The Tattered Toothbrush!

So what's so indispensable, a daily phenomenon, hard and almost a compelling need every morning?

And before your thoughts run amok in the obvious directions, let's take a 'tooth' back. I am ruminating about the brush aka 'the toothbrush' aka 'your first kiss of the morning'. Well, almost!

So this morning happened. Like every other morning. 

I coyly looked at my first important companion, the cell phone. And no this blog is not about it. Not yet. 

It looked back at me with blinking eyes as if whispering,"Buddy, I am starving. Will you feed me some charge?". So I plug it in and voila! It suddenly seems to be so happy to be out of its death bed.

Checking for my 'Good Morning' messages, I could find none. So apparently for this day too, it was all unto me to make it, well, a good morning!

Now it was time for my second best companion, and yes this post is all about it, my toothbrush. I reached out for the holder, only to find something amiss. 

The toothbrush, my second best companion, the tattered statue of liberty, my leaning tower of pisa, my first kiss of every morning - was nowhere to be found! And it dawned on me, that perhaps the inevitable has happened. 

Perhaps, in the hustle bustle of life, a companion has been lost! Perhaps.

But wait, hold on for a minute while I pull you out from this story telling. 

And before you start judging this post by the very 'object' that it wishes to detail, let me try and get your interest back. (Well I know a title with 'The Debonair Dildo' would fetch me more readership, but let's save that for another day for now).

So where were we? Ah, the forgotten tale of the toothbrush! 

So once the realization sets in, I could only fathom the mystery of the disappearing act, the never-said-goodbye, the memory of the soft bristles and a slim hold. They all came back to me and I headed straight for a replacement. I was angered, as for a guy who was just dumped by his beloved! 

Now as someone who minds my own business, I’m used to making difficult decisions. Seriously, I am. However, today I found myself facing one of the most challenging decisions I’ve made in a while. That’s right – to buy a new toothbrush!

Before you laugh again on the dexterity and the compounded mental load this brings about, just consider what a complicated decision it has become to choose a new toothbrush. I spent several minutes pondering, bemused, in the mini supermarket aisle because I couldn’t decide between automatic, semi automatic and manual; white, green and blue, soft and firm; springy head or non-springy head; tongue cleaning or non-tongue cleaning...

What I found particularly funny, other than imagining the sight of me scratching my head infront of the toothbrushes, was some of the marketing on the toothbrush boxes themselves. For example, the toothbrush that I ended up buying (because it was on special offer) was labelled as ‘professional’. Now, what exactly does that mean – can I call myself a professional tooth brusher? 

And if I could, where could I possibly flaunt this newly acquired degree. An asylum?

There seems little justification for being awarded this title. Surely I should have attended a training course, passed an exam and been presented with a certificate before achieving such an important honour?

Having graciously accepted this title (by agreeing to pay Rs 75), I wonder whether it’s time for me to update my CV to include “professional tooth brusher?” Perhaps I could also include the fact that I do a ‘professional’ job of wiping my own backside too? (though I do say so myself!)

But I truly believe the toothbrushes are, as a matter of fact, very important piece of your life. Consider the following arguments in favor:

• It can make your life miserable. Don't believe me? Try giving it a miss one day and kiss your girlfriend. I bet you two bottles of listerine that you will come back to read this post seriously!

• A toothbrush can identify the mysterious people in your household. Simple math, if the no. of folks in the house is less than the no. of toothbrushes that you have...time to dial 911/100 depending on where you live.

• For all the ladies out there; and this one is so true and tested, you ought to swear by this - If a guy is willing to leave his toothbrush at your place, you damn well marry that bloke.

• It is always better to keep an eye on the future. As you grow old, you won't brush your teeth, you'll rather count them. So why not pay some attention to the little friend now, eh?

All said and done, I found my new companion, a shiny new toothbrush, with an advanced feature set to take the relationship to a new level. And I just walked out of the store, only to feel wonderful that as long as it can help me stay truthful to my teeth, they won't be false to me.

And the music played in the background. 

"Brush it top, brush it down, brush your teeth all around. 

 Somethings lost and somethings found.

 Pretty little joy we expound."

Wait, where the heck is my toothpaste now? The music stops and the feeling starts all over again!

 - V!K$

The Trapeze Artist!

"As I dangled, inverted in mind and body, swaying on the wooden bar, my world upside down, the background whizzing past my eyes like a myriad of blurred moments, it's then everything became unclouded and clarion. I could look at my possibilities and I was ready to take my chances!"

Possibilities are too many. Possibilities are rare. They needn't exact to the chances you get in your indigenous life which is at most times celebrated out of proportion. They needn't stem from your core beliefs. They need to be devised. They need to be identified from the camouflage of so called 'chances'.

Not because they aren't borne by destiny. Not even by the irrepressible chances that generate in bound every moment and then.

They are possibilities, sheer possibilities and nothing more than the face value. Life, as we know it, originates and dictates from the factual descriptions of what we know and non-factual instances of what we want to.

An expectation to live upto or possibilities to live into, is perhaps the modular decision a life being has to take.

Chances on the other hand are sublime definitive instances. Layered and presented in a moment, dissolved in another. We cannot create chances. Possibilities, yes.

Regardless of the notions and differences, dependencies are aplenty.  Build on your possibilities or you wear down. Make the most of your chances or you perish.

Life, a trapeze, between chances and possibilities held together swinging around on the ropes of reality and beliefs. You land on one for a moment and off to the other in another, round for round.

The universe applauds. Every attempt. Every miss. The penultimate question still remains: When it's your last swing, will you land on possibilities or would you take your chances?

- V!K$

O'dear Rapist!

Will you listen to me?
O'dear Rapist.
Would you now care to answer my questions,
For I am lost in this mist? 

Cold and staunch,
The wind cuts me into half.
Of what is left. The Silence.

The crowd has no face. The God never had one.
Who will show to the world, of what you've done.

Make me a mask, I want to be pretentious.
I want to show you care for me. To show you feel.
I had to relent, and you had to steal?

The smile on my nude face, the mask now I wear.
You see the brave face on outside, my inside breeds only fear.
To veil the shame you need to have.
I need to show you how humans behave.

Will you listen to me?b
O'dear Rapist.
There is something else to ask,
In my small infinite list.

Make me a mask, for I was not raped by a man.
It's not any individual, for society alone can.
I want to fit in, the mask you wear.
I was a lost property, raped by your society.

Will you listen to me?
O'dear Rapist.

Will you show me the way to die,
to get away from the shambles of lie?

You say I will be safe, you say I will be free.
I shall jump off this bridge, only if you can count to 
one
two and
.............

-V!K$

The Half-Baked Patriot (51%)

“Hey you! Out there in the cold 

getting desperate, getting bold,

Taking tricolor out of the fold, can you teach me?
Hey you! Standing in the aisles 

Posting pictures and those image files

Can you teach me?”

These are not exactly the Pink Floyd lines I wanted to hum along as I walked across the street, but something, or rather someone caught my attention. And my humming automatically changed to a robotic tone as I threw my voice hard enough to reach him.

Hey you! Yes you, right there. The one posting your tricolor loaded images all over the space. Pardon my ignorance but would you care to educate this ignorant soul on your identity and explain this phenomenon that you are contributing to?

The enthusiast looked up (Yes, that's what I named him till he disclosed his kind) and murmured in utter disbelief," Did you just ask me that for real?"

“Yes, I did.” I replied. For I was still waiting like an innocent child who has just asked his mother about a colorful balloon and waiting for the secret to reveal.

He paused, scorned at me, and then replied," Brother. You're an Indian? You should know that what you are calling a tricolor is our national flag, and what I am doing now is what a patriotic Indian would do."

A Patriotic Indian? That sounded new to me. Now I was more intrigued, more drawn and more tied to the phenomenon. I too wanted to belong to the clan, to the cohort, to the 21st century trend.

What is that I asked, this p-a-t-r-i-o-t-i-c Indian. "You are so naive", he replied. Are you an NRI who just lost your way to the country, a mentally retarded soul or someone too ignorant to notice the larger signs of life?, he kept on shooting the questions.

I felt like a soldier who fired a blank shot in air only to receive a barrage of cannon shots in reply. And probably for a zillionth time in my life, I felt naive again.

Naïve because I always thought a Patriot is someone who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. But this one was different. Calm and composed with his electronic gadgets silently making ‘patriotic’ sign gestures (Well I always thought that was the sign of satan), this Patriot, who so wanted to be named but won’t be started with his ‘rapid crash course in patriotism for me’.

“Now listen to me bro! And listen rather well.” he said. For this is very important that you follow these steps to turn yourself from an ‘ignorant earthling’ to a ‘patriotic individual’.

1. Start with small but elemental step: change your profile pic on Facebook, Twitter,

Whatsapp and other social media, to the Indian national flag and their spinoffs alongside

changing your status to “proud to be an Indian” or “Saare jahaan se acchha” etc. etc. But

don’t overdo it and make sure you restore back your stud profile picture and the ‘cheeky’

status at sharp 12:00 am on 27th Jan.

2. Post patriotic status messages on twitter, create fake pages on facebook etc. Best start

    an intellectual discussion around what has changed over the years and how the current

    Govt. is incompetent (it’s another matter that you don’t even know which Govt. is

    actually in power?)

3. Attend a social flag hoisting event in your neighborhood for just that long so you can take

    pictures with unsuspecting children holding the two rupee flags and post them on your fb

    timeline or twitter.

4. Watch Arnab Goswami’s debate re-runs. After all having watched him, you have watched

    What the ‘Nation’ had to say. What’s more patriotic than hearing your own opinion on

    grave matters from someone else’s mouth?

5. Try to also post pictures of your previous/current foreign country tours while lamenting

    on the status at the same time that nothing is better than your own country (And try to

    do that with your foreign country manufactured Phone or laptop on sites Not owned by

    your own country)

6. An alternative to above, be patriotic enough to not go to a foreign destination and opt for

    Goa instead (where you can be as patriotic as you want by ogling at...well...the

    foreigners)

7. Watch an India-Pakistan re-run while munching on a patriotic pack of Lays and Popcorn.

    Though, once in a while you are allowed to indulge in a 'dual citizenship' patriotic

    behavior with countries like Brazil, England, Germany etc. etc. (Yes, I am referring to the

    World Cup Football Indian fad)

8. Forward random patriotic messages and mails to people you seldom know with all the

    more patriotic instructions such as “Forward if you’re an Indian”, “Proud to be an Indian”.

9. Lament on every possible failure of Govt. like petrol prices, The K issue, too many dry

days and Global Warming......while watching a Salman Khan movie or Comedy Nights

with Kapil!

10. And last and the least, nothing beats watching Gadar or Lagaan while you are onto it!

Thus the list came to an end and I thanked the Patriot to move on with the new Patriotic Nirvana I had just attained, now humming the national anthem “Baby Doll main Sone di....”. Wait, or was it an Arijit Singh song. I am still a half-baked patriot!

And then it occurred. A stolen thought from G B Shaw who once exclaimed, "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." Hell yeah!!!

P.S: Before your WiFi connectivity gets lost and you suddenly lose your chance of being Indian, do read the blog and hit like while the net is on!

~Yours truly,

The Confused Patriot!

*Image courtesy: www.stuffosaurus.com

Somebody's boring me. I think it's Me!

The question, my dear Watson, has always been, "Do I believe in afterlife?" And even though I am no Sherlock, for me, the answer has always been a straight "NO".

Because even if there is one, it will never be the same 'ME' again and then I will anyhow prefer the 'Tortures of Hell' over the 'Boredom of Heaven' once my current self is done with the life. 

But enough about 'afterlife'. I am not writing to discuss the psychic boundaries and certainly not for their so called interpretations. I am here to write about what has become my recent state of mind - 'Boredom'.

Boredom - What an intriguing word or rather a sentence! One that has no full stop. Channel of continuity with a rather sublime streak of monotonous life.

I have been feeling bored quite lately. And a lot of it to drive me to the extent of writing a post on it. But before you start getting ideas, No...I haven't been kicked out of my employment yet. Neither have I been running less on my eccentric muses.

I am bored because I have been playing my normal self for a bit too long now.

Weird isn't it? You may ask, even rubbish this and stop reading. Who gets bored of being his usual self?

Boredom is surprisingly stressful. And when we’re busy, but still bored, it’s even more so. And I am quite sure most of you, who have managed to read so far, suffer from the same disease.

But let's discuss the premise first, A handful of times throughout my social life I have been accused of being boring. Initially, such statements were pretty boring in themselves, but then they started making me restless, because I, like so many others, have been conditioned to believe that “boring” was negative and something to aspire not to be.

But then, after much contemplation, I began to consider the source of the statement and then consider the context in which the statement was made. Having analyzed both aspects, I have come to own my boredom thesis. I was not boring, for every time I was deemed boring...in a societal meeting, I was just being ‘oblivious’ of my not-so-interesting surrounding.

By the looks of it, I have come pretty far from that state. Now I only ‘look’ boring. Yes, I do! And people who have actually met me will agree with the fact (though internally I long that someone disagrees here). But, anyhoo...that’s where it ends...looks!

As far as the real life is concerned, it’s actually quite exciting.

Well, how many of you watched the motion pictures, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"? Because I did, and loved every bit of it. The imagination, the landscapes, the story et al. However, I don’t take the protagonists life case as exacted to mine ‘cause I believe in the ‘Real’ stuff. Stuff that I can touch, feel and experience. Not imagine.

I travel a lot. Observe people. I write more than I actually read. I get to meet interesting people from society’s diverse echelons. I have been lucky enough to have some unique experiences in life. I get to spend months living full-time with teams of high performers in such unique environments as elite sports and war hospitals. I have more projects in the pipeline than I can shake a stick at. I am busy. But I am still bored.

Well, now you may ask. Why the boredom now?

My boredom stems not from having nothing to do but from having nothing that seems worthwhile doing. We human beings are addicted to meaning, and this kind of existential boredom signals its unhappy retreat. Surely, it shouldn't ever be as if you never existed at all?

The funny thing is, if boredom were due simply to lack of stuff to do it could be eradicated by giving people more to do. Even relatively mundane tasks will help alleviate the feeling of utter uselessness. However, this is only ever likely to work in the short-term if what people are asked to do does not contribute directly to something more meaningful — something bigger than themselves.

Likewise, if boredom were the result of having had too much of a good thing — the novelty has worn off, the sense of excitement has gone — it could be solved by giving people something new to do. This is one way that many people are busy but bored at work, and this type of boredom is particularly acute with high performers and with people who take to tasks quickly but are easily bored by them. There are some obvious fixes — such as job rotation, or a training program to broaden skills, or a larger portfolio of responsibilities — and usually this kind of boredom can be eradicated after a while.

But how do we fix our working lives when we suffer from the boredom of having more than enough to keep us busy all hours of the day, but nothing that gives us meaning?

And so it ultimately seems that the only obvious solution to existential boredom is to give people something more meaningful to do.

In fact, I occasionally ask the working class: if your organization disappeared overnight, aside from you and those that depend on you financially, who would actually care about this? Who would be affected by it, and why? There are many variations on these existential questions, and you will no doubt have yours, but their object is always the same: to wake people up to the realization that what they do on an everyday basis actually matters.

Left to your own devices, how might you address this? If meaningful work is too much to ask, why not develop a passion instead? Is it any surprise that many high achievers have “other lives”, or a competence in a skill unrelated to their everyday work? For example, in my own line of work, some of the most highly respected business folks are also quite accomplished in other areas. These include a poet, an adventure enthusiast and a basket-ball champion.

To sum it up, boredom or no boredom, the ifs and buts of it lies only in the single theory – would you be bored if:

a. you have nothing to do

b. you have stuff to do you don’t find interesting?

c. you have a bucket list so full that even a hole at the bottom of the bucket doesn't make a                difference?

I will go with the third personally with rather two holes in the bottom.

After all Friedrich Nietzsche was just understating when he said,” “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” 

It indeed is. I am bored again, and I am not yet finished!

-V!K$

Joker...In The Box (?)

Ideas are born. Like I was. Like you were. But ideas don’t die. Like we do.

They get killed, in instances. Every now and then. And then they get regenerated.

And in one of those moments, I wondered – What if I am killing some right now?

There was no zen. No answer that would resonate with the walls of my mind and answer in cohesion. But a single answer, and yes it came through – Think Out-of-the-Box!

This is now becoming an old adage, a fool’s paradise - to think outside the box, a term over abused and ever less understood in the corporate world. It has become ubiquitous in business. So much so that it has become the new box inside of which everyone thinks. It has become more of a lip service.

So what exactly is – ‘Out-of-the-Box thinking’ all about? Let’s try and decode the adage, shall we?

When we say OOB what we really mean is to think outside the realms of boundaries we have set for ourselves. But then, that raises another question. Why do we have boundaries on imagination at all?

Aren’t we supposed to be creatively free creatures with limitless imagination to serve us and amaze the humanity?

So that brings us to the basic premise, why do we need to think OOB?

The answer is, and let me try and be as simplistic as possible, two-folds:

In–the-Box (ITB) Myopia:

If you do not set limitations to your imagination, if you do not engage in restrained thinking, if you do not hesitate to shame yourself by wandering into the weird zone, then you mister, suffer from what I call as the ITB Myopia.

You cannot possibly think outside the box unless you understand the nature of the box that bounds your current thinking. One has to understand the best case scenarios that the box provides. Without unlocking the true potential of the box if you move out, it doesn't signify your creativity, but only reaffirms your inability to use the box and its features.

There’s a Zen saying, “What you resist persists, and what you allow to be disappears.” Thinking outside the box without understanding the box is a petulant exercise in resistance — every idea that comes from the process has the box written all over it. It’s a reaction to the box. It’s fighting the box. 

Out-of-the-Box Relativity:

Every so called ‘out of the box thinker’ is more or less within a larger box relatively. So the point is – you actually never get outside the box to think. “People who refer to out-of-the-box see the box ... People who don't know the box even exists are the innovative thinkers.” 

Parsing and conducting all your ideas without defining a perpetual boundary is what will get you out of the imaginative box.

In the end ‘Think OTB’ is simply a euphemism to ‘let’s start to think’ and nothing more, box or no box!

I leave myself with these thoughts to get into the box again. I kind of like it here! Where is my Rubik’s cube?

- V!K$

Brutus, Why Do We Hike?

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

There are things which you don’t do yourself. They just happen to you. Like birth or death. Or like the continuum called life.

I hike. I travel to places. And it was never a question before, until someone asked me, “Why do you hike?”

And then it dawned on me that the answer has never been simple. Or was it too simple to be expressed in words?

The mortals who dwell with fancy gears and pick farther destinations are said to ‘Escape to the Nature’. But what are they really trying to ‘escape’ from?

I could conjure a zillion answers to the question, “Why do we hike?”

• May be because we like to be out there doing something fun, not tasked in different rooms or swallowed whole by the routine of the daily grind.
• May be because neither of us were born with a silver spoon shoved up our... noses.  Hiking is cheap. It costs gas, sometimes food, an occasional permission fee or equipment upgrade. That's it. We could literally hike many times for the amount it would cost us to take you out to eat once.
• May be because it's good to feel like a kid again.  All the responsibilities of growing up ---- yeah, one day you'll understand.
• May be because it feels great to accomplish something using our feet for what God intended them to be used for.  That'd be walking, by the way, not holding down the coffee table.
• May be because we have the opportunity to relish in the glory of the creation - the grass, the fields, the trees, the flora, the fauna, and the complexity yet the simplicity of nature.
• And last, because we like to.  It is enjoyable to us. Because out there, in the wild, we are free.

I think we seek the isolation, peace, and grandeur of Nature because it reminds us that we are more than what we are.  As humans, we seem to be egocentric.  We have our cities, our societies, our systems.  But once we enter the wilderness, we are no more significant than that ant you just stepped over.  

The Transcendentalists sought Truth in Nature.  In Nature, we see ourselves.  To me, I hike to remain aware of how I am but a speck in the vast terrain of our beautiful planet.  No matter how well-prepared I am, no matter how much gear I have, no matter how strong I feel, I never forget that it is nothing compared to the grand scheme of our existence.  

I hike to remain humble.  I hike to remind myself that no matter what man accomplishes, it pales in comparison to what Nature has already accomplished. 

Some people climb for the personal challenge.  Some climb for the view.  Others climb to boast a newly summitted peak, to add a notch to their belt.  

I hike to remember my place in the world...a place no important than that eagle's nest high atop a cedar tree, or that marmot's burrow along the trail.

"Now shall I walk
or shall I ride?
"Ride," Pleasure said:
"Walk," Joy replied."
~W.H. Davies