Sunday 29 September 2013

House Hunt - II

Strings of guitar were struck, laptops were geared with speakers, cake was gently placed, and our photographer was in no mood to miss any moment. It had been just 2 days in our new flat, and we had started to gel with the rest of folks staying there. The fun that started around midnight continued till 4 in the morning when we heard the bang on our front door. The abstainers amongst us reached the peephole, and then opened the door. Residents of that apartment were pretty upset from our deafening melodies, and had come to register their justified protest. They threatened us to vacate the place which instilled no sense of worry from the rest of the crowd except from us - the two new residents who had luckily managed to get a roof on their head.

The life paces, and soon we were moving with the flow. Although there were few occasions when we found our nights of sleep were disturbed, with nightmares hitting us more often than usual. But I and my roommate never discussed it and were fine ignoring them, for we thought about them only when the body was drenched with the tiredness of day’s work. The same continued for days and weeks when one day I shared about this repetitive dream and the reaction that I got from him opened the corridors of horror on which we had just stepped in.

Can two different persons have the same dream? And if by coincidence it happens once, is it expected to repeat again? Well, to be honest, these unanswered questions and a few answered ones had started to haunt us. We often felt the disturbing presence of an unknown while we were asleep, and the repetitiveness of the experience lead us to believe in it, even when we were awake. We talked non-stop on the subject and tried to convince many rationalists how we were confronting the unknown. Many gave a scientific justification, while others laughed us off, but none dared to spend a few nights in there. Since there was a kind of conflict between what we had believed all our lives, and to what we were witnessing, we found it better to curtail the talk and work hard to move out from that place quickly as possible.

In the daylight, there were few people who were no less than the ones that invaded our dreams. Yes, those were the people who were having two things, of which we needed one badly and unfortunately always got another. The first thing was our money which we had given them as security deposits, token amounts, etc for our previous flat, which was to be refunded when we vacated the house. And the second one that we got from them was lame excuses for delaying the payment of the money. The trust levels of their talk and expectation of getting our money back were at the nadir when we took a different, not so polite approach. After a few days, rough talk loosened the deceitful and despicable clutches, and we spent no moment idle before we grabbed our righteous refunds.

While the hunt for new place was on, we were learning interesting stories about our present residence. Simple stories with weird conclusions had become a routine. Even our maid tried to put in some dust in our ears, for what all shall we do to get rid of the situation.

There are times which pass so quickly that we don’t even notice, and also there are times that appear to be still. We were putting all our energies to move ahead of the situation, but every time we looked back, we found that we were still at the same place. The monsoon had just hit the island city, and lightening had made it worse. Frequently, there were power cuts owing to heavy downpour, when thunder played its tricks. I have always felt that it is the thought and the belief that drives us, but with this 27 day long experience, I realized that it is also so easy to lose control over the mind. And when this happens, be assured that it’s not going to be simple anymore, because that’s when weirdness creeps in and messes with your entire circuitry, just to teach one lesson, "the only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability".

Saturday 24 August 2013

House Hunt - I

Often when we’re asleep, the tensions and commotion of life fade away from our brain and it takes us to delightful journey across the hidden treasures of our subconscious. The beauty of these treasures is heavenly if they happen to portray the pleasant side, and so magnetic that we start contemplating their possible happenings in the awakened world. And for few, dreams do come true. Today, mankind is proud of such dreamers that transformed their dreams to reality for the betterment of the world.

Also, there is another kind of dream that takes us through a roller coaster ride of anxiety and fear, and we often end up screaming loudly in the dream only to wake up with pin drop silence with beads of sweat on our forehead. That’s called the nightmare, and like the former, they too come true.

It was July 6, 2013, when I got a call from my broker who had helped me get a flat in the vicinity, as I was to vacate my place on completion of the term of rent agreement. I and my flatmate had thoroughly analyzed the available options and finally chosen a place for which we completed the pre-possession formalities well in advance. We were to shift on 8th, and all things were set in place when we received a call that taught us an important lesson in our lives.

As the voice on the other side told that we could not move into our new apartment, for bachelors were henceforth banned in that housing society, we certainly foresaw the troubles that were lying ahead. With 36 hours at our disposal, we were supposed to find a new place in Mumbai, when a sizeable amount of our money was in the hands of this fellow who could not keep his words even after we had paid him the token amount. We flipped through our contact list, called our friends and after 12 hours had arranged a temporary accommodation that was supposed to house us for a month, after which we planned to move to our final place.

(To be continued….)

P.S.: “The only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability.”

Thursday 6 June 2013

Cycle


As a kid, I knew only one meaning of the word ‘cycle’, and it was certainly an important possession that ruled my evenings. However, prefixes kept on varying, from a tricycle to bicycle and then the motorcycle, and these days, a totally unique one, Project cycle. When the latest prefix got significant in a sense of daily encounters, it all together gave a new dimension and meaning to the word cycle and hence some pondering became inevitable.

Cycle that symbolizes one of the greatest inventions of mankind, the happiness of parents when their child first strokes the pedals of tricycle, the joy of a kid that comes on the first ride with no training wheels, and the energy of an enthusiast performing stunts with his bike got altered into the paradigms of IT jargon. Keen over the multiplicity of the word cycle, the imagination hovered over the grounds of lingo and then landed on the term ‘life cycle’ that boggled the mind enough that it pedalled the way for this blog.

Upon looking further through the windows of my browser, many interesting facts, tales, designs and theories surfaced that portrayed the universality of the cycle or rather universality in a cycle. From being the symbol of an Indian political party to the Tour de France competition, the cycle has its imprint on several realms, either in figurative or literal terms. As per a theory in Physical Cosmology, Big Bang is described as the birth and Big Crunch as the end of a universal cycle, and the Puranas adding further to this states the occurrence of numerous such universal cycles. The Space-Time Continuum also talks about the relativity of space and time and their corresponding cyclical nature. These arguments of science and religion prompted the usage, universality in a cycle.  

And at this juncture keeping the above mentioned in view, the word cycle ceases to exist within the scopes of air-filled rubber circumferencing metallic spokes, rather it manifests into a shapeless cloud full of droplets from infinite sources that govern something as huge as the universe. The cycle in literal terms is the repetitive occurrence of events, like the waves on a shore striking the land repeatedly. Just ponder how waves glide over the sea, push the land, retreats humbly and then charges again with the same roar, riding on the strength of the sea. The cycle could also be a trap, and that's where Nirvana comes in the picture. Directed attempt to break free from this periodicity of day and night, happiness and sorrows, life and death.