If you knew this was your last day on earth, how would you live it?

If you knew this was your last day on earth, how would you live it?
Suppose you wake up early one morning, and you somehow just know that it is your last day on the planet, would you choose to live it differently from all other days? A potent question, if ever there was one.

First of all, you might try to bury the feeling and convince yourself that the feeling is false, that no, you are not going to die today. But what if your gut feeling was true? Would you like to live your last day pretending it wasn’t? Isn’t that how we live everyday, ‘safe’ in the knowledge that there will always be a tomorrow to make up for the mistakes that we made today, yesterday, the day before, and the day before that?

Would you go around apologising to everyone you ever hurt? More importantly, would you have enough time to apologize to each and every person for each and every mistake you made? Do you even remember them all?

Would you call up all your old friends, whom you haven’t talked to in ages, to talk to them one last time?

Would you tell your near and dear ones that this was the last time they would see you in flesh and blood? Would you really want to burden them with that knowledge?
How about telling the rest of the world? Will it affect the way they feel towards us? Won't all animosities suddenly vanish and won't we become good in their eyes once that knowledge is imparted?

It is a fact of life, or rather death, that most people tend to remember us for the good that we did in our lives when we pass on, rather than for the bad times. It is also true that most of us also feel a certain sense of guilt when someone we know passes on. Maybe we should have called them one last time, maybe we shouldn’t have said that to them, maybe we should have tried to get to know them a little better. Is there a perfect way to say goodbye?

Or would you choose to live your last the same way you have lived your past 40 years, do all the regular things, if only to enjoy those simple pleasures for one last time, living every moment just a bit more? To give you some semblance of control, to prevent you from panicking?

Or would you go to the extent of trying out new things, things that you somehow never had time for? Would you be the crazy guy who does this “First, I'd beat up everyone I hate. Then, I'd rent a Ferrari and drive it into a wall. Then I'd do some skydiving (or some other extreme sport). At the end of the day, I'd get so drunk and high that I wouldn't know that I was going to die.” Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?
Would you spill out all your secrets, say things to people you would otherwise not have had the courage to say before, be it good or bad? Would you spend it regretting all the things you could have done, all the people you could have loved, all the good you could have done, but never bothered doing? Would you be the guy who thinks “there are so many books I’ve been wanting to read, so many films I’ve been meaning to see, so much music I’ve been missing out on, but that isn’t possible to do in a day either.”

Would you spend it praying to God to forgive you for your sins, so that tomorrow you would be in a slightly better place than the one that has been reserved for you today?

Lastly, would you forgive all those who have hurt you or would you carry that rage and hatred to your grave?

Think about it.

Life

I found out today that one of my JC juniors passed away during his pilot training in America. I am astounded and shocked. I thought it was a joke when I saw the Facebook group "May you rest in peace – Sanstav Paul". This is horrible. I still cannot believe it.

I cannot express what I feel in words. Since I don’t even know what I feel. How do you face something like death? Someone you knew yesterday is there no more. Someone who came online till yesterday will do so no more. How? Why? Why??

I hope God gives his family and friends strength to get through this. May he rest in peace.


A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.
~ Louisa May Alcott in Good Wives

Years, following years, steal something every day;
At last they steal us from ourselves away.
~ Horace

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight....
Not people die but worlds die in them.
~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "People"

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
~ Madame de Stael

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
~ J.K. Rowling

Updated list of TV series that I have seen

Friends
Joey
24
How I Met Your Mother
Scrubs
Sex and the City
House
The O.C.
Seinfeld
Prisonbreak
Lost
Heroes
One tree hill
That 70’s Show
So You Think You Can Dance
Grey's Anatomy
Dirty Sexy Money
Private Practice
90210

Next in line should be Boston Legal.. :)

The hamster experience

So I agreed to take in 4 hamsters from my friend’s friend for the duration that he was going back to his home country, 2 males, 2 females, one male-female couple in each cage. Today morning I returned him 3 of them. No-no I did not decide to keep 1 for myself, 1 died. Stupid thing.

I have no idea how. 1 night they were both fighting, next morning I wake up and 1 is dead. Lying there. Flat. Fur standing. Dead.

As you can see, I'm obviously not an ardent animal lover. I can watch little puppies from far away and yelp how cute they are, but don’t bring anything near me. If I’d thought that taking in pets, if only for a few days, would be a good experience, I was obviously mistaken. After one had died, I used to check first thing in the morning that the remaining three were alive. Would move the cage even if they were sleeping to ensure they were moving. And of course to check that there were still three inside and they had not escaped. Considering how they are highly active nocturnal creatures, who used to wake me up so many times at night. I was in constant fear that they would escape from the cage and I would wake up to find one sitting on my blanket staring at me.

Plus I had a dream the other night that when I opened the cage door for a split second, the hamster escaped and I was chasing after it in my room. And finally managed to capture it in that green ball thingie. And it started going round and round in it very fast so that I found it very difficult to hold on. Weird.
Glad to say, they’re gone now. I can go back to a hamster-stench free room. With no one to ruin my night’s sleep.

But all said and done, I think I’ll miss them. Miss having something alive in my room. After all they weren’t all that bad company.

The American Dream

So I'm reading this book called The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi. On a very typical clichéd topic of a 27 year old Indian girl living in America coming home on holiday and being pestered about marriage. Nothing new. But the way the book is written is very grasping. Some of the issues I can relate to. Some I can't. Considering I’m not a Telugu Brahmin and don’t live in San Francisco.

But the statement “I liked having an apartment from where I could look at San Francisco and know that I was here, in the U.S., in the land of opportunities” does make me wonder about the whole romanticized idea of the American dream. I mean do I want to go live there now, no. Hell, I didn’t even put a U.S. university as my first choice for student exchange, but where do I see myself in ten years? I would have to say the States. For some divine reason, it just seems like the place to be. To me at least. Maybe it’s the mindset we’re brought up with – you are successful if you live in America. Not taught explicitly, not ever mentioned in those precise words, but it seems to be the sum total of all wisdom that we ever learn.

I mean sure Singapore is a nice place and all, but no offense or anything, it is too small a place for me to actually envision much of a future in. It feels claustrophobic. There are just so many places you can go to, so many things you can do to chill out, so many times you can curse the system and government. At the end of the day, you want something new, something different, something more. Yeah I do sound like a leech and will probably get sued if a politician reads this, which I doubt is ever going to happen, but that is the way I see it.

I don’t really see myself going back to live in India either. I just can't. What will the future hold for me, I don’t know. I might go back to my homeland one day and actually be happy about it, but at this moment in time, I don’t see it happening in the near future.

I like winters. Maybe only for a short while at a time, but maybe that is something I will get used to. It surprises even me at times that I am actually willing to come to terms with a not so perfect life in a country I have never been to, just based on some subconscious gut feeling.

An apartment, somewhere in America. I can't help but yearn for that. A place to call home.

Is there such a thing as happily ever after?

Ok so Grey's Anatomy is seriously messing with my head. And also my ears, which feel like there are headphones on them when there are none. Yeah well my speakers are spoilt.

But GA has me doubting, once again, if there is such a thing as people being happy, forever. I know it does not exist, but isn’t it the hope for it, that keeps us going? After all what are we really searching for?

The people who thought it would be enough to just be with one another find out it’s not enough. It never is. People who love each other start hiding their true feelings. So as to not hurt the other person. And slowly they drift apart. A point of no return is reached.

And in every relationship, is there always one person who tries harder, loves more, suffers more? While the other is distant, even has an affair?

Why do we cheat? Is it possible to love two people at the same time? How does a wife stay with her husband when she knows he is having an affair? Or the other way around? Why do we love in the first place? When we know we are going to get hurt. Because nobody is perfect.

When someone hurts us, we use different means to cope with it. They say time heals all wounds. Does it really? Aren’t there some wounds which never heal, some tears which can never be mended, some tears which can never stop flowing?

I’m not really looking for an answer here; I just want to put these questions out into the cosmos, into that big black wide hole of nothingness.

All these emotions that we have, we hide within us. At the end of the day, aren’t we all just damaged goods, trying our best to just survive? We become dark and twisted from inside, and slowly, we rot away.

I know this is depressing, what I write, but it makes me feel better to write about it. So I will. You can judge me all you want, but if you are not there for me when I fall, who the hell are you to pass judgements on me?

I love dialogues. I love the way they touch me. I love the way they express how I feel. I love the way I remember them. When I watch a TV series, it is not just some people enacting it for me, I’m there, right there among them. If they get hurt, I get hurt; if they’re happy, so am I. If it is an emotional series, I cry. I beat myself into a mushy pulp over it, which I know is not good or smart, but I don’t regret it. That is the way I am. That is the way I want to be, the way I choose to be. I cannot not care. It is stupid, but in that moment I am alive. I might not move from my bed for hours or even days, but I travel so much more through my mind.

Following are a few quotes from GA.
- It may be better to stay in the dark. There might be fear, but there is also hope.
- Communication – it’s really the first thing we learn. But the funny thing is, the older we get, the more difficult it becomes to decide what to say, or how to say it.
- I’ve heard it is possible to grow up. I just haven’t seen anyone do it.
- I’m all glued back together now. I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke. You don’t get to call me a whore.
- At some point maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare.

Sometimes its just hard, you know..

So my latest obsession in TV series is Grey’s Anatomy. I do this thing where I take some series and watch it obsessively until I finish it.

Here’s my achievement list so far –
Friends
Joey
24
How I Met Your Mother
Scrubs
Sex and the City
House
The O.C.
Seinfeld
Prisonbreak
Lost
Heroes
One tree hill
That 70’s Show
So You Think You Can Dance
Impressive isn’t it? :)

Anyways, back to Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve reached halfway of season 2 in 2 days, and I’m so slow only because that wasn’t the only thing I was doing. Haha.
I somehow tend to think too much. And every situation that happens, I somehow always place myself in the position of the person before blaming him or her for their actions. Like yesterday what really moved and saddened me was when Dr. Derek Shepperd aka Dr. McDreamy had to make a choice between his wife and girlfriend. I know it sounds totally wrong and stuff, but the way it happened was a bit different. His wife cheated on him, with his best friend, and it totally shattered him. So he just left Manhattan and moved to Seattle. At the bar he met Meredith Grey, and they had a one night stand. And then the next day they discovered that she was an intern and he was the attending at the same hospital. And then they both fell for her. While it was extremely wrong of him to not tell her that he was married, I can imagine that a person who was finally happy after so much pain would want to keep it that way, as he was probably trying to block out his past. And then when his wife finally came back, hell broke loose on all of them. He had to choose, between his wife, with whom he had spent “11 Thanksgivings, 11 Birthdays, 11 Christmases” and the girlfriend who he was falling in love with and was so happy with. I mean how do you make a choice like that? And eventually he decided to do the right thing and stay with his wife. And when the first Christmas comes, he has just one explanation for his depression, “it’s the holidays you know”, and Meredith says “yeah, I know”. And when he meets his wife at Joe’s bar and she asks him why he is so sad, “we love Christmas, remember? At least we used to.” And his reply is, “Christmas makes you wanna be with people you love. And I’m not saying this to hurt you, or because I want to leave you, because I don’t.”
“Meredith wasn’t a fling, she wasn’t revenge. I fell in love with her. That doesn’t go away because I decided to stay with you.”

How do you deal with a thing like that?

Dance

Dance is an awesome thing. If only I could dance!
This sudden upsurge in my love for dance springs from the fact that I’ve been watching So You Think You Can Dance again. And I’m so in love with Benji Schwimmer. He’s the second season winner.
Every single time I see him dance, I fall in love with him all over again. He's like the perfect guy. Ever. Awesome performer. Not perfect. But so funny. So cute. So adorable! :) I LOVE him!!!

The nightmare is over,but the dawn is yet to come.

The siege has been brought to its conclusion but the terror it has struck in the hearts and minds of people all over the world will continue to be felt for a long time to come. I’m sitting in a room, thousands of miles away from India, yet every other minute I somehow expect my building to blow up. I have never seen so much violence in my life in the matter of such a short time, except maybe on the TV series 24, and that thankfully wasn’t real.

I am scared, for all my family and friends back home, because I know they are not safe. How can they be, with a government like that? I can't even begin to imagine what the families of those who died in the attacks must be going through. They deserve to be revenged.

What I fail to understand is how the Pakistani government can claim that their country is in no way involved in the Mumbai massacre. When the 21 year old Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, the lone terrorist who has been caught, admits to being from Pakistan and having been trained by the Laskhar-e-Taiba, when he tells the authorities that his fellow men hailed from that country, how can the Pak government possibly be thick skinned enough to deny all charges?

Saluting martyrs..

I salute ATS Chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Police Commissioner Ashok Kamte, Encounter Specialist Vijay Salaskar and NSG commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, as well as the many other policemen and commandos, incredibly brave men who go in knowing full well they might never come back, never see their families again, who selflessly lay down their lives so that people like us can be safe. All the forces have indeed done a wonderful job over the past 2 and a half days, and I am greatly thankful to them.

I also pray for the more than 150 people who died in the shootings and attacks by terrorists, Indians as well as foreigners. May they rest in peace.

In this fight against terror, politicians have not failed to disappoint each and every one of us. Their petty pathetic bickering, finger pointing, politicising of the deaths of hundreds of people for stupid votes makes me boil. What the hell do they want votes for anyways? So that they can be the ones whom fingers are pointed at? Till now I have not heard one single person take responsibility for anything that has happened, not the politicians, at the state or central level, not the intelligence, not the police. Everyone except the terrorists is clueless, and instead of acknowledging it, they blame each other.

Just the fact that people actually suspect that an Indian political party can be involved in an attack as dastardly as this speaks volumes of the reputation these selfish, horrible people have built for themselves. At times I am glad I do not live in India at the moment, as I would never know whom to vote for, they are all corrupt, power hungry bastards.

Despite the fact that elites have been hit this time, the government still seems to be asleep. One after another, bomb blasts occur all over the country. Pakistan does nothing, India does nothing. Today we talk about our anger, the desperate need for change; tomorrow the hype dies down, all sacrifices are forgotten, till another attack happens and the whole cycle repeats itself.

While I totally detest the mud-slinging by Narendra Modi on the Indian PM Manmohan Singh, I can't help but agree with him on the point that the latter's statement to the nation was disappointing to say the least. It was the same old promises, we will go after terrorists, blah blah. Ya right! I am not a Bush fan, but I did agree with one of my friends when she said that when the terrible 9-11 attacks happened, Bush went after the terrorists in hot pursuit, despite all the criticism that he got, because it was his countrymen who had been killed, his nation which had been attacked. It might have also been driven by the desire to show that the United States was the most powerful country, but the Indian PM's reaction to what has been called India's 9-11 was shockingly mellow. In fact he seemed so dead while delivering the speech, no emotions on his face, just his lips reading out words probably written by his secretary because a need was felt for the PM to issue a statement.

In an SMS sent by Karkare on the morning he was gunned down, he said "I am sick of being a police officer in a country where every investigation is politicized." The moment the truth starts to come out, the politicians involved start raising a huge hue and cry and get the honest officers removed, so that they can put in their own stooges.

At this point, the Rang De Basanti dialogue comes to mind, "is desh mein kuch nahi badla hai, kuch nahi badlega. Aisa hi hota aaya hai, aisa hi hota rahega." (Nothing has changed in this country, nothing ever will. It has always been like this, and will continue to be so.) Sad but unfortunately true words. Nothing seems to wake politicians out of their comfortable slumber. Why are they not the ones who are killed? Because people lay down their lives to saves them. As someone on TV was saying, "I don't know whether to be happy or sad that nobody was killed in the Parliament attacks." Except for innocent soldiers of course.

The ease with which terrorists seem to be able to move inside our country, the intensive preparation that they carry out, undisturbed by anyone whatsoever, tells a sad tale. I agree that India is a large country, with a long coastline, and it is indeed difficult to police such a vast territory, but to be totally clueless? With so many agencies?

I believe that terrorism cannot be rooted out by military action alone. You kill 10 terrorists today, a more 100 more come up tomorrow. The hateful ideology that hardened militants plant in the minds of so many innocent youths is the real reason why it is so hard to control it.

I do not know what can be done. But I do know that if nothing is done, terrorism will rise. Because they obviously realize that India is a "soft target". I sadly also know that nothing will be done. Mumbaikars, as well as the whole country realizes that we CANNOT depend on politicians to do anything, they are too busy politicising terror.

Today Mumbai is silent, dazed, shattered, shocked and shaken; a financial city which just wants to get on with the business of life has today come to a standstill. Will the sacrifices of Karkare and all the others be remembered in the right way, as professionals who just wanted to do their jobs, but were haunted and hunted all their lives by politicians? People need to know what Karkare stood for, honesty, integrity, professionalism, confidence, a man of few words but immense courage, who never thought twice before leading from the front.

Today I have tears in my eyes as I watch people paying respects to the body of Karkare, a man I had not heard of till 3 days back, but today he symbolises for me hope, the knowledge that my country has produced people like him makes me hold my head high with pride.

But today I am angry, just like every other Indian. Today fine speeches are not enough, I want change. All we expected was some basic standards of government, and we have been failed miserably by our “leaders”. If the system does not change, it has failed people like Karkare and their sacrifices have been in vain. If the government does not change itself, families who have lost their loved ones will feel violated. Today people who go to five star hotels have realized that even they are not safe from terror. Slogans are being made at the funeral processions, but can good intentions be shaped into action? The everyday man cannot take up AK-47s, they don’t have television cameras. We have obviously not learnt our lessons from 1993. Will it be different this time?