Homeless

I am a man without a home, no, not the philosophical sort which you rich sorts search for all your life, the one without four walls and a roof above.Every day or rather every night I search for a place where I can lie down without being disturbed by cops, dogs, rats and any other such creatures. Every morning I wake with the knowledge that my day would end somewhere else. All my belongings are in a big polythene bag which I carry with myself at all point of time. I found it with great difficulty while rummaging through the garbage of a posh housing society, or maybe it was my lucky day.

Dark corners, isolated places are the best to take care of my the bodily necessities, especially the ones you have in the morning. The smaller urgencies are taken care much easily. I can vaguely remember the regularity of brushing my teeth and the feeling associated with it, now a gargle with water (which sometime is clean and sometime is not) is more than enough to last me through the day.Like love, taking a bath happens when it happens, there is not much I can do about it.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I wasn't born on the road, I had a family once. Not so loving though, but nonetheless I had it.In fact, I am almost as educated as most of you are, give or take a few degree / diploma. So how the fuck I ended up here. Let's admit it, you don't give a fuck.There are million ways to go up in life, and there are a billion to go down. Mine was one of them, so there is that.

I tend to get philosophical at times and talk to no one in particular (usually the stray dogs are the best listeners). I would wonder how worrying about my next meal or next bath has made me free of all the other superficial worries in my earlier life, like finding the meaning of life or my calling. Mostly, i call my bluff myself and say out loud, "my life sucks.

Once in a while, I feel oddly buzzed to change my life for better. This feeling lasts for sometime (usually for around five minutes or so) and then it fizzles out on its own. Being on the other side, my motivation gets hampered largely by the fact that your life is not necessarily better. You are equally unhappy, stressed and insecure about your own future like I am. The effort to reach your state doesn't seem to be worth it, hence I wait and continue with my 'sucky' life.

Wait

Bruised and wounded,
Heart torn to pieces,
With shattered hope and faith,

Bodies behind me,
of people I loved, cared for,
of people I hated,
of people I loved and loathed,
of people who got hurt 'cause they were there

with no light in my soul,
and clouds in my eyes

in the world without colour,
with tastes long forgotten,
remembering a touch from a distant past,
seeing a sight, too magnificent to be real, too vivid to be imaginary,
those momentary raptures of the heart, I once felt

with time without any meaning
I wait for death to come to me 

Meditation on Ruin

It’s not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
or the con game gone bad, or the beating Taken in the alleyway. 

But the lost car keys, The broken shoelace, The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — 

these are the things that eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! 

But the broken pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,


These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it’s this ache to which we will ourselves Oblivious. 

We are oblivious. 

Then, one morning—there’s a crack in the water glass —
we wake to find ourselves undone.

- Jay Hopler

I have changed the arrangement of the words to make this poem more readable.  In case you are wondering, this poem is about how little things (rather than the big things) wears a person down as he ages. 

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Very rarely we come across a movie which leaves us wondering what that movie was really about. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and I mean it in a good way. Is it about a man going through a mid-life crisis, is it a romantic comedy, is it about the quintessential search for meaning of life ? I just saw the movie and I couldn't be sure of anything. What I am sure of that after a long time I had a feeling that I watched a good movie.

Don't worry at all, it is not those Oscar type movies which usually bore us (the normal people I mean) to death. It is interesting, comic, tragic and exhilarating
in the ways that only a good little movie could be. It is written beautifully, shot brilliantly and anchored competently by the director and actor Ben Stiller.

He takes you from US of A to Greenland, Iceland, upper Himalayas in Afganistan before he coming home literally and metaphorically. Walter Mitty travels the world only to rediscover the past he left behind and what a fascinating journey it is for all of us to watch.

Ben Stiller is in top form, comic and tragic at the same time in the ways only he can be. Kristen Wiig is perfect in her role and there isn't a cooler actor to play the photographer than Sean Penn. He is absolutely riveting in the single scene when he meets Mr. Mitty in Himalayas trying to shoot a snow leopard.

Highly Recommended. !!!

No Strings Attached

Before we humans became too many, we were born with things that we don't get to see today. Everyone was born with strings attached to few other humans. These strings attached people whose destinies were inextricably tangled with each other. Some of them from the same families, some the best of friends and few the true soulmates. As one would guess, it definitely was a tangled mess. Living with strings attached with other people. There was not a single move you can make without affecting the other and therefore people learnt to live, move and act in harmony. They all just knew how to live together like one big connected group, like a flock of birds flying in the sky. They learnt just to be, there every move in sync, doing what everyone needed to do to survive as a group. Strings told them everything, a small vibration, a little tug, a jerk, a whip...it all meant something to them. As if the words were spoken through the strings. Not unnaturally, the world was a quiet place.Then we became too many. Strings got tangled, choked a few and to stay alive some have to be cut.

No wonder the language of the strings was soon lost and forgotten. We started talking, at times shouting because of the distance between us. At times, we weren't sure if we got heard, not sure if we listened as much we should have. The world without strings was a convenient place, not necessarily a happy one. We realized soon enough.

Stil we persisted to at least know the people who would have been attached to us through strings.

Some were easy, our mother, father and siblings. Mostly we found the strings were there, invisible yet undeniably present. For some, strings were conspicuous by their virtual absence. Like a phantom leg, which should have been there but wasn't. How does one know the absence of something which wasn't anyways supposed to be there ? Funnily enough, one always does.

Some strings were difficult to find because of so many false alarms one would find along the way. A thread less conversation, the tacit understanding and maybe similar views. These were the easiest to be mistaken for the strings that should have been there, but time most of the time told otherwise. As time would go, the false ones would breaks and affirm their true absence.Those remained through all the turmoil and roller coasterly ride of life were the strings that defined us. Our happiness, our greatest joys, our sadness and our deepest melancholy, these strings held through it all. These strings connected us to people who were connected with us not by blood, but through destiny, through kismet and most importantly through their own love and faith in us. Some were friends, some were lovers, some were just people who gave a damn about our existence.

Those who understood the play of these strings, realized soon enough that there is not much else to fuss about.Through these strings, they made sense of this world and life, as it was always meant to be. After all, life was meant to be tangled mess, since the day it started.

Stay Beautiful,
Amitabh