Picture Imperfect

Coming from your stereotypical middle class family, a picture perfect family life is what I believed to have lived for most years of my existence.Normalcy was the golden goal.Sunday lunch was exciting. Parks were picnic spots.There was never a seperate concept of “family time”.No siblings to bother about.Parents who never fought.A life that revolved around report cards,temple visits,cricket,movies and pav bhaji.Simple. Uncomplicated.Never really had the need to question suburban utopia.Ignorance was bliss.Knowledge came from text books.A whole generation passed through this sieve where compromise was taken for granted and the need for more was a discipline breach.

Newtons third law.

This generation has passed on from being sure of utilising whatever options they had to being headless chickens stumbling from one chance to another in an orgy of choice.As a proud card carrying member of this lot I resent these wistful talks about being a part of a generation with no values.

I dont disagree. I just resent it.

True.We are a bunch of pot smoking ,aimless , committment phobic,pissed off,selfish leeches.But theres no real reason to feel bad about it.It is but a mere blip on the otherwise long winded process of evolution.

We are comfortable in our tarnished skins.We've adapted,we've realised and we've moved on.It might not be pretty but atleast its honest.We are shallow cause we choose not destroy our today in the hope of a more stable tomorrow.We are selfish because we dont have grand dreams of handing over this already overpopulated world to my children who will probably even more shameless and indifferent than us.


Its a fuckin short life. Would you really hold it gainst me if i choose not spend it trying to fit into someone else's idea of perfection.


We dont subscribe to your values.We need better reasons than it was supposed to be done this way/it always has been done this way.Escapist statements to say the least but surprisingly effective.

Our concience depends on which side of the bed we get up on.We leave judgements behind in our eternal quest to be cool.So keep the justifications to yourself. It doesnt help me in my quest for social rejection.



We believed all is well in our homes and talked grandly about tradition,culture and family values. All the while lookin down upon the ones who were having fun and pitying them for their lack of any social bond.We were born at a time when hypocricy developed into a fine art and living in denial was the holy grail.

For all our posing the great indian middle class has enough skeletons in its cupboards to put the biggest mass grave to shame.
They wont allow their daughters to date but will suffer in silence if she's been molested by a family member.
They will look down upon us spending money in bars and then drop their hard earned money into the temples piggy bank.


When all arguements fail they point to god.End of the matter.Theyve washed their hands off it. God willed.Who the fuck gave an already jaded mortal the right to question.


I Envy them at times.They Somehow have this wonderful ability to look through the obvious.See what they want to see.Believe what they want to believe.If it cant be done in real lets settle for second best.

Hope it helps them now.See through this.We are not fucked up.Its just an illusion.We arent morally corrupt.Its gods will.We arent aimless.We just have nowhere to go.

The greater cause of "I"

I am always amused by the wave of compassion and humanity that engulfs us post a significant disastrous event. Number of lives lost is a fair indicator as to how compassionate the wave would be.

Duration is questionable. Feeble attempts are made by the still compassionate and the socially awakened ones to stoke the same passions and emotions. Anniversaries of such events serve as a pretty decent occasion to realise, feel bad again and remind our self of the grief others went through.

Cynical bastard you might think. Well, truth be spoken you are not all that off the mark.

With a little alcohol in me I managed to find some semblance of reason for this periodic awakening of conscience. Its selfishness mixed with a little built of guilt. Before the hell hounds of moral righteousness and social activism descend upon me, let me clarify. I say this with no sense of finality but only as an opinion with the usual disclaimers and caveats attached. Take it or leave it.

As long as it’s not us that have been shot in the ass it serves us well to go up on streets, hold up placards, maybe even shed a few tears, and pay homage to the souls departed. Do our duty as citizens and go back to sleep cause you need to catch your local in time else that fat smelly motherfucker’s going to grab your seat.

Suburbia doesn’t allow us the luxury of full time activism. You can’t handle a traffic jam, a pissed of boss, a demanding girlfriend, deadlines, hangovers and still take time out to go and actually make tangible efforts to change the system. The greater thought of making the cops accountable is immediately clouded over by the pressing concern of your pending phone bill.

The ones who talk and criticize the general apathy the public don’t really realize that the reasons for their activism and the reasons for the criticized party’s indifference are one and the same. Selfishness. Everyone’s doing whatever it takes to make them feel better. Remember helping a poor kid begging on the streets? Or giving out your change to the old leper on the signal? Or buying that souvenir for your girlfriend which was made by the children from the blind school?

I am sure you do. Your two cents in making the world a better place. You not only funded a part of a blind kid’s education, but also drastically improved your chance of getting laid. Bravo.

Somewhere along the line you managed to convince yourself that you really did feel bad for the homeless guy and for the victim of a mindless assault. But then that feeling evaporated after you gave him the change and lit the candle at the Taj. Your conscience was put to rest. Instant gratification. Went home feeling like a contributor to society.

The majority of us left it at that and went back to seeking other avenues of contentment. The ones who were still at it continued to seek the same from the same source. What makes them happy, the fact that cop’s have better equipment or the fact their efforts got cops better equipment. It boils down to a very basic question. Why do you do something for someone? To make them happy, to help them? Why do that too? Cause putting a smile on their faces matters to YOU. So if your efforts don’t make them happy you wouldn’t even take them on. You do that to make yourself feel better. The other reasons are built out as logical outcome of your actions.

Every greater good is born out of a need to satisfy oneself. Every greater good originates out of “I, me and myself” .It just looks better when you club along a million causes too. If you don’t have one that really matters, no problem you can always borrow. There are enough whales being killed and more than enough trees being felled. You will not feel left out. There are enough causes in the world for the aimless to be associated with. Better packaging always helps.

It’s nothing to feel bad about. It’s been going on since we evolved and will continue to do so. We as a species only respond to stimuli. A sustained stimulus doesn’t make us respond more. It makes us get used to it. Makes us adapt our self to live with it.

We are today’s children. Tomorrow mildly concerns us. Yesterday’s dead and buried.

... let it flow...

14 th June. I turn 24 that day.Seen in the larger scheme of things , its almost a trivial amount of time.Inconsequential you might say.
But when I wake up everyday with a hundred different emotions running through my head,thousands of paradoxical beliefs fighting it out and a million neurons firing end to end at one go..I feel I have felt too much ,too fast , in too little an amount of time . Maybe I need to pay attention to that hollow voice that keeps telling my brain to shut the fuck up, the one that screams "enough".

Too much is never enough.

Why do I have to have an opinion on everything . Issues that will never affect me keep me awake at night. Issues that are supposed to matter are met with a cold stare and a derisive smirk.

I am full of myself, I do not see reasons to be otherwise. so are you. so is everyone is else.
I have my own little kingdom where my ego is king.so do you. so does everyone else.

I dont have that one dream goal that I want to achieve. I dont have that one point where I want to reach. I am not looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I just want to enjoy the ride and laugh at the leprechauns.
Curiosity.
Motivates,frustrates,intrigues,confuses ,pushes my life forward and kills cats...all at the same bloody time.
Most of my days end with an exclamation and begin with a question mark. I like to be ruthless with my brain.It started off as a novelty and evolved into a habit.
There was a time when I never got tired of asking "why". Much to the chagrin of my near and dear ones and much to the joy of my neighbourhood cigarette vendor I moved on to "why not".
I moved to the other side just to see how greener the grass was. All I discovered was that the other side had another side... so I kept moving on..and am still moving on.Curiosity. That word again.
In this mad ride..there are people who I have walked away from.People who deserved better. People who needed stability.People who did not need me.I was the shining knight in armour who never knew he existed.
Right or wrong..not for me to say. I have made my presence, as well as my absence felt in peoples lives. For better or for worse.. I dont know..what I do know is , I will pay my dues.
What goes around ,comes around.
Whats left to see is which side of the scale is the balance tilted on..I always do love a little bit of suspense.
Guilt.Felt it.Felt it creep in me in me,crawl under my skin and take over.Did anyone notice... its just like fear.
Did anyone think..it is fear.Fear of consequences.If you had to feel bad about something you've done,why would you do it in the first place.
When someone coined the term "brutally honest"..I dont think they realised how apt it was.
In this innate quest to replace fear with curiosity,the hatred left behind is bound to catch up.
I am bound to be consumed by it. Thats the day the exclamations and the question marks will be replaced by one big full stop.When?How? Dont know.Dont care.


Welcome to my world.Have a nice day.