My Thinking Tree

Better Man

Posted: 7th May 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: ambitions, better, crossroads, dead, destructive, drinker, end, fairy, freedom, funeral, happiness, he, her, highs, his, job, lighthouse, lost, lows, man, marriage, nagged, prodded, road, self-loathing, she, smiling, smoker, spiral, truck

As he stood there smiling, he recalled what a mess he had been when he had met her. A chain smoker, a heavy drinker and locked in a self-destructive spiral of depression and self-loathing. She had seen all that and still become his friend. As a friend she had improved him, as a lover she had shown him what degree of happiness he could attain.

He had been stuck in a dead end job and justified it thinking it was all to sponsor his real ambitions, retire early and all that. She had shown him how to go for what he really wanted. In the now, not some vague future date. She had challenged, prodded and nagged him into becoming a better man. Without ever impinging on his freedom, for she understood he valued that fiercely.

He had been at a crossroads his entire life and she had shown him which road he wanted to walk down. How to ultimately start walking than always be paralyzed by the cons of the decisions he wanted to make but had always stopped himself from.

She had been his lighthouse, the one beacon he had followed with blind faith. His shining light on the gloomiest of day and his radiant sun on the good ones. He had almost forgotten what he had been without her. He remembered of course but that seemed like another person, couldn’t possibly be him, he thought.

It was not like the fairy tales though. They fought, they argued, they hated each others’ guts at times. And found each other boring at times. At other times doubted whether they wanted to be together. The answer had always been yes after varying intervals as they both were miserable without the other.

Through thick and thin they stayed together. Got their first grey hairs, through sickness and health comforting and loving each other, had witnessed each others’ highs and lows. They had never needed a social certificate via marriage to justify staying together. They needed nobody’s approval to know that they belonged together. Through every sarcastic retort to witty repartee they had become fonder of each other. Through each journey and shared experience they grew together and became more inseparable.

They had been contemplating having children when she died. Hit by the truck driver on one of his sleep deprived runs while she was driving to work.

He was at her funeral but it might as well have been his. He was lost again and this time there seemed to be no hope of redemption. Right here and now, he just wanted to be nobody.

By- Aseem Mahajan

What Should I Write about today- He Wondered?

Posted: 5th May 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: bikes, blank, block, boat, Cars, defend, ditty, document, failures, fighting, honour, hunches, hydra, meaningless, mocking, nature, noob, nothingness, p.p.s, p.s., page, politics, punches, religion, row, scream, sports, stream, today, traveling, victories, what, wondered, write, writers'

Well what do I write about today? The blank document teased him. He wanted to beat the white space filled with oodles of nothingness into submission. He wanted fame, glory and to make a living writing and this damn white Microsoft Word document had the gumption to mock him.

He produced black letters on the previously blank space but it was more a matter of form rather than actual material. One small victory over nothingness on the blank canvas the document was touting itself to be. He smiled with an acerbic expression and a glib retort on his lips as he fought with a silent yet unassailable foe. For every page he covered there would be infinite more challenging him to defend his honour. Those fighting the mythological Hydra had a better job, they had to contend with a multiplication into 2, and here he had to face the infinitely renewable Microsoft Word page.

He would go down valiantly he thought, he scribbled on (and as you read on, this is useless prattle, get some constructive thing done, you noob, you). Well, well, well, a quarter of a page down and with the images to come I might just conquer one page the quivering writer thought, a facile victory but meaningful to him in his own way.

He thought of all the victories in his life and thought of writing about them. Nah, maybe some other day, he procrastinated. Then maybe his failures, well that should slaughter many a blank pages. But maybe some other ‘days’, one day was simply not enough to list them all down after all.

So maybe politics? Religion? Nature? Traveling? Sports? Cars? Bikes?

Well when you are rolling with the punches,

Sometimes you just run out of hunches,

Of what to think about in a particular moment;

And what to write about to your readers torment.

Well he had a nice ditty going there, right?

Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream,

Please don’t tear your hair out and please don’t scream.

Then he decided to admit to struggling with his random rant and decided to wrap it up. So here goes another sentence … ( the imaginary reader in his head shouted -Well, be done already).

Bye bye poor reader. I am sorry for wasting your time but more about wasting my time, but we won and one page had to lose to unremitting human thought and the incessant drivel we are capable of. Yay, for small meaningless victories 😛

By- Aseem Mahajan

P.S Due to usual signature below an office mail almost signed off with thanks and regards.

P.P.S. If you actually had the patience to read the whole thing and you are even reading this you really need more interesting hobbies my friend.

Dear Old Big Blue

Posted: 5th May 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: ageing, beautiful, big, blue, disease, Earth, entity, entropy, existence, Fire, freedom, grand, heartache, heartbreak, hunger, joy, marble, meteor, paradox, peace, perverse, philosophers, planet, romance, saints, selfish, selfless, sensory, sentient, universe, war, wonder, world

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The entity soared above Earth, the home of one of the sentient species of the universe. They had primitive technology and grand ideas about their importance in the Universe. They still believed in deities and miracles. There was so much suffering. Yet Earth was one of the most beautiful inhabited planets out there. There was lots of joy, small incidents that warmed his heart analogue. He could see millions crying, millions laughing, life of all shapes and sizes scurrying about following its’ own beat or the routine constructed through the dawn of early civilization.

Seeing everything and feeling everything these humans felt was overwhelming for the entity. He had to shut down his empathy filters. There was so much heartache, hunger and disease. The abundance of joy, of wonder, of the beauty of romance discovered and rediscovered was as unbearable to his sensory apparatus as the aforementioned suffering.

He wondered what would happen to them as eons passed. He did not have to wonder, he just skipped ahead in the reel. He saw battles, decimated towns, he saw the dawn of eternal peace in the realms. The slowing down of entropy of the dominant life form’s organ systems or ageing as it was termed here. Enlightened thinking, first contact with another sentient species, unraveling of irrelevant social taboos, freedom becoming an acceptable solution to all.

He saw every death, every tear, every smile, every heartbreak; and insanity seemed like a real threat even with his empathy filters off. There was so much senseless killing. Oftentimes over land masses as large as an atom in the scheme of things as far as the universe was concerned. Over petty misunderstandings, due to posturing by so called leaders, due to personal ambitions and greed, due to dwindling resources; they fought like creatures that feed on carrion, and set their world on fire. So much collateral suffering.

He went to an abandoned planet to cool off and perhaps preserve his sanity. Earth was a perverse yet beautiful paradox. It was an extraordinary milieu, of saints and philosophers, of ambitious leaders and generals,of selfless people working anonymously for the greater good, of selfish people working for only a self serving agenda , of the quintessential average man, spending a life time seeking joy in the mundane, making the mundane extraordinary at times. Some whose existence was confined to possibilities outside their own control. Such a beautiful world condemned to millennia of suffering before utopia or its nearest possible equilibrium was created.

Well his job was only to observe and report. Humans and all the myriad life forms on Earth were worth preserving he reported; the thousands of years where they would reach a semblance of enlightenment notwithstanding. So the meteor that would have wiped out dear old earth in AD 3578 was averted. Some hailed it as a miracle; others spotted the energies behind the event and thus was made the first contact with another sentient species.

By- Aseem Mahajan

That one Night he lost in Alcohol’s Bright Light

Posted: 5th May 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: 500 days of summer, address, alcohol, bar, befuddled, bench, bike, black, black out, bright, Car, ceo, clothes, corporation, covered, doorway, drunk, english, forehead, grand, handsome, home, homeless, india, machinations, petrichor, pneumonia, Rain, tab, wednesday

He knew he had to go somewhere. But for the life of him he couldn’t recall where. Getting blind drunk on a Wednesday would do that to you, actually getting blind drunk on any day. Days and alcohol aren’t discriminatory that way. Nice and liberal of them he thought.

Well he had paid his bar tab, next step trying to figure out whether he had come by car or bike and the even profounder question of whether he owned a car or a bike. Then another nagging doubt set in, had he come with his wife? Did he have a wife/girlfriend?

Only one thing was certain, he had had too much alcohol. This had never happened before, this memory loss. But since it was a memory loss he couldn’t be certain about that too. Well, well, well life isn’t so predictable after all. Wait, why did he think that was a revelation. Was his life predictable and boring?

What should I do he wondered? The most logical thing seemed to try and get home. But where was home? Did he have a home? He looked down at his clothes. Certainly didn’t seem like a homeless guy’s clothes. Then it just hit him there is a thing called a wallet. It might have an address, a name and other details which may come in handy. He found it and a stranger seemed to be peering up at him from the driver’s licence, so he at least knew how to drive. Did he really look like that he thought, and then perhaps it was good he did not to have a mirror around so that he could persist with the delusion that he was strikingly handsome.

The address mentioned was another country’s though, oh wait was he in a foreign country? Which one? Since the licence listed his home country as India that narrowed it down to anywhere but India. Well that didn’t help much did it? Well the signs were in English so he must be in an English speaking country, or so he concluded. To narrow it down further required active brain function which appallingly had decided to desert him leaving a country cousin to make do for the sophisticated job of doing his existential thinking. Hmm… he decided he had to spend the night somewhere and figure things out as things came to him in the morning, if they did. Anything seemed possible, it was a magical time.

So he found a bench and slept. He woke up wet and confused in what seemed like a minute later. Then he cheered up as he smelled the fresh rain. Ah, Petrichor. He was so glad he knew the word for that wonderful scent. Then his drenched underpants brought him back to the grim reality.

Well there’s nothing to it, his befuddled brain responded, get wet and get pneumonia or worse, or find a covered doorway.

The next day the just fired CEO of Grand Machinations – We really want your money, can we please have it, Corporation limited; woke up wet and sore on the doorway of a house in London suburbs. It was a bright sunny day as he rolled down the stairs as the newspaper boy woke him up with the wallop of a well-aimed newspaper across his bright externally, yet not so bright within, forehead.

By- Aseem Mahajan

Unrequited Love

Posted: 5th May 2014 by aseem.ace in Poems, Thoughts
Tags: chaos, chords, crushing, damning, existence, hair, heart, life, loneliness, love, marred, poem, proof, scarred, smiled, tousle, tried, unrequited, vanity, welcome, wisps

Transfixed he stared at those errant strands wanting nought but to touch them, Tousle those further to see her play longer on the chords that seemed to his touch alluringly welcome,

Those wisps of hair she kept fiddling with when nervous or angry, perhaps driven by a subconscious desire for order amidst the chaos that her life had become,

He heard every word, but heard nothing at all as she told him the story of another day in her life,

A life torn by sorrow and misery and all that had turned her into this perfect creature of strife,

He was jealous of the past as he had not been there, and feared the future where he might be absent again,

For it was unrequited love and friendship blossoming amongst the ruins of a familiar pain,

He remembered the first time he had met her, those incredible moments where his heart shot through the roof,

Where he was dumbfounded as for such a divine creature to exist he needed more than a mere sensory proof,

He talked, she smiled, they spent a memorable evening together with friends, and they parted with a song on his lips.

And she left smiling and playing with the aforementioned wisps,

Time passed and the friendship blossomed, seasons turned from spring to autumn, his heart grew fonder as he on her magical hold over him continued to ponder,

At last there came that day when he gathered his courage , his wits and his abandon , and told her that he loved her and why, his heart filled with fear, hope and wonder,

Then came the crushing lows as she dealt soft but definitive blows, putting him down gently or so she tried,

His heart shed a pound and little by little all the dreams he had built up about that moment shriveled and died,

They remained friends, and every interaction was a painful reminder for him of that awkward, vulnerable moment, torment at the closeness and the distance driving him to insanity,

He often wondered if his infatuation was foolhardy and a simple product of his vanity,

Time heals all wounds and his wounds scabbed over and healed too, he was happy again but scarred,

He smiled as always but there was an occasional ephemeral glint of sadness, as he realized the truth of his being – with a damning loneliness amidst the crowd his entire existence was to be marred.

By- Aseem Mahajan

Of a Life ill spent

Posted: 30th April 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: ages, climbed, curmudgeon, destination, dreams, empathy, heart, higher, imagination, journey, jump, land, life, louis, man, matrix, reality, rebellions, road, robert, romantic, sea, stevenson, thorny, trekked, undone, unknown, unsaid, vista, young man

As he climbed higher he was witness to a fantastic vista. The horizon endless, the sea and the land merging into each other with the harmony that only nature can achieve. He had come here ages ago once. He had treaded the same pine needle strewn paths on the edge of the world or so it had seemed back then to his fertile imagination. He had been quite a young man back then and had thought that he knew what it meant to be old and worldly wise. But dreams had still seemed possible.

The world his for the taking, just because he wished it so.

The future a wonderful possibility of multiple divergent realities, each interesting and enjoyable in its own right.

Here he was much more cynical and alone once again, the old familiar joy coursing through his battered being. The dreams crushed under years of corporate drudgery blossoming forth from his curmudgeon heart. Reliving the adventure he had once promised to repeat many a time; after years of keeping his sense of adventure abated. He was remembering the first time he had ever trekked up a small hill, the thrill of it and his racing heart as a child of no more than 5 or 6. The numerous times he had taken a leap into the unknown and come back richer for the experience. The journey in hindsight almost always more romantic than the destination.

Yet as age had entrapped him with the web of responsibilities he had made compromises. He had thought he was being rational and pragmatic. Life is lived in the grim matrix of reality and not the glamorous dreamscapes of fantasies he had reasoned. He had been miserable, yet he had treaded the path with a smile on his face. He had seemed successful to his peers, only his close friends knew his real anguish. He had stayed single out of an obstinacy to find the one, as if she existed. Well, maybe for some. So foolish of him to hang on to that one rebellion and compromise on the many mini rebellions that would have gladdened his heart. Well as they say age brings wisdom, but for him it was all about things left undone and unsaid. Of thoughts banished for fear of real world implications, of the road not taken as thorny as it might have been.

At 50, dying, more due to apathy for his own desires rather than the affliction which had been announced to him by his doctors. The pronouncement replete with the fake empathy a doctor tends to develop and loathes himself for unless he can rationalize it. Reminiscing about the life truly wasted he smiled. He remembered why he had come here today.

That promise he had made to himself, to go out with a bang and not a whimper.

Snare drums roll….

Jump

By- Aseem Mahajan

That One time When I kind of Died

Posted: 28th April 2014 by aseem.ace in Thoughts
Tags: 72, atheist, cpr, dad, dark, death, diarrhoea, died, entity, family, heaven, hindu, lights, omnipotent, once, permanently, rejuvenation, ring, shit, stupid, the boy who lived, tunnel, verbal, virgins, white, world, zilch

I have actually been dead once for over a minute at the age of around 3. My father was a doctor otherwise I would have remained dead for a bit longer and more permanently. He performed CPR and saved me that day and inflicted upon the world my verbal diarrhoea.

And maybe I was too young or something but I don’t remember a tunnel or white lights or anything. Or maybe Hindu heaven is more subdued or something (as I was back then a Hindu, default setting by virtue of being born in a Hindu household, much like a mobile phone’s default factory settings). In fact the only recollection I have of the incident is of waking up much later and seeing my parents’ and relatives huddled around me deeply worried. I was too young back then but if that happened now I would be so disappointed if in what I mistook for heaven, all I get to meet are my family. Where do I sign on for the 72 virgins deal?

Well as an atheist heaven would be zilch, so anywhere else would be not heaven. (And non-existent, so there’s the plus side).

There was a time in medical school when I was obsessed with death and the various post death scenarios we usually speculate about. At the time it seemed like if there was an afterlife the very argument that it’s a parallel dimension makes it unverifiable. But that’s the beauty of faith related science, you got to take it on faith, empirical evidence be damned. Then I started reading about views of various religions on death. As I went through a normal doctor’s routine along with the metaphysical takes on death I found them amusing, poignant and delusional to various degrees.

But hey I can understand why all of us need a safety blanket, the world is big and vast and so bloody dark. Plus there are movies like The Ring. So from a kid who died once (cf. the boy who lived) to an adult who knows that ultimately he would only die once, from a decently religious kid to a nearly pompous atheist, I have rationalized all the things I do or want to do by invoking the YOLO clause (Pretty annoying but convenient word to cover up for the stupid shit you want to do or end up doing).

For one day I would die; full stop and all in the right place. Hopefully not very young, neither too old (unless they invent rejuvenation in the meanwhile, then really really old would be the way to go.); and this time I hope I don’t wake up to anything. After all the atheist rationalization I would feel very stupid then and have a pissed off omnipotent entity to fend off to boot.

By- Aseem Mahajan

Disclaimer: I don’t mean to hurt anybody’s religious sentiments, this is just an expression of my own belief system. Atheist and Pastafarian, all hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster

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