Amit Goes Blogging

In the last three days, I have been called a lecher by two girls. They were parallel flings and coincidentally both fell apart almost the same time. Let the readers be informed that there was no physicality involved. It was a misreading of my intentions that caused estrangement. Well, I am not depressed at all. I was kind of expecting such a glorious end.  Flings move onto being love affairs if the counterparts aren't treated as human resources. But, people interest me only so long as a sense of mystery surrounds them. I start in the right direction but goaded by a sense of experimentation, I end up falling out of the relationship. But, I don't regret the disaster because now I am a writer who welcomes even the untoward with open arms. I Now, when people narrate the sorry incidents of their lives, they pledge me to secrecy and to strictly desist from making their tale food for my writing. I am seen as a threat to their private lives. I have people telling me that a writer can n...

If passion is what counts to make it into Google, then I am a monument of passion in the field of my interest. Going by the testimonials and the penchant for talent that Google speaks of, I decided not to exaggerate my professional flair over my personal talent. Google would be the best judge of my suitability for the role of technical writer when I am given an opportunity to prove it. My academic career speaks little of my passion for language. I did not fare well as an engineering student. But, all that I learnt was utilized in breaking the intellectual moulds that mind so often gets into when ideas stop flowing by or a homogeneity of ideas narrows its vision. I have a strong philosophical interest and my education just served to broaden my philosophical outlook. I resist overdose of facts, and, at the first cognizance of facts attesting truth, I stop pursuing them. I distinguish between curiosity, which is vain, and inquiry, which is fruitful. Language holds a special charm for me...

Love passes through many phases from filial love to parental love. Of all the phases, romance is the youth of love. Lifestyle changes may have trimmed romance to its bare minimum but the charm it holds is undimmed by either career pursuits or the dictates of professionalism. Wherever goes man, romance trails along. And, in my case, the rigours of workplace only added to its tenacity. Being bound to corporate decorum, workplace romance never gets into the excesses of courtship. It is like a dew drop that perishes in the warmth of work and settles again in the moments of leisure. This is what makes it is so agreeable. The decorum and discipline tone it up. My hesitating steps ultimately took a leap of courage. Luckily, I landed safe. This time there were no wordy traps laid, no action plan. I was full of energy that takes one over when failure is most certain. The lover in me was playing the last game of the evening in the hope that he will have a sweet tale for many nights to come....

I cannot abolish questions that seek answers to my place in existence. The 'why and how' takes away from my enthusiasm for life. The value one places on life is an assumption. How can we be sure of its purpose? Knowledge can fill our minds but not the blankness where life wiggles. Adding more and more meaning on one side can keep us busy but cannot weigh down the question 'why are we here?' rising at the other side. This hopeless 'why' never leaves us alone nor leads to an answer.  Slipping into life is like wearing wet pyjamas to sleep; such irritable feeling life is. I believe not all suicides result from unhappiness, they could also result from an indifference to life. Coming into existence and being snuffed out of existence describes our lives. In the meanwhile is the ambition, the dream and the hope of outliving our time. There are specks of emotion, of action, of inaction, of understanding, of ignorance and then extinction. Helplessly we arrive and helple...

People who have described my writing as straddling the fence will see a reason for it. I am afraid you would be bogged down after reading this. Discontent has been my lifelong companion, going down all the way my earliest memories as child. Nothing could prevent the feeling of being short-changed at the end of every activity. I always had to encourage happiness to justify the desirability of action. But, on the inside, I was an unhappy traveller following an unsolicited itinerary. People were just tolerable. Obliging them mind-numbing. I had made an unstable peace with the fact that we are condemned to live and also tasked with making living enjoyable. Kids of my age derived great satisfaction in eating raw guavas stolen from the neighbourhood. But, when I set my teeth into the hard crust, I doubted whether the risk and the effort involved in the ordeal were worth it; was the resulting joy any close to expectations. When were we overjoyed when seeking joy? Playing cricket in th...

It came as a blow to my healthy efforts at wooing my female colleagues. Can you believe that for girls in my company a common nativity is a reason enough to make friends with guys and feel safe in their company? Why is beauty prejudiced? Let beauty know that it has no value in absence of a beholder. I think it is the fate of all girls to falter before they move in the right direction; to choose waywardness and mistake the call of my heart for somebody else's. Nobody in the office has waited so earnestly for their arrival as I did. I broke the jinx hanging on our workplace as only a few months had elapsed after my arrival when some darling faces joined the company which was suffering the brunt of male population in the form of workplace dissatisfaction. With my coming, came the girls and the enthusiasm. And the first encounter with all of them was love at first sight. If only they gazed a little longer into my eyes they would see the overflowing love for them. But, they seem to tak...

There are days when sleep quits you at its usual hour, but sloth pins your head to the pillow and dreams brightened in the daylight float by. These dreams do not need a Freudian interpretation as they scale out from the real world. What differentiates these dreams from thoughts is that they deny subservience to practicality. Some of them turn out to be wish-fulfilling. They avenge the past injustices meted out to you, or they offer a pleasure ride, a jaunt to the inaccessible object of pleasure. Today, as I slept in, a dream drifted in and left me with a sense of empowerment. Let me give you the backdrop before narrating the dream. I was as an English language trainer with a spoken English institute, Elixir. Being an undergraduate then, I was not a trainer on papers. So, I was entrusted with the task of counselling candidates who came for inquiry. Interestingly, my first counselling session with a candidate resulted in on-the-spot admission. The villain of the dream, the centre manag...

I am an avid learner and my interest lies in grappling with underlying concepts. Over the years, I have cultivated a state of mind that is receptive to any form of knowledge and that quickly recognizes the universal behind the particular. I reach for the comfort of generalization rather than labouring under details. I enjoy abstract flights that take innumerable facts in their stride and offer a last word on their existence. I developed a natural taste for philosophy as it perfectly answered my aptitude. I couldn't relish fiction that hangs around characters to unfold the theme.  During my school days, the chapters in the text-book ended with a summary that read 'know to learn', and it never appealed to me. I was happy knowing rather than learning things. This attitude continued throughout my engineering. I did extremely well in my practicals and viva voce as the questions asked were mostly conceptual. I remember my digital electronics viva in which I was asked questions on...

He was a devotee and a troubled heart, factors that invariably co-exist. The worldly dross started falling away from his person and the divine made way into his life. He could feel something unearthly taking control of his life. For such is the nature of devotion that His grace and power start manifesting in those who seek refuge at His holy feet . The impersonal polarizes into a personal being to help his devotees even though the hankering for the worldly gains consumes their breath. It happened during an interview. He was worried but not nervous, for he had learned to accept whatever circumstances he was put through. When things would go awry and his last plank of safety was about to deceive him, some unseen hand would intervene and save him from the untoward. So, he couldn't disregard the timely help and arrogate his demands. He was facing the interviewer and suddenly another channel opened to him. He could read the mind of the person before him! The interviewer in her character...

Can a boy and a girl just be friends? The friendship between a boy and a girl is a potential love affair. While it has all the ingredients of love, it lacks the opulence of emotion and the touch of closeness. It is yet another possibility to discover love and yet another mutuality waiting at the doorstep. It is self-restraint that prevents it from trespassing the love zone. The relationship that begins with love limps on infatuation. It opposes the realism of personalities and seeks solace in the optimism of syrupy sentiments. It's a shrub nourishing the dream of a tree while cattle are grazing around it. A little mindfulness, and the hollowness of their relationship echoes in the distraught heart of the lovers. But, the love that graduates from the checks and balances of friendship is a new edition of love, spurned of mushiness and surplus on understanding. It has no traces of fussiness or the snares of pretense. Friendship doesn't come tip-toeing; it walks with steady steps t...