know how silly it is to even have come up with the idea in the first place, but then I’ve already touched upon the astounding effects of boredom previously.

During my training, I found that when staring at a PC starts to lose its appeal (not that it had any), watching nameless people move back & forth suddenly becomes remarkably interesting. In fact, I watched these nameless-people-who-look-all-the-same-in-formals so much; I could identify them by their footsteps and even their hair. A bunch of people I’d take special interest in tracking were the people I was answerable to. They’d bring out the best of my ‘I’m-very-busy-doing-something’ acting abilities.

[Having said that, I solemnly hope there are no potential employers reading this. If they are – “Sir/Ma’am, I’m a very sincere, industrious individual, please do consult my superiors & associates in case of any reservations. And do not hassle yourself by reading any further 0:-) ”]

For example, jotting down or typing completely random stuff provided an excellent cover for my joblessness. I could glance at the screen from time to time (or all the time, if I was typing) and it looked like I was taking notes. I took to doodling and sketching absurd geometrical forms like I was a professional. It was akin to making an intense effort to sketch a beautiful woman and ending up with a stick figure instead. But in the unbelievably dreary environs of the place I could call an AC prison, anything & everything except work revealed entirely new, exciting dimensions.

I stared at the tube lights wondering if there was a glass cover beneath their holder and marvelled at how pretty they looked. If I wasn’t already finding the sight of the monitor revolting, simply staring at it blankly did the trick at times (that’s how most of the people looked when they were working). I scrolled up and down the PDFs, edited the Word documents, and dug up the entire hard disk in search of adventure.

I wouldn’t say that the exploration of the PC was entirely futile. I did discover an incredibly amateur game of Snooker, which would take a minimum of 15 seconds to start and shut down. Nevertheless, the programmer was considerate enough to have included this feature called “Boss” where the ESC key would minimise the game to a nameless tab in the event that your boss interrupted your game. Except that the game was to be played using the mouse.

I tortured the MS Office assistants to no end (Animate... Animate... Animate...), every single one of them, till I actually started feeling like a cold-blooded despot. It reminded me of “Naach, Basanti, Naach!” Except that these poor fellas didn’t have much of a choice and seemed quite willing to oblige. I must admit I really miss them on my Vista system; they were, after all, the only companions I had in the solitude of my deserted semi-cubicle.