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Monday, September 27, 2010

Seriously sidetracked


Distractions always come in attractive packages; sometimes in a form of hot gossip spilling out from Ollie’s chatty mouth or as a heart-catching cover of a book popping out from Sumi’s handbag.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it just a momentary urge to turn your head at something that you are not supposed to be looking at or sometimes it is intense enough to make you float in the mid air for days and even weeks.
What is so dangerous about getting distracted is that it makes you forget what you are supposed to be doing, and thereby delaying the completion of the task you are entrusted with. Worse still, getting sidetracked can also mean that you letting go of one of the most precious moments you worked hard to seize.
Perhaps what we don’t realize is that, an innocent ringing of a cellphone when you are crossing the road or an eye-dazzling sari you see on a shop window while driving is not as harmless as it may seem. The moment you choose to give priority to distraction over your task, you are holding your life at a great stake, the gravity of which you don’t even understand.
Getting distracted is a natural ingredient we have in our characters in different doses. But like any other thing, it needs a good control and curbing. Your ability to focus and your presence of mind should be strong enough to fight away distractions that can sometimes ruin you in the long run. If you give away to temptation very easily, people around you may paste the ‘easily distracted’ label on your back. Once you win such a title, no matter where you are, be it school, workplace or youth club, and no matter how hard you appear to look responsible, you will not be counted in the lot of dependables.
Once you are labeled, others can find it an easy weapon to use against you.
It is always easy to let go of something you already have; but it is uncertain whether it will come back to you in the same easy speed it went away. This is the logic with everything you let lose in your life – from small things like concentration, presence of mind to ultimately your life.
And yet perhaps, it may not look as fearful as it sounds. Sometimes small distractions come in the form of divine treats. After all, I am no saint to keep my eyes on the computer screen when my ears pick at the sound of Di opening a bag of Cheese Rings or yummy waffles singing in Shehan’s lunch box.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

My dear Mr. Darcy,


If there was one woman on earth who did not aspire to become an Elizabeth Bennet after reading Pride and Prejudice, she would have either been too much in love with George Wikham or had many a vicious scheme to abduct you for herself.

Complete madness or extreme bookishness call it what you will, to stalwart readers of Jane Austen you seem to get down from the realms of Pemberley comforts and into the lives of many women who, thanks to you, are led to set impossible standards in choosing men to share the forward portion of their days.

Is it worth the waiting behind the curtain of centuries-old dreamland that filled with the empire-waist muslin gowns and the fragrance of tawny pages of sonnet books? Waiting for the right man, no matter how different the times are, is as difficult as waiting for the sun to rise ending a big treacherous sleepless night. But their Mr. Darcys are never too certain to cross their fences like what you did with Elizabeth’s. Even the times change, there are certain things that can never be beaten by the time. The waiting and the hunting for men, Mr. Darcy, has only taken a different shape, but the arts and crafts and the rules and the regulations of the game are very much the same. Had you got a ticket to travel to the 21st century, you would figure out that there are more Miss Bingleys than Jane Bennets and of course hardly any Elizabeths who can never be bought with your ‘ten thousand pounds a year.’ You will realize that Mrs. Bennets have grown larger in numbers.

Checking on a list of Pride and Prejudice sequels that relate your side of the story, I was wondering whether you were just a figment of Miss Austen’s imagination or a shadowy figure who couldn’t make it to the story of her life but preserved in her ‘two inches of ivory’ for the generations to fall in love with.

At the time you fell for Elizabeth when she was doing the least bit on her part to encourage you, it was sheer consolation you offered for the women, whom until then never thought, that a man can fall in love with a woman without a single flirty glance or wink from the lady’s part. For them, you are everything a real man isn’t.

Isn’t it surprising that the living live a life of death while those who never born to tread on this earth continue to tread through the generations of fictional histories and emerge into real life as role models or trend-setters.

Too bad you never really lived and worse still the women who keep falling for you never believe that you aren’t real!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Trapping the time


The feeling of being trapped in a vacuum of time is almost suicidal. The day takes the shape of one huge rubber band that stretches as far as a bottomless horizon of emptiness. You keep looking for the to-do list that time forgot to bring to you. You keep sighing, thinking about the tasks you were too lazy to fulfill in your past.
Trapping the time before time traps you is an easy thing to do which rarely crosses our minds.
Life is too short and uncertain to postpone things you are supposed to finish today; be it a simple task of washing your handkerchief or visiting your grade one school teacher whom you haven’t seen in ages. Life is not as unfair as you complain; it is just a matter of how you take it. Perhaps, there is some fault with the way we prioritise the tasks that come our way.
Up to the nose with work, tired or tight schedules, whatever you call it, somewhere not very deep down inside, you know that your life is not as busy as you make it look like to the outside world. And at one point, if you do not start feeling guilty about wasting time, electricity and internet facilities which are given to you to make you more productive or not feeling bad about getting paid for doing nothing- then you have already gone beyond the stage of rehabilitation.
Once in a way procrastinating can be somewhat pardonable. But if you are that type of person who thinks highly of your conscience or recite ‘pansil’ before leaving for work and become insensitive to the fact that you are hoodwinking your management, or if you spend lavishly the money which went to your bank account at the end of the month, when you have no moral right to do so, you are not a simple procrastinator but a cheater!
Today, when you get lost in the charms of Cyber space to chat with your co-worker who sits in the next cubicle or watch movies on youtube, you may not realize that at one point, the opportunities, be it grand or simple, will stop crowding your life. Being jobless is more killing than the pains of over-working or working under pressure.
When you come to that stage of life when you are lured to hunt for work, work will stop hunting you.
How many confessions will it take for you to get over the guilt when it comes to haunt you at the age of walking sticks and toothless smiles? What will you tell your grand kids when they come to you for advice about being productive?
Trapping the time is all about taking the maximum use of the chances that come our way. The satisfaction of fulfilling a task, the adventures and misadventures and praises and criticisms will all turn out to be one beautiful album, you will keep turning when you enjoy the rocking-chair comfort.
You will know that you gave your best and your service worth every cent you were been paid, and you fully deserve the bliss that often draws smiles on your face.
After all, changing the world is when you can soothe someone when your voice does not quiver, smile with someone when your teeth still have the pearly glow and work for yourself and make yourself useful to the world and give your heart and soul selflessly for something you really believe in.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Unknotting the pouch of time


Growing up comes in way after loads of bitter lessons and internal battles of choices. And it never sees an end. It is a process of learning many lessons and defining the margin between reality and fantasies
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When times go by you will realize that not everyone who did well in their Grade 5 scholarship exams will make it to the university. You will also begin to see that those bad kids who ran behind boys, got expelled and messed up their exams can end up in higher places than where you are.
You will begin to wonder whether the person who first said that life is not a bed of roses was actually too blind not to see the thorns as both the flowers and the thorns will make you what you are.
You will also begin to feel that switching the language of thinking can be a total disaster. But it is certainly better than translating the thoughts when communicating.
When you grow up, you will gradually develop a sixth sense to identify the back-stabbers and the tale-carriers. And you will be brave enough to live among the cut-throats and survive. Also, you will begin to figure out the few-tissue difference of a fake smile and a genuine one.
There will also be a time you will come to know that those who do not speak much will be walking up and down with countless stories that can inspire you to live and make others feel better about their lives.
You will also realize that the friends who have loudest of laughs are the first to cry. And perhaps those who tell jokes and make you laugh may not have laughed in their lives as much as you.
There will also be a time when you feel like transferring the silvery glow that is getting into your hair into your skin and ample stocks of melanin that darken your skin into your hair.
After years of waiting you will concede the fact that Prince Charming does not really have a face and that his ‘profile picture’ can be replaced with that of anyone you want.
As sad as it may sound, after wasting fortunes on fancy jewellery, clothes and accessories, it will dawn to you that men do not spot on half of the things women wear to boost the attraction factor. Funny enough, he will likely to notice the shape of your ear but the huge butterfly-stud will surely escape his notice.
Looking at your parents struggle with their e-mails or grand mothers struggling with the tuners of the radios you understand that one day, you will also feel as outdated as they are, but the technology never will.
Trying to get over the morning-mirror shock, you will repeatedly tell yourself that no matter how many strands of hair fall on to the ground still there’s enough hair to be tied into a pony-tail or bun.
Worn out slippers will begin to define your approach. Your table will define your appetite for intellectual food and what you eat will decide the sharpness of your eyesight and firmness of feet.
At last you will keep learning that, with constant practice, smiles can be polished sun-shiny and the laughs can be better tuned.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Tried hard and still trying


When I was really small and Achchi and Loku Nanda were overjoyed to find out that I was the newest addition to the left-handers’ gang in the huge family, it did not stop them from training me to use my right hand when I feed myself. The training I found very much torturous as a five-year-old. Their attempts were somewhat successful as I learnt to use my right hand when I ate things like rice and string-hoppers.
But when it comes to culinary etiquettes I was very much compelled to use my own etiquettes rather than the standard forms of practice; worse still when I have to eat things like sandwiches or cake I very much prefer to use my good hand. Even though, this has never been a cause of embarrassment for Amma and Thaththa, at the age of twenty-two, I am very much resolved to discipline myself before it becomes an embarrassment to someone else.
Some years ago, biting nails had been on top of my list of bad habits. I would happily chew into my thumb nail while watching Sri Lanka pathetically losing a match against a visiting team. Those days, stopping my fingers from going into my mouth was harder than swallowing the bitterness of defeat. When Saha was crowned with the title ‘Miss Beautiful Hands’ among us girls I was ashamed to raise my hands to give her a loud applaud. But things changed when I was out and away from tennis courts and among the bunch of Visakhians. For once in lifetime, I let my nails grow just to see how it would look like. The final result was my decision to let them grow as they seemed much better on my fingers than in my appendix.
The habit which annoys me most perhaps is converting my handbag into a mobile garbage bin. I would take the credit of not throwing bus tickets, hand bills and toffee wrappers on the roadside like most of the other pedestrians do. So trying to be the ‘good girl’ I always make it a point to throw away all the bus-tickets and bills as soon as I come home from work. But that is the very thing which escapes my memory. The final outcome is producing heaps and mounds of hand-bills and bus tickets when the bus conductor asks for change.
Even today, when a silent drizzle is falling over the plants growing outside my window, I have been playing a certain Hindi song from morning perhaps for the five-hundredth time. Even though it was downloaded only this morning, Nangi had already grown sick of it thanks to my excessive replaying. Now, the next battle would be stopping myself from humming ‘thujé deka deka sonâ’ every thirty seconds.
I have been wondering why it is always easy to get used to something bad yet very hard to get over with it. Wrong poses, eating junk food, smoking and drinking are some of those killer-habits that can cross your health at the wrong side. It is also funny that most of these bad habits sneak into our lives when we are wise enough to weigh things before choosing. If that is one of the benefits in growing up, I’d rather remain in my childhood and make others do the same. After all, sucking the thumb is much healthier than sucking in tonnes of tobacco and tar.