Stepping Stones

There was once a young boy, adventurous and steadfast. He had a simplistic life, with ups and downs, albeit more than the average kid of his age, but remarkably average nonetheless.

And suddenly, there was only failure, failure all 'round. Nothing really seemed to work out, nothing fell into place. No endeavour successful, no achievement added to the roster. He couldn't see clearly, it was all haze and confusion.

But he'd heard failures are stepping stones to success. He'd heard it all gets better and at the end of a long and eventful life, it only matters what your journey has been. Life was the exact opposite of a state function, he was told. It all falls into place, it all becomes okay, as long as you've garnered happiness along the way! That was how things work, he'd heard!

Sadly, it wasn't.

The finer things

(Note: This was written in the library while around a 100 people were studying around me. It's more of a spillage of thoughts, not a carefully crafted article)

I recently happened to read a rather intriguing article in the editorial page of the Economic Times. Does the name Joshua Bell ring a bell? (heh) He's a grammy-winning violinist who once decided to conduct a social experiment on being prodded by a Washington Post columnist. He donned a t-shirt, a baseball cap, a pair of rugged jeans and played his best compositions outside a Washington metro station, as one of those buskers by on the pavement. Out of over a thousand people who passed by, apparently, only seven stopped to listen, and, amazingly, one recognized him. There's stats on how much cash he collected from the people who stopped to listen (apparently the guy who recognized him payed him $20, i don't know how that's a sign of respect and all) but let's not go there.

Of course, the columnist who came up with this idea and later wrote about it got quite a few accolades for it, including the 2008 Pulitzer prize. (Oh, he won another Pulitzer in 2010. For an article on something along the lines parents killing their children by leaving them in cars. Don't ask) The point of this entire charade was to prove that people have "no time to stand and stare". That they pay substantial amounts, $100 for a half-decent seat, to listen to the same guy at his shows, but they really wouldn't stop for him at the metro station.

The idea stands. Strong and steady. We've all got quite a busy schedule. People don't have time today, there is always something or the other on their minds keeping them tensed and taut. What the columnist wanted to convey was that human relations aren't the key anymore, it's all about alienating yourself from human contact, being alone and calling it competition.

But you've gotta admit there's a better way of proving it. This experiment proves nothing except the author's talent of making 45 minutes sound like an epic.

I discussed this issue with a friend over tea. I honestly didn't see the big deal. Agreed, it's a racy life, nobody has the time to appreciate beauty even when it's staring you in the face. And as for recognizing the guy at the metro station - Thin about it, if Ustad Amjad Ali Khan or some other Indian virtuoso were to be standing in a below-average attire at CST station at 10 AM, how many people would recognize him?

What did come out of it, though, was a realization that there's people who're working on it. Working on trying to show the world how out-of-hands the pace of the world in general has gone. I know I'll get questioning looks and advice that it's a dog-eat-dog world, and survival of the fittest and all that, but I still firmly believe that the finer things of life are seldom appreciated.

But what change do I expect? What are these social experiments going to achieve? There is no way the amount of competition, the insanely workaholic habits of people in general are going to change. I guess all that matters is if one realizes what happiness is for oneself.

Whatever be the case, one thing's for sure. Joshua Bell in a metro station is not the way you prove this.

Full Monty

Giving in to a whim I had, I recently decided to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail again. The last time was more than two years ago, as a fresher in college, kicked about the LAN and what not. You could describe my reaction to the movie as "amused" or even "mostly grinning punctuated by occasional laughter."

This time around, though, such blasphemy I did not commit. At the end of an hour and a half of trying not to fall off the chair, not only did my sides ache, I think there's some permanent damage on the sidelines. No episode of any show, no movie has ever got me in splits such as the Pythons did and it would be the lease I could do to just plainly dedicate a post to those geniuses of humour.

And on the walk back to hostel from the night canteen, I discussed this exact issue with Prashant. Our senses of humour have transformed over the last few years, and HOW! From being almost contrasting, to forming this one fuzzy mesh of jokes and one-liners that are completely predictable and more often than not, funny only to us. The bad part is, I can never get around to writing about this. I've tried to put fingers to keyboard and recreate scenarios, but somehow, never happens.

Yeah, that's about it. I don't think I have a point. Thought in transition. Admittedly, all of the above could've been put much better. That for another day.

Take me to a better place.

It's messed up how much the lack of sleep can trouble your mind. Everything turns out annoying. The noise, the sheer volume of everything around you, the frivoulty of most things, the constant bickering, the utter indifference of the world. And on expression of the aforementioned, a blame of being elitist, people telling you to get over it and stop blaming others, accusations of hypocrisy and many such things. 

I just want to drown into There there and let everything go. It's just not worth it. All the efforts, the constant bearing on the mind, the life of an engineering college, the charges of seeking attention, all such things make it not worth it whatever be the rewards. Is THIS the college life they speak of, or is the matter with me? If I could play the guitar today, I'd be strumming Radiohead tunes all night long. To hell with classes, to hell with assignments. To hell with the people.

Flip Phone

I have an insane urge of stepping on something and breaking it. Very specifically, a flip-phone. I'm certainly not doing it to mine, mostly because it belongs to Abha and she'd kill me.

Butt I almost sat on it a while back, and I just wondered about the crack, about the sound it'll pass. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it ever since. As stupid ass it seems, I just had to post it.

Bleh

I cannot, for the life of me, write poetry. Except for the ones I write with Suramya, which REALLY doesn't count. I just read 15-odd blogs in the space of the last hour and a half, and everyone's been shelling out random poetry. I tried to get the deep inner meaning and all that, I really did. No dice. Maybe it's the PoM report.

Bleh. Feeble attempts to blow dust away. Mostly resulting in choking on it. Nothing attempted, nothing gained.