The Year So Far

2015 has been quite an eventful year for me. Eventful is so much so an umbrella term that it encompasses all things good and bad. The bad has helped me to keep my feet firmly on ground and the good has aided in the expansion of my vision.
I have learnt that not every kind word has a kind intent, as La Rochefoucauld puts it aptly in his maxim " what seems generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a greater one." No act is ever a purely selfless act, selfish shenanigans always linger on but are well hidden behind the veils of sentiments, lest you question them.
I have learnt to probe and doubt things that for long have been thought to be beyond the realms of logical deduction and existed solely on faith. I have learnt that god only exists because man fears oblivion & death.
I have learnt not to exercise bad faith or mauvaise foi as Sartre puts it. Scrutiny of self action is the best tool for self extrapolation.
I have gained interest in philosophy though I shall admit in all fairness that it does seem like a bunch of baloney at times. I identify myself as an existentialist but cannot tell existentialism , absurdism & nihilism apart. I have learnt that 'Kant' is actually pronounced as 'cunt' and Nietzsche's overman is not an undearwear and cloak clad flying alien. I have learnt that we all are like Sisyphus, only ours is not a perennial doom. 
I have learnt that to sound intelligent you need the validation of grades and sophistication comes from using scores of humongous words with no intrinsic meaning whatsoever.
I have learnt that math does have practical applications and not knowing it is nothing to be proud of. Also history is not just a catalog of dates , valuable life lessons can be taken from it.

This year in particular has shaped my rational mind but it has also taught me that the young mind rides high on hormones and is rebellious & impulsive , ergo , it is prone to making mistakes.

Forgone Youth

I turn the pages of the newspaper, decorated with stars & starlets of the tinsel town. I too was one of them, though, before the advent of such media furore. Every single small act in privy or public by these actors are written about in full detail. I detest it but so I crave for such attention.I seem to pity the stars of the decade for their lack of privacy and the sheer discomfort of media intrusion at all times but seldom do I realize that I don't pity them , I pity myself , for I am not subjected to such fandom anymore. I am old, very old, so old that I have forgotten certain fragments of my own life. Maybe in a years time, I will forget a bit more of my being but  what I can never forget is the essence of being a hero to the masses , though a reel hero but a hero nonetheless.

I feel the fine wrinkles and loose skin on my neck, in stark contrast to the perfectly done faces that stare me from the tabloids. I wish the curse of old age falls on them too, which surely will, eventually.They will also be secluded and made to rot in misery and penury. A charming face can sustain you for how long!.

I don't click my photographs anymore, I hate how I look now. My fragile figure , wrinkled skin and bald head is laughed upon , by others as well as by me. Ah! what a plebe I was to think I was omnipotent.

Thoughts of suicide fills me with hope. Irony much?. But then the reality hits me hard, what is the point of killing myself now when my image has been tarnished already. I should have killed myself in my youth, at the prime of my thriving career.To go down the pages of history as a figure of reverence and adulation. Alas! , Its all too late. I have to live the remainder of my life as it is, as a pariah. Old , lost & forgotten.

We seldom do , what we preach

Rainy Nights

I am a sucker for rainy nights
for I become invisible & unheard that time
like a long kept secret forgotten
like a blot of ink on a mighty canvas

I am like those zillion water dots
rubbed against the thumb of a child on a window
&
I am that one single bead of anticipation
on the brows of a virgin lover

I am the moist sadness
in the eyes of a mother

I am the happy gleam
dipped in nostalgia of a  decade old kinship

I am a many to catch
but a few to hold

Wishful Thinking

Why I dislike the education system of this country.

Eons ago when I was a fifth grader, I had this amazing teacher named Mrs. P.V. sunitha. She was the one who rekindled my lost interest in natural sciences. I was never the person who could mug up facts & then puke them all over the sheets in the examinations. I always tried to understand the concepts, sometimes I could & sometimes I couldn’t but nevertheless I chose to write what I felt rather than copy – pasting every god damn thing printed on the prescribed textbooks that I had no clue about. I was a curious kid & Mrs. sunitha appreciated me for that. Later on when I passed and went one class further, I still maintained contact with her. I paid visits to the teacher’s room just to wish her a good day & spent all my recess breaks talking to her about stars, constellations & galaxies far and beyond. A year later she suffered a neural spine injury and changed school. I never saw her again.

She was and still remains my best teacher. It’s quite taxing to find good teachers nowadays. In a hurry to complete the given syllabus, the teachers end up compromising on the quality of teaching. Seldom do they stop & ponder over to clarify the very basics of a concept. Let us take this one example..

Any student who has studied high school level science is familiar with the concept of ‘logarithms’. But can any one of you tell me what exactly is a logarithm, like, when I ask you to calculate log₂(8) , what am I asking you basically?. In simple words, a logarithm answers the question ‘how many of one number do we need to get another?’ So simply put, log₂(8) means how many 2’s does it take to make an 8.Nobody taught me at school about the very basics of logarithms & so I ended up fearing and loathing math. We were asked to find log values of gigantic numbers but we were never taught the very basics. It’s like dreaming of constructing the empire state building on a six inch slab, with no solid foundation, it is doomed to fall. Likewise in education also a solid foundation is a must. Clear the basics before going any further. This is the irony of the situation; we know the hard stuff but have little to no knowledge about the simple ones.

A bit more confident

I am growing
I will grow
Becoming a bit more confident
With each stride I take.

I won't Bawl
I won't bicker
I would just silently whisper
There is more to come from me

My palms might sweat
When I shake hands
My feet might tremble
Under watchful eyes
My throat might dry up
When I try hard to speak
I may cry , I may run
But I will come
Come back to this

As I become a bit more confident
With every backlash
Every harsh word
Every sly smile
&every fake friend......