fabulously flawed... much like the hope diamond

"What's so great about the truth? The truth hurts people - try lying for a change. It's the currency of the world."

Closer, stage version.


Had seen this long back, and this line struck a chord. But of late I have developed this unhealthy streak of truthfulness. Completely unecessary and extremely inconvenient. And have realized how bad the truth can be.

In my current state of hightened dissonance, professional and otherwise, truthfulness can be very very dangerous. If one must lie, it has to be in states like this. Well, never mind (that cure for all evils)!

My respect for Ken Kesey overflows whenever I come across absolutely anything he's written. Couple of days back, when I logged into my Bloomberg terminal at work, there he was saying: “Take what you can use and let the rest go by”. And it struck me that there lay the key to happiness.

I have realized that I spend my life between states of extreme. About 95% of the time I do nothing. Nothing at all. Not just nothing of any consequence. Simply nothing. I frustrate people around me, but I think they love me, partly for that (though they might complain that with me there never ever is any hope of "closure"). I keep listening to the same music, reading that book, writing that book (yes RV, THAT book). In that same house, in with that same car, which I will never drive. That house whose walls now talk back to me in those rabbit-shaped peels.

I am aware I am missing a few things- swank apartment, fancy car, hot dates that IK keeps lusting after. And oh yes all those gadgets that the money in the bank can buy, that fancy new club...


And then all of a sudden something happens (for instance the week before my parents land up). And I want to pack everything, all experiences, into a day or two. I then want everything- a night of binging downtown, of movies, that holiday in Ladakh, of fancy cars, of big bonuses and blowing it up instantly- oh yeah!

And some things are managed. Others not. Stuff how hard I might, it just doesn't fit. It can be frustrating... sigh!

But I do realize something. The moments I really relish in my life, the memories I cherish, are from that 95% when I have accomplished nothing on paper.

~ Like walking from Mt Mary to Bandstand and Back... uphill-downhill with AK and CDC. in the middle of the night, all of us alone, with only the shimmer of the moon on the creased sea for company

~ Like noticing how your skin creased around the corner of your lips. How the follicles near your ear stood up each time you exhaled, and the incandescence of them in my dimly lit bedroom.

~ Like having tea from that flask, in between, sips of Old Monk, and writing stuff like this

~ Like that walk in the first rain... so many questions on my mind and so few answers. And that one that just refused to go away.

~ Like those numerous debates on things- like love, like youth, like relationships - things that are unlikely to be relevant for me ever again, but once were.

~ And things that do concern me, enormously.

~Like inspiration that needs to work, but alas won't

~ Like discovering the Johnny Cash rendition of Bono's ONE. That brilliant baritone voice, and those beautiful words: "act like never had love, and want me to go without" And movies... ah movies. Falling in love with such things is so easy. Why isn't it the same with people?

~Like discovering Calcutta, while roaming iaround in a cab driven by an Osama-bin-Laden look-a-like

~Like doing that little bit of ego massage and some humour in the process

But then how can I ever forget that the only meaningful thing I have written was the product of the other 5%