Love: The way I understand it

We all need a bit of magic, something divine, supernatural, empowering, and enchanting in our mundane life. As Woody Allen says, “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.”

Theists have a great privilege of witnessing God in almost anything. For some people a bit of cleanliness is almost as good as godliness. However, life gets a bit too methodical and predictable for a logical atheist. The possibilities of witnessing a miracle are remote if you discount a few coincidences.

A second magical possibility conceived almost as good as God and sometimes even better is Love.
Plausibly one of the most misunderstood words, like few others. Or rather everybody just understands it differently.

Love is often discredited as a trick played by hormones (oxytocins, pheromones etc) or sometimes it is diminished to a level to be used only as a protective cover for carnal desires. A person I knew considers the self-sacrificing, unconditional, divine love as nothing but a marketing gimmick that probably sold and is still selling myriads of books, movies, music and various other art forms.
Confession: I grew up on Shahrukh Khan’s movies.

It may be a slight exaggeration because I certainly have also been influenced by some of the finest filmmakers including Woody Allen, Tim Burton, Guru Dutt, Vijay Anand, Vishal Bhardwaj etc.

And well, it may sound childish but I interpreted the meaning of Love from his movies. The unconditional love where the hero like a naive poker player bets his farm (goes all in) and leaves the table with an amazing win. It’s not about the conquest or about taking the prettiest girl home or being the most fun person. It’s about those feelings and emotions that I experience when I witness a character whose passion makes him larger than life. The person who has an access to a never-ending source of love that never dries off. A person who achieves the unimaginable just to make his beloved smile for a moment longer.

Quite a few acquaintances of mine consider him to be a bad actor, but in my opinion I have yet to see an actor who can romance as passionately as Shahrukh. Someone who can convey only with a look “I will fly to the sun back and forth a million times for you. I will fight Superman and even beat him for you. I will make you feel to be the most wonderful person in the entire cosmos.”

I had a few amorous affairs myself. I treated a couple of them as princesses too but needless to say, real life was much too disappointing.

But I am not complaining. I still relish and will possibly keep relishing watching the romantic antics of the person who defined romance for me and for contemporary cinema.
Summarising with a bit of Charles Dickens “You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy my mind has ever become acquainted with.”

Investor Me

I am proud of myself. After months of dillydallying, and without any expertise (I am kinda financ-o-phobic), I bought my first three shares of my favorite addiction. :)

Let's see where it goes from here.
But I am happy to finally make a move.

Zenzi Salsa Night

I attended the sunday salsa night at zenzi for the first time. It sure was a great experience.
Seeing so many talented dancers from various schools was absolutely impressive.
And I got to watch Kaytee dance live for the first time. Loved his flawless and extremely graceful dancing.
I managed to get a compliment from a girl on my dancing which was all I could ask for at this stage.

Would like to do it more often in future.

Strawberry Fields Forever

It is just a sham.
Everything I like/dislike, love/hate is programmed into my head by social conditioning.
Food,
Drinks,
Smokes,
Art,
People,
Just about everything, all preferences are consequences of programming.

Good to know we are all manipulated, including the ones who think they are the manipulators.

Nothing is real and Nothing to get hung about

Everyone is choosy...

Everyone is choosy. Some compromise, some don't. Those who don't, define attitude...
This is the concept I came up with while doing one of my favorite pastimes, gchat with a very good friend of mine. Yes we all know we are all choosy. Some a bit less, some a bit more. There is always a degree involved. As Wikipedia defines “attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item.” But I am not talking about the likes and dislikes, positive and negative attitude towards things. I am talking about Attitude.
The thing I want to emphasize is that people who don’t compromise are the ones who define attitude. This word is one of those commonly misused word and that makes it harder to define. In a discussion with another friend, I realized how people who are choosy demonstrate attitude. Ever felt that your friend who refused to join you for lunch has attitude because s/he found the place inferior to her/his tastes. Not a very good example of attitude, well let’s take a few others.
Indian freedom fighters (Gandhi or Bose, pick whoever you like) lived a harsh life and struggled throughout because they were choosy about who governs them. Andrew Carnegie, the second wealthiest person ever, chose to draw only $50,000 per year and gave the rest away to philanthropy. Remember Rahul (Shahrukh Khan) from “Dil To Pagal Hai”, who never compromised for his Maya? Lord Buddha relinquished all the luxuries because he chose wisdom over worldly pleasures.
There are tons of such examples and all the great achievers possessed attitude.
I regret every time I compromise and always learn from every such situation.
Yes, I do have Attitude.

No Direction Home

I am at work and do not want to work. I do not want to do anything. I am feeling directionless. I want to just listen to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, CCR, Steppenwolf and of course, The Beatles. I want to be teleported to Woodstock ’69. I want to spend time with some really interesting and nice people and smoke. I want to just be.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
Peopled call, say, beware doll, you’re bound to fall
You thought they were all kiddin you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, miss lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where its at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin, thinkin that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you cant refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
~ Bob Dylan

I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told

It suddenly dawned on me, I am average. I know it’s perfectly normal. I also know that all big achievers are normal people. And like all average people, they had slightly unusual dreams and the eccentricity to realize them. I dream unusual, spectacular, magical dreams too. However, I am not eccentric enough and I don’t want to be. This at times, makes me feel a bit uneasy. The feeling of being an average Joe who is not a social misfit. Who is also not one with the system. And I don’t mind being in this awkward place, but sometimes it gets a bit lonely. At times, I feel like an alien from the “3rd rock from the sun”, trying to mingle with the inhabitants of this planet, without being one of them.
I live in a crazy world. A world where inanimate objects play peek-a-boo with me by appearing and disappearing. A world of teleportation and time travel. A world where it’s just me and then at other times, dozens of crazy people like me. A world where love is not just a chemical reaction in the brain or an upsurge of hormones. A world that cannot be imagined by anyone.

After all, our imaginations are nothing but an extrapolation of our past experiences.

My world is nothing like we have ever known. So different that it cannot be expressed with the words from this world.
There I am, an average and normal guy, who thinks crazy stuff and believes it to be unique like all normal people.