Ten wishes for 2013

Disclaimer: It’s me saying to myself. People whoever get to read this post are more than welcome to follow.

1. Read more.
2. Write as much as you can.
3. Make every day productive by any means.
4. Learn to forgive everyone (whomever so is applicable).
5. Never show your sadness to anyone.
6. Do what you love the most.
7. Learn to respect everyone and their choices as well.
8. Do something credibly to share with your buddies by the end of the year.
9. Get over your anger completely. Or reduce it to the maximum.
10. Try to stay in touch with the people you love, forever.

There are many other wishes that are not included. Some might seem personal too, but never mind. 

The wish list above might even seem clichéd to some. Again, never mind. Happy 2013!

Lies

I hate to say this, but today, in long, is one of the worst days in a better way. Or I should say it’s one of the worst days in a not-so-worst way. Having said that, I know I must be happy at least for nothing happened on the far left end of the spectrum. Yeah, right. I must be. Moreover, these sorts of days make us swim stealthily in a realization phase. And that’s for good, you see.

And swimming in such phase today made me realize, for the nth time, that I wish I learn to learn things in a better way; especially when it comes to reading people. Yeah, I really mean it. How many times do I need to keep on regretting after it all had happened? Seriously. I still hanker sometimes, maybe on the days like today, that I should get an extra power from nowhere to read people, to handle them. It would help me in moving the way they want me to. I know it will eventually wane my identity out. But who cares anyway!

Last week I came to know that a friend of mine had lied – or in perfect grammatical words, have been lying – to me over some important things – that can also be considered as trivial by some, but I say important because I just took them that way, a serious way to say the least. Call it as my fault. I agree. But I was incapacitated. Totally. A mutual friend of ours explicated certain things to me during one of our everyday casual conversations. I was all but left ravaged. I was left fumbled. It even led me to an imaginary stage show where that person, in several unseen avatars, was circling me with some rapturous movements.

I have to admit that I’m not perfect. I do have faults; plenty of them. I have lied to people, both known and unknown, but mostly, when I was in a position to save myself from any unwanted consequences of my past bloomer or something like that. I know anyone can say such lame excuse to defend them. But trust me, mine were never meant to hurt anyone. Sometimes, I lie to people for fun, and to make fun of them. And on doing so, I don’t have the heart to prolong it forever. I just let them know the truth in a few minutes, or in some cases, in a few days’ time.

What kills me this time is, believing that person’s words, I had spent several hours, several days thinking of how to work things out in a better way for the betterment of that person. Now when I realize that all are of no use, I get frustrated. I get thwarted. It's good that in order to maintain my sanity, I still keep things going smoothly between us, hiding the fact that I knew of that person’s lies. It’s actually tough, you know – tough to pretend as if nothing had happened, as if nothing bad had happened.

Okay, in a broader analysis – giving away my disappointment and anger – I can presume that that person had said all those things for fun. Maybe that’s even true. But of all, one is indigestible and inexcusable, and that leaves me fuming. Nevertheless, I still hope one day I will get to know the reason from that very same person itself. Maybe, who knows, I will even get a reasonable justification too. However, deplorably, that doesn’t render any soothing for my current state of mind.

Thinking of this incident actually takes me back to a couple of years. Back then, my sweetest friend accused me of sharing certain secretive information with a couple of people (who are close to me; by close I mean very close). I felt more ashamed than sorry. I was unanswerable to the questions put right in front of my face. I stood speechless. It actually took few minutes and some indispensable courage to gather my strength to say SORRY. Yes, that was all I did. Nothing else. Wait, that wasn’t the hard part yet.

The real hard part was after several months, when I came to know, through one of those two people whom I shared the info with, that the very same information was already shared by my sweetest friend with one of them, several months before I had to say it by myself. How crazy is it? Just imagine my mind at that point of time when I heard this. My mind, it was literally cracked. Yeah, it was.

I wanted to blast my friend for concealing this from me, for making a fool out of me. I wanted to confront my sweetest friend for once. All the same, I knew I neither can blast nor can confront any of them.

If only I were able to read people well, I’d have very well avoided the above said situations for good. But then I feel these things are also for good that they show who we really are and whom we encounter with.

Fictional Diary Pages - 2

I wish I walk her home, every day.
I wish I don’t get jealous when I see her with someone. Yeah, by someone, I mean a guy; only a GUY.
I wish I take her to my favorite restaurant once a month, preferably on a Saturday night and to hers any time, any number of times.
I wish she talks her problems to me.
I wish I will be able to comfort her with my words, if not with my presence.
I wish I’m smart enough to lie to her aesthetically.
I wish for her to be even smarter to read my lie yet act artistically as if she buys in everything I tell her.
I wish I kiss her good night, every night.
I wish to see her first when I woke up and wish to see her last before I get to sleep.
I wish I make her a tasty coffee, and with it, I get her out of her bed/laziness on any hebetudinous holiday morning.
I wish she never makes me wait, especially when she is busy shopping.
I wish to spend every Sunday morning with her in the beach.
I wish she talks a lot of nonsense, and wish all that seem to make sense to me.
I wish I have as much patience as to listen to whatever she has to say.
I wish for her to beat me in everything we compete, and not beat ME with everything. J
I wish to take her to all her favorite places without her insistence.
I wish for her mind to perch on mine, always, to guide me in my life path.
I wish I never deviate from my goal of making her dreams come alive.
I wish I give her my heart and my everything and get hers in return.
I wish I meet her pretty soon.
I wish I should have taken some more time for penning additional wishes.
And I wish all my above-listed wishes to happen in real.
And I wish I don’t ramble any such fable things ever again in my diary!

Fictional Diary Pages - 1

I reached out for a pen and paper. It was my New Year’s resolution to pen down my every day’s experience. Please note that it’s not just for the sake of recording the happenings. The aim was simple, realistic, and apprised by my beloved teacher. It’d be optative to call ‘AIMS’ rather than a mere ‘AIM’. They were – one, to make myself fluent in the language (I swear, I didn’t know what level of fluency he meant anyway), two, to make myself know where I stand every day (I never even had the slightest idea of where I stand in my life. I never wanted to, in the first place), and three, to improve my hand writing (‘Are you serious?’ That was my instant thought when I heard him saying this).

As you might be aware of any kid who is hopeless, lackluster, and carefree would do, I did nothing. The problem was that he never saw me as a kid who was in the bounds of the previously mentioned adjectives. And that was the only reason why he, of the several others, became my beloved, my only beloved. But, regrettably, that didn’t save me from lying to him often. I don’t know if at all he knows that, but whatsoever, he never left a hint. I was safe. I mean, I felt safe, though I always knew that I was safe with him.

It’s been several months since he asked me to do the writing stuff. I never did that till date. What I wonder the most is, he never got tired of asking me about how it’s coming along, every day – save the days when I didn’t meet him at all. Unsurprisingly, I too never got tired of saying the same words to him – “Great! I can see the progress myself.” He merely smiled and patted my shoulders. I never understood the real meaning of that smile and the pat. All I assumed was I was good at lying, and there was someone out believing that.

At times, he used to ask me to show my scribbling (yes, he always referred my writing as scribbling. He was trying to be funny, you know. Nevertheless, my academic writing was itself a scrawl anyway). I’d blatantly reply, “Sir, it is personal.” And guess what, I’d always get to see his smile and feel his pat. In a way, I liked them. I liked to lie to him and enjoy the response.

On the first day of this year, as I was still asleep, he came down to my home. My mom had to wake me up to greet him. It was 9:30 A.M. already. I wasn’t sure that it was the question in my mind that he read or it was the usual habit of his to explain things, but he told us that he was crossing my home then, and thought he should come by and wish me. By the way, the question in my mind was, “What the heck is he doing in my home at this point of time?” I was a dumbass, you see. Before he left, he gifted me a pen (the one that I’m holding in my hand now) and wished me luck. My parents were lame. Yes, they were, as anyone in their position would have been. I wasn’t for I knew he came purposefully; just to gift me the pen. Otherwise who would walk somewhere with a pen gift-wrapped in his pocket.

That was when I decided to take this New Year’s resolution – to scribble (in his words) or to write (in my assumption) my every day’s experience. I went back to my room, took out the diary that I had got from my dad the previous night, sat in the table, and scrawled ‘Jan 01, 2001’. Before I could round off what to start with, my Mom called for me from the kitchen. She was howling to get me brush my teeth and have my breakfast as it was already late. Taking shower was out of question as she knows that if that was included, I’d only have my breakfast at lunch time. She became so adjustable with me, you know. I love her for that and for every other reason regardless. That was it. That diary only has the date scribbled by me yet.

Today, the calendar in my room shows the date as Jan 06, 2001; but that’s not today’s date in real. Lucky, at least I was sane enough to know that it’s not. Blame it on my laziness – the laziness to tear off the paper every day. Having said that, I don’t exactly know what date today is. Maybe, 16 or 17; well, probably, 16^th of January. I have to go to the other room to check for it. Hell, forget it. Who cares? In fact, that’s the least important of all. On this day of the year, I don’t own a cell phone to check the date and time in a split second. I haven’t even held one in my hand yet, let alone owning one. None of my family members own a cell phone – which I hear is tardily becoming a sensation, at least among the younger generations – in any case.

Okay, what’s with me now? No answer. A Blunt mind, which is all it is. It’s been fifteen days into the year with my doing nothing to be proud of, an absolute nothing. Not even able to be true to my beloved teacher; worse, not even able to be true to myself.

Okay, again. That’s not the real reason that made me to sit straight up here from my bed to pen down my first diary page (not precisely in a diary though. Who knows, probably I’d paste this paper in my diary later). It’s the dream I had. The dream of my beloved teacher meeting an accident, that really is. And he, lying in his deathbed, was asking me about my scribbling. Heck. I was so bad at lying in my dream. But still, he smiled and patted my shoulders before he closed his eyes.

Why did I get this dream all of a sudden? That’s the life, can I answer to myself? Life treats me badly, I feel sometimes. Whenever I feel it, what I fail to do is to treat life differently, as in brazenly different. Things change, after all; in an unexpected and undesirable way, mostly. But when and how are the questions. They can’t be answered precisely. We only have to experience them as and when they come along – just like the way I’m doing for a while now...!

Random Ramble #2

“Is this a right place to smoke?” she asked.

“What?”

“Sorry to ask, but I was fined for smoking in a public place a couple of days ago,” she said raising her shoulders.

“Oh, really?” I asked her, though I knew how lame it was to ask.

“Yes,” she nodded. “So, could you please, you know, confirm or ….”

“Of course. I, uh, yes…. Yes, it is,” my words twitched.

“Thank you.” she offered to shake my hands. I responded promptly.

“I’m Jessie, by the way. Jessie parker,” she introduced herself. I was floored. Floored might be too big a word to use for this simple happening. But if you are me – who had never been bumped into a situation where a girl – a stranger, who is also stunningly beautiful, had volunteered to introduce herself, not to mention by shaking hands – you’d have used the same or something even more powerful depending on how strong you’re in your vocabulary.

“Hi Jessie, it’s nice to meet you.”

She looked straight at my eyes, and damn, because of that, I had to do the same. I was forced to do the same, I’d say. Dignity, they say. Fuck it. No offense to her eyes, but there were many other fantabulous whatever of her to look at.

It took few minutes for me to figure out, only with her help, that she was looking for something else from me.

“And you are…” she started.

“Ah, sorry, I’m Prem.”  I offered her another handshake. The second one was better for two reasons – one, it was offered by me and two, the most important, I wasn’t as nervous as I was during the first; In fact, I wasn’t at all.

Honestly, it was a public place, and there was a rule not to smoke in a public place. The person whomsoever, he or she may be, was right in penalizing her few days back. But on that day, I seldom cared. It’s a rule, after all. I mean, who cares about the rules anyway, unless we are caught red handed. Moreover, rules are meant to be broken. Aren’t they?

She took out a cigarette from a pack, and was kind enough to offer me one as well. She was right in offering to share, but at the same time, she was wrong in offering without asking whether or not I smoke. However, it didn’t matter, to say the least. Well, did any men ever cared about any women’s wrong when he is very much happy in her presence. I wasn’t different.

I took one, still fearing how to handle my first ever cigarette in my whole life, that too, in front of a girl who seemed to be well-versed in that front. She lighted hers, and then lighted mine. I struggled to hide my struggle to smoke. I failed. She noticed. I blamed it on the cigarette. It was easy; she believed it. Time and again, women prove that they are easily deceivable. Oh, we lucky men.

“So, where are you from?” I broke in while she was on her smoking journey. By that time, I’d already killed my smoke.

“Atlanta,” She replied exhaling the smoke from her mouth engine. I loved it, loved the way she did it. For a moment, I wanted to get one more cigarette from her and wanted to get trained by her. “It’s just a five days trip. We came for a seminar. We’ll be leaving by tomorrow.”

“Oh, is it? That’s great.” I said. Frankly, I didn’t figure what was so great about it. I didn’t even care to ask what 

the seminar was about in the first place.

“Nah, nothing great about it, you know.”

She was being humble. I loved the way she was trying to be humble. Appealing, that she was, in whatever she did. Or at least, I found it that way.

That was just a start. Our conversation travelled through different paths for few hours only to end on sharing our email IDs. Those were my happiest hours in a long while then. That’s the fact though it may sound as a cliché or exaggerated.

We took photos of each other with her camera. She promised me that she will share the snaps with me, and that she will stay in touch with me forever. For reasons unknown, I simply trusted her. I felt she trusted me too, and that’s the reason she was ready to take photographs with me, to share her email ID, to gift a book that she was reading then (despite my hesitation to accept it).

“It’ll always remind you to remember me, to remember this day.” Those were her words to convince me.

I wanted to give her something, but I had nothing with me then. She would have probably read my mind. She asked for an autograph of mine. I took a hundred rupee note from my wallet, signed on it, and handed it over to her. She smiled and said, “Don’t mistake me, but I’ve seen kids running behind us to get our currency notes from us, no matter wherever we go. And now, to get one of yours is kind of special. Thanks.” She said.

“Maybe, that’s the way we are,” I replied thinking of me running behind the tourists when I was a kid.

I haven’t seen her ever since. But she kept her promise by sending the snaps in the next few days. From then, we have been constantly in touch through mails and chats. We shared a lot. She was very open in sharing her personal stuffs with me. She used to say that she trusts me a lot that she can say anything and everything to me, that I’d help her in her bad times. We never had any boundaries for our conversations. They travelled through all, I’d say. They will start at one topic, move to the other, then to another, and then end up on something else.

Our relation continued for months, for years. I slowly fell in love with her. I loved her more than anything that I was aware of. I won’t say my love for her was divine or any crap like that. I won’t even term it as ‘a true love’ for I don’t know what ‘a true love’ really means. All I’d say is I liked her, I loved her, and I wanted to spent the rest of my life with her.

I even brought the topic “long distance relationship” during one of our weekend chats. She responded positively on that topic. That boosted my confidence. That day as we ended our chat, I decided to plan to get a job in Atlanta at the earliest. How lousy that was? I didn’t know then. I was building my own dream palace for us, for us to live happily ever after until I heard news from her that she lost her virginity to one of her classmates, that how happy she was, and that how exciting that was. I myself destroyed our palace. I knew she wasn’t the one to be blamed. I damn knew that. Ah Man, I never gave her any hint that I was in love with her, let alone proposing her.

Days went. I got news that she broke up with him. The building work for our palace began slowly. But before it was even half-built again, news came. She thought she was in love with five different guys, and she is staggeringly confused to choose one among them. I thought a lot about it. Our cultural differences made sense to me. That’s it. I never built the palace again, albeit my love for her, my care for her was never a bit reduced. Surprisingly, I helped her choose one. That love episode also lasted only for few months. Few other episodes came and went by. She told me everything that was happening in her life.

Months went. One fine day, I got a mail from her. It conveyed a message about her engagement with her then recent boyfriend. I knew it was coming, but not that sooner. Moreover, she never gave me a hint on this. She wanted to surprise me, it seems. She wrote that in her mail. I was a bit disappointed on reading the mail; maybe because she didn’t inform me about her engagement in our previous chats or maybe because she is not going to be my better half ever. But frankly, I was happy for her. I replied my wishes to her.

She had mentioned a P.S. message in the mail asking me to come online in exactly 2 hours’ time. But I didn’t. After few hours, I decided to send her a mail, advising her how to keep her marriage strong forever. It’s not like I was qualified to advise her and all, but I knew (she too does) I was far better than her. At the end of the mail, I added a note that I’d be online the next day. I really needed at least a day to come out of the disappointment.

Meanwhile, in the next few months, I got an offer for a job in Atlanta (not easily, as you might know). I didn’t tell her about it as I was still contemplating whether or not to take the job. But, deep within, I wished to attend her wedding which was scheduled in the next six months.

It was hard for me when I finally decided not to go to Atlanta for the job. From then I was thinking what gift I should send her for her wedding. Exactly ten days before her wedding, I decided to send her the one that would make her smile on the most important day of her life.

I sent her the book – “Are you still there God? It's me, Margaret” – that she gifted me on the day we first met, along with a hundred rupee note, of course, with my signature. I also sent a note “I don’t need anything, anymore, to remind me to remember you forever. You will always be remembered till my last breath. My memory is sharp, you see.  Hope to see you one day, in person. Happy married life. And, hey, have my gifts safe forever.”

That night, all I thought was that the book will still be one of the most valued gifts I had ever received. It's just that the book won’t be with me anymore, but memories will, always.