The 13th Post!

An Observation: The Highway! 

While I waited for the train bound for Mumbai to arrive, I daydreamed; allowing for the probability that some pretty girl would be bound to my bay and due to her interest in me would pick up a conversation with me and that would make the fellow passengers jealous but would make my journey memorable. I further fantasied that I would go and pose for a photograph in front of the Taj, like everyone else does and put it up on Facebook and generate some likes. After that Terrorist attack, the Taj got more popular, while the Gateway of India watched with quiet envy, with the English East India Company buried with it.

 The train did arrive 20 minutes late enhancing my dream for 20 long minutes extra, and we rushed inside , throwing the luggage up and under and got the seat offenders to leave and I very soon realized that there wasn't a pretty girl around except a girl named Preeti. ( A girl I hypothetically named) The 36 hour journey began with a Chai for 7 bucks!

Train journeys are usually like some mobile (moving) parties, with mostly folks whom we can’t become fond of, have invited themselves. (I don’t know what I was thought of). And yes, there are food and drinks (Non-Alcoholic) – served. Ah! Yes! The music is on and audible as long the train is moving on the tracks, as if the DJ was underneath and the speed of the train controlled the tempo.  Well! Dance is very passive. U really don’t have to dance, u just stand or sit and you are already dancing.

However if you eat too much at the party, the biggest alarm is the toilets. Nevertheless these days, folks carry far more anxiety than the reluctance to go to the toilet, when the icon on the mobile phone which indicates battery power goes half empty. (Or half full) As the power dips, the party’s over and they get disheveled,  their eyes dart towards the power socket near the door to see if it’s free to have their souls filled with charged particles. Sadly there is always someone there, charging and looking around victorious, as if he is high on something; one place to get high i guess at the mobile party. 

Moreover standing at the door is one luxury that folks reach for, for it gives you the time away from the stares of others. And it is when I stood there away from the people, watching the moving view trying to understand Einstein’s relativity, I noticed something.

The one thing that caught my eye beside all these confusion of the party inside is a passive construction of a highway. A highway created by all the responsible but ignorant travellitizens. A highway created by not of corrupt politicians but our selfish souls I reckon. This highway formed by the thrown waste through the windows gets broader and whiter each day, as trains keep whirring past every day. This highway runs beside the tracks beside rails or sometimes on the bushes nearby.  This litter highway runs even in to the platforms of the stations and run for thousands of kilometers and runs every where.

That's the problem with waste, they are very naughty or they tend to have the boomerang effect. You throw them away they actually never go away and come back to us in very subtle ways. In this case, these waste got together as if in a conspiracy to create a highway beside the track like a child throwing a tantrum for it is given to someone else care and they can’t take care of them.

This highway is still not complete and it solely depends on us to make it whole for the entire earth is a dump yard. So let’s join hands and throw everything through the window in to the moving frame so we can complete this highway collectively. Once it is complete maybe our children could travel on them in some strange way or if that is not possible then maybe the bacteria can foster this highway, when they evolve to have wheels......

Yeah Right! With this my daydream about Mumbai was over!

An Unfinished!

Love is War!

The war between the sexes is perhaps the longest waging war in history and its battleground are our streets, homes and our comfort zones. This war has lasted longer than the 100 year war between England and France and perhaps began at the blame game, acted out at the Garden of Eden. Or if I consider evolution, I really don’t know when those asexual beings thought to themselves that creating a parallel sex, which would evolve to be differently wired was actually progress and whom they could procure later, later at an advanced stage. Whatever! We have a frustrated ugly war raging in all of us for being forced to be attracted to the opposite sex. (Well! I know what you are thinking) But this war becomes a battle from being a war in general, when the opposite side sends in a personal ambassador and this happens when people fall in love or get married.

They together actually sign off a contract for a bigger, closer war right in their comfort zones, which for many is supposed to be a demilitarized zone or the ‘no one allowed’ zone. They sign up to be together with a kiss, a partner who might turn in to an opponent sooner or later, who engages with a different of rules gathered up by the wired head from culture, traditions, customs and a unique past. Nonetheless this war can increase opponents or fellow soldiers, who come in the form of children or relatives and society. Love is not just a beautiful story but a tale of war for to love is to be at war and death could be only the noble peace treaty. Falling in love, I guess is a unique call to arms, where your partner may become the main opponent, whom you need and so you cannot despise. ......... Blah...Blah....

It's one of those days, where you start writing on a idea and then change so many courses and finally can't come to a place to finish for everything is easier to start to tough to finish especially you tend to write about the issue of opposite sex, love etc. Now i am at war with my own mind and i believe that i should sign a peace treaty and then i could write again on this or maybe after the Syrian crisis is over. But  looks to me there is no conclusion in matters as these and this is the conclusion i have arrived upon as of now, to end this fruitless endeavor.. Adieu!   

Did i Write This?

 The Green Dot!

Back in those old days, when the world was six years younger than today and Facebook was beginning to grow to be everything - everything from the young folks’ expectations to old folks’ hidden desires or whatever, the green dot was being dotted besides names. These virtual folks with an account had to sign in to check out the new environment, like on an evening stroll that comes to an end and so it ends with the click of the sign out button, which also called logging off or back to the not so bright world - Gray. So if a guy had some crush on someone, whose mobile number he didn't have an access to, he would have waited for hours or maybe even days (Based on how crazy he was) for her to come online and perhaps generate a conversation that looks vaguely like this:

He: Hi

She ( after 10 minutes): Hi

He: how r u?

She (after several moments): am fine! U?

He: am good.

She: nice….

(This nice creates an awkward moment for it sure crashes the course of the conversation)

She: I gotta go… Bye!

He: Bye…….

(Oops! before he could say “it was nice talking to you, the green dot turns gray indicating she is no longer signed in)

He now with the crashed fantasy, with a deluded mind begins to miss the green dot beside her name, even more than He seems to miss her. The green dot is what he waited for, beside her name and perhaps he would wait again for the greening of the dot to indicate her virtual existence or reappearance; he wishes for the dot to be forever green.

 However, now with the advent of the ‘mobile computer’ that actually stays stationary in your pocket, while we dumbly move around and it gets to be called smart...... Anyway these computers which have become very touchy these days, let us exist simultaneously in the real and the virtual world like the cat in the famous 'thought' experiment called the Schrodinger’s Cat Experiment; the cat, I guess,  is still awaiting death or maybe even longing for it. As a result, I believe the most important application of a smart phone is not the Apps, but its ability to keep that green dot besides your name from turning gray virtually, even if your hair turns gray really. Although they seem to promise to keep that green dot alive until u and I are dead, this endeavor seems to suck life out of your battery exponentially. Alas! I wouldn't be surprised if they soon begin allow the dead to be pseudo-online or something, for everyone loves some sort of immortality and continued familiarity minus contempt.  

  Sometimes while i am still alive, I often reckon if people always had something written before and after their names when just their names, made them feel vulnerable or too exposed. Now I believe that folks would rather have this green dot beside their name for company than all these years hiding behind or before their educational qualifications. Now it has become a thing of coolness - the green alien glow beside names. So I was just thinking if I could get this green dot for company when I am gone and alone in my grave, making me look cool even while dead by installing a digital tombstone or something, with a will left behind stating to whom my cool cover photos would go to and possibly he can use it too.

Moreover as this green dot continues to dominate our life, I sometimes feel that it has begun to decompose the idea of goodbye. For after you usually wave goodbye to someone, the person physically leaves you and now logs off. But now thanks to the smart phones, the green dot beside the name you just said goodbye is still staring out to you from the side; making it look like that the person is still peeping out, checking out your other activity or just waiting for another chat. Yeah Right!

I see sometimes that folks joke, with image laden statuses that if they aren't online, in other words, if that green dot isn't green for two days, call the cops! As if the green dot represents differences between living or immobile. Is it that they have become secretly become comfortable residing beside the green dot than existing in this real gray world or I am just making some needless fuss about a green dot that is just a green dot?

 Well! At least the green dot on Facebook doesn't discriminate like Gmail where you and I can be busy, idle or perhaps even dead. So RIP!