I think,

I think I will leave you the day you think me a fool.

Or when I catch myself thinking that you are one.

It's not really about love or lust or affection or loneliness.

(Perhaps a little bit about loneliness, but that's understandable, isn't it?)

It's about knowing that you don't feel the contempt for me that you feel for everyone else. That Idon't feel the urge to roll my eyes every time you speak. Not because we are better than anyone else, of course. It's about having that little bit of compassion, giving that little bit of space before pouncing on each other, that love so beautifully affords, something we do not have for everyone else.

It's actually about having someone to look at and think, yes, I am that bad, but so are you, so that makes it alright. It's pathetic, but we knew that all along, it's just reassuring to see it in someone else.

But mostly, it's about growing. Using each other to get out of that terrible circle of looking for external reinforcement and reaffirmation, because such things are sought only when we continue to suffer from the useless, debilitating disease of inferiority, forgetting that comparing oneself to another is the most useless, baseless deed, a deed the merits of which we have been fed relentlessly since the day we were born.

It's about having that space for ourselves where we do not need to prove to each other how pure and well intentioned we are, scrambling to cover our hypocrisies from each other, trying to be better, not better than what we are, but better than each other.

It's about knowing that while the whole world might think ill of me, you don't. I should not need even that, I should be capable of standing up to my own actions and values without at all looking for reinforcement, but I think knowing that I am incapable of doing that as of now is a big step in itself. And knowing that I can tentatively hope for a future where you will be there, giving me that modicum of space wherein I can sort myself out, wherein I can look inside myself and try and dredge out something honest, is comforting.

If we ever get into that race, that race of holding scores and waiting for the other to make a wrong move, I think we are better off without each other. Now, I don't believe we will ever get there, because we are good at looking at ourselves and being forgiving, at being alone and knowing the value of finding someone like each other.

I think love, for whatever it's worth, takes a lot of courage.

My mother, is an amazing, amazing woman.

So many untapped thoughts just waiting to be drawn out. So much fun and energy and tragedy and pathos all rolled into one complex, incredibly fascinating person.

Its such a tragedy that I have only realised this when I'm 22, and when she is 60.

Tissue of Silver

I have tried to avoid this for a long, long, long time, but this is simply too lovely to not share.

This is a story that I read 2 years ago, written by Fearless Diva, and I keep coming back to it.
Tissue of Silver

It is,
1) Fan fiction.
2) Harry Potter fan fiction.
3) Slash fiction - GAY Harry Potter fan fiction, where, (and don't run away now) Harry and Draco are the pair.
4) Long, exhaustively detailed and quite incredibly lovely and quaint.
5) Hot as hell.
6) One of the most beautifully characterized and poignant stories I've read, and I've read a LOT of fan fiction.

Draco here is simply there to fall in love with. Its his story, through and through. The interaction between him and Severus is wry and touching, the interaction between him and Harry is hilarious and hot.

I know, there are a lot of homophobes out there, and yes, you don't need to subject yourselves to this.

For those who are even mildly interested, read! I ughed and ahhed through my first Harry\Draco slash but my friend (thanks Pooja!) forced me to read this and this converted me. For good.

My Manic and I

The world is a drought when out of love
Please come back to us
You're all of the above

"I'm making a choice to be out of touch.
Leave me be," He said, He said, He said,


"Leave me here in my stark raving sick sad little world!
Leave me here in my stark raving sick sad little world!"


Sick Sad Little World
Incubus

Threads

And the distances slowly wear us down, chipping away all the warm layers of forced happiness and smiles until what we are lies bare.

We were never beautiful.

I see you seeing me see you silently, gazing into the distance, staring at the walls, clutching at conversational straws and fucking up anyway.

It was never meant to be like this.

But what was? We were never meant to be, two lost, lost souls colliding like blind moths in the stifling ether of the universe. We bartered words for love, secrets for trust, staying up and staring at screens, inducing perversity and openness with oh so much to drink and no sleep at all.

It was never meant to happen, that little click in the universe, that little shift of reality that were explosions in our heads, that brought me east to you, where you came to me with glassy eyes and no defenses at all.

And now we are lost, in our own grimy lives, having nothing but bitterness to give. Lost and angry and more than a little scared, waiting for the first shoe to fall, resigned for the second.

Lost, lost souls, drifting again, but connected by a little glowing thread, tenuous and undying, braver than the both of us.

And that,
that makes all the difference.

Messy nights when we transmit our frustrations through useless bandwidths, huddle in the cold, trembling and laughing, missing what we need the most, try and satisfy our cravings with paper rolls and dried herbs, move restlessly and look for something, anything, to distract us. We were never meant for this, this life full of purpose and determination. We make do with rush jobs and smothered consciences, wearing a new mask of readiness every morning, not even bothering to get up on the days which are too difficult.

We made the deal with the devil, sacrificing, unknowingly, any future constancy for just this one moment of happiness, just this one smile and just the prospect of one warm body next to us, to take the chillness away. We do so many things to hold on to this, this little spark of happiness, pretending to care, pretending, more often, not to, pretending to not mind and pretending to get on with our lives. We try and send out garbled messages with garbled meanings across channels of communications that were never meant to bear the burden of our love. We hang on, grimly, to people, to things and to ideas, refusing to believe that they are now obsolete, refusing to admit to ourselves that we could have made mistakes.

We do not want to start anew, become better, right our wrongs, because we convince ourselves that we are perfectly fine just where we are, in our own mess and hypocrisy, in our own dirt and stink, which now hold the familiar smell of home.

Fertility is overrated.

Really.
Fertility is overrated.

Listen!

Pins and Needles
Mutemath

Paper-thin conviction
Turning another page
Plotting how to build myself to be
Everything that I am not at all

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
And I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

I'm one of them, I'm one of them, oh

Oh, why must I work so hard
Just so I can feel like the noble ones?
Obligations to my heart are gone
Superficial lines explain it all
Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
Oh, I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
Oh, and I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

I'm one of them, I'm one of them
I'm one of them, I'm one of them

Lab Rats and Pink Alarms

Nonchalance and elaborately crafted indifference laced with dark humour. So cynical at such a tender age. A semi-sadistic streak of voyeurism as a sardonic being in your head watches others milling about and running around trying to gather all the stimuli you give them, reinforcing whatever belief they already hold of you, they become dogs and bitches to your Pavlovian instinct. Lab rats they all are.

Falling in love with a lab rat. How does that feel? Do you relish the challenge? Do you resent it? Will the rat ever transcend its function? Will it invade that smoldering and ashen wall that surrounds whatever you've so painstakingly hidden? Rats are known for their deceit and strength, maybe you are setting yourself up for something that might overwhelm you. Or maybe you'll squash it dead. With you, no one can tell. The sadism and the gentleness go hand in hand, one never knows just which brand of you will manifest itself.

Oh the fascination of the broken. It sings and calls and tells you, tells you that you can fix it, that it has only been waiting for you to fix it. The excitement of the ride into a broken mind, with the jagged edges and sudden, gravity-free falls. It will make you gasp and bleed and laugh and scream. It calls to you, to prod it, to twist it this way and that, prick a needle here, tie up that little loose end there. It tempts you, telling you that you can fix your own broken pieces as you go along. Now that could be a fabrication. Nevertheless, it won't be boring. No it won't.

So many little thoughts in your head come with so many little alarm bells, each with a history, each with a baggage of its own, trying to fit comfortably within a limited space. So many risks you run each day, waiting for one of these alarms to go off, waiting to see red. Because there are so many of them! All red, pink and white dots milling around, making interesting patterns and tainting everything they encounter, every new memory. And you, you actively go about activating these alarms, until there's nothing in your head but the insistent clamour of too many bruises, too many scabs picked. You can't hear yourself think in all that noise, and you're free.

Freedom comes at such a cost, doesn't it? But as someone very wise said, the ultimate freedom is the freedom to face the consequences. And you, you do that so beautifully. Even with your world falling apart, you do that so beautifully.

Need

So what was I thinking about? Need.

Need is a dangerous, dangerous thing. All these people who keep talking about non-materialism and detachment and things on a similar vein really do have a point. Need turns into dependence faster than you could say the damned word and dependence, unless carefully negotiated, will spawn emotions that are usually up to no good at all - bitterness, resentment, paranoia, and, in the end, loneliness, merrily accompanied by all the former emotions.

Where do you draw the line between dependence and avoidance? Figuring that out seems to be objective, if you want your lifetime to reasonably happy, that is. A little bit of self respect really does help in this quest. Plus loads of distractions and an acceptance that being alone can actually be fun. Most of the times. Well, sometimes at least.

Do people negotiate all this in some subconscious realms of their mind or do they painstakingly think things out like I do?

Old people are sad and adorable and terribly frustrating and I feel like taking their terrible fragility and vulnerability and locking it away somewhere. Old people should be cuddled and be happy and be pampered and should not be scared and cower and feel alone and starve and be in pain. Old people can break your heart if you are not careful. Watch out.

I constantly need others to know that I like being alone. It's tragic, it is. I'm uncomfortably straddling the line between being unable to deal with company and being unable to be alone. I have to keep proving to others that I don't need them. The inherent contradiction in the very sentence is like a toothache in my brain.

I really hope its an age thing.

1) My roommate is a sweetheart, really. Ultra conservative meet damned sweet meet whiz programmer meet tolerant of my psychotic behaviour meet bubbly as hell. I sit there hunched up in a corner spreading encouraging waves of doom and she bubbles all over it.

2) I smell dog everywhere. The dogs in the hostel reek of pee and that amazing smell of wet, matted fur that NEVER leaves you. Never. The one that sits outside my room looking imploringly at me every time I open the door is especially fragrant.

3) Helplessness sucks. I would suffer everything for everybody rather than watch them suffer helplessly. Of course, I would immediately be wishing the opposite if I was indeed suffering. Hypocrisy, unlike helplessness, does not suck. Covering for both sides of an argument is so fool proof!

4) My hair smells of cigarette smoke all the time, causing roommate to wrinkle nose in a not-almost-disgusted-but-benignly-tolerant-as-always way.

5) I really do wish people would think before judging when they are not in possession of all the facts. I really do wish I do that too.

6) Men are wonderful creatures. Un-understandable as hell, but wonderful. I feel like taking a few apart and trying to see how they work, but I think I'll end up finding rusted wheels and a few broken springs that still twang around.

The Scold's Bridle

Disturbing, to say the least. Its been a while since I have read about so much rape and molestation in a single book. But the characters! They are so beautifully and exquisitely crafted that its difficult not to fall a little in love with them. The murder mystery eventually comes to its own dreary conclusion but that becomes absolutely secondary to the way the people are portrayed in the book.

Excerpt:
"Then you obviously require lessons on the male of the species" Jack said. "There are only three things to remember. One: most men need to be told what to do by women. Even sex improves when women take the trouble to point the man in the right direction. Two: compared with women, most men are inadequate. They are less perceptive, have little or no intuition, are poorer judges of character and, therefore, more vulnerable to criticism. They find aggression extremely intimidating because they're not supposed to and, in short, they are by far the more sensitive of the two sexes. Three: any man who does not conform to this pattern should be avoided. He will be a swaggering, uneducated brute whose intellect will be so small that the only way he can give himself a modicum of authority is by demeaning anyone who's foolish enough to put up with him, and, finally, he will lack the one thing that all decent men have in abundance, namely a deep and abiding admiration for women."
____________________________________________

Update - Look Here :D

I gotta new Pratchett I gotta new Pratchett!

*jig*





















Of course its going to be good. Its going to be the most amazing-est book ever written!

Just like every other Pratchett :)

Yeah okay, so even I got sick of seeing the incessantly morbid and, it has to be said, pitiful entries in here. Not to mention lots of people asking me sympathetically if I'm doing better, apparently recovering from whatever mental illness that caused such bitter outpourings.

Full recovery seems unlikely, but the prognosis is not that bleak :D Its nice to be sad and angsty and petulant sometimes. After all, this is Tantrums of a troglodyte. I must live up to the complaining bit of it as well as the cave dwelling bit, which I do without making the least of effort.

So here it is! The new bright blog! The blog which, instead of causing you to strain your eyes in the low contrast environment, will now cause you to blink warily in apprehension of my apparently unending supply of happiness and love for all things that live. You know? That very sentiment that makes you want to strangle the bemused grin off whichever idiot is wearing it.

Here's to being manic!!
_____________________________________________________________________________________


Of course, if moods go by colour, the black moods and the manic glee will ultimately colour the blog a dirty brown. Life has no narrative beauty sometimes, really.

My existential angst has been pacified for a while :)

h e a r t b r o k e n

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

stop being such a girl

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

get a life

A day of auto-bus rides, detective novels and questionable realities.

Saw Inception today, which, apart from totally kicking ass, raised the same questions we were talking about during the ride to the theater. We being me and brother. After snuffling, biting and nosing around the same point, which is the most common way of approaching the entire idea of reality (i.e, in a roundabout way), the general consensus was that no one can ever know. Ever. Not only is that because of the extreme subjectiveness of the entire experience, but also because there IS no single definition of what is real, just as no one knows what is right, what is true, what is good, blah blah. I know, I can wax lyrical about the lack of a center to our existence and about how everything exists in a relative mesh of interdependent and intermingling meanings, about how nothing is concrete and therefore about how everything, at the end of the day, is just a value judgement you end up making (from numerous external cues such as family, society, religion, the books you read, your friends, and, of course, the media.)

But the point is, whats the point? Okay so I realised that there IS no point, there IS nothing really to live for, there is no transcendental goal that will make my entire life meaningful. Not only will I ever know if what I think is right, but even if it is, what can I do? Jump off a building because I've just discovered that the entire process of living is meaningless? That will simply not do. Not only because I'm a terrible coward (which I am), but also because this life is all I've got and I'll grimly hang on to it, like it or hate it.

Another aspect that came up was, can I now consider myself self aware? Now that I can see through all the social constructions, now that I realise that "reality" must be taken with a pinch of salt, and that "truth" or "good and evil" shouldn't be taken at all. How will I ever know? What yardstick do I have to rate how aware I am? For all I know pretty much everything I believe in might be wrong. But you gotta believe in something (in order to avoid the entire jumping off scenario), so you might as well pick one principle and stick with it. Or if thats too hard, pick one and stick with it till you get tired of it, then pick another. Only, if you intend to do that, make sure you pick a place far away from where you stuck with a first principle, because you'll be branded a hypocrite before you can utter that word.

At the end, the middle path seems the best. Awareness that what you do with your life isn't worth goat shit, but understanding that you have to do something with your life anyway. Hopefully some sort of nirvana can be reached at some point. Some sort of peace. But the prospects look pretty bleak.

Excerpt From - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

"Leontyne Bennett skillfully dissected in 'The Commonwealth of Lost Vanities'(1969) Virgil's renowned quotation Love conquers all.

For centuries upon centuries we have been misinterpreting this famed trio of words. The uninformed masses breathlessly hold up this dwarfish phrase as a justification for snogging in public squares, abandoning wives, cuckolding husbands, for the escalating divorce rate, for swards of bastard children begging for handouts in the Whitechapel and Aldgate tube stations - when in fact, there is nothing remotely encouraging or cheerful about this oft-quoted phrase. The Latin poet wrote 'Amor vincit omnia' or 'Love conquers all'. He did not write, 'Love frees all' or 'liberates' all, and therein lies the first degree of our flagrant misunderstanding. Conquer: to defeat, subjugate, massacre, cream, make mincemeat out of. Surely this cannot be a positive thing. And then he wrote, 'conquers all' - not exclusively the unpleasant things, destitution, assassination, burglary, but all, including pleasure, peace, common sense, liberty and self-determination. And thus we may appreciate that Virgil's words are not encouragement, but rather a caveat, a cue to evade, shirk, elude the feeling at all costs, else we risk the massacre of the things we hold most dear, including ones sense of self"

You HAVE to fuck it up, no?

I mean, finally, finally, things are going somewhat in the direction you think you want them to go in, but oh no, you can not leave it at that. You have to go ruin something there so that all the happiness it could offer you gets smothered beneath the fucked-up-ness. Its like a part of your head craves for all the stress you create in you and all the others who scramble around, last minute, to clean up your mess.

Well, kill that part dead. Because one day, you will not be this lucky. In fact, you might have already run out of it by now.

7:03 AM
And I can't sleep.

So log on to Facebook, and observe others, others I know, others I thought I knew, others I used to know, and a few I have never seen, live their (productive) lives. Because mine, believe me mine, is not productive.

Who goes on to Facebook as soon as he or she gets up anyway?

Facebook is evil.
It can not be banished and it asks you thousands of reasons as to why you hate it and it justifies its importance to you.
Much like everyone else actually.
Except those who got out when they could. Those who simply retreated into their shells and got lost in some crevice within their heads.

Facebook rule #237
Never put up a display pic in which the other dude is prettier than you.
Really now, isn't it elementary? You want to attract people to you, have them stalk you, have them look at your pictures and your updates.
And then you want to complain about how terrible and cheap Facebook has become, about how random men keep poking you, keep writing on your wall.
But you will be smug about it. You will complain about it with an indulgent, entitled air. After all, when you place your life on display, you expect some returns, yes?

Mockery is good.
You have to be able to be mean, witty and creatively cruel in order to mock someone.
Self mockery, then, is a masochist's dream come true.
Sit back and take a look at the meaninglessness around you. Your life, with its elaborately constructed relationships, the alliances and betrayals, your hopes and dreams (oh how terribly clichéd these words are), your sense of self, which, in all probability, you have internalised from a completely external source, but still cling on to the notion that it is self generated and pure. That call you got yesterday, from someone you once loved, you once thought you loved, calling you up in a flurry of monotony and asking you if you knew any drug peddlers.
Maybe that someone just beat you to the inevitable end.
Or maybe there's a meaning to it all, a meaning that will shine through, as you lie dying.

I feel like a disjointed song sometimes. Everything desperately trying to come together, but never quite managing.
The resulting sound is slightly discordant and heavily annoying.


And finally, ladies and gentlemen, a conversation between Death and his grand daughter.
YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

'So we can believe the big ones?'

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

'They're not the same at all!'

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point-'

MY POINT EXACTLY.

She tried to assemble her thoughts.

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT.

'Yes, but people don't think about that,' said Susan. Somewhere there was a bed...

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A...A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

'Talent?'

OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.

'You make us sound mad,' said Susan. A nice warm bed...

NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?