Toe the line

If there is one thing I’d love to do,
It would be to stray beyond the realm of your consent
to toe the line
- just a little bit, a tiny bit.
Enough to make you wonder if you should be cross
or allow yourself to feel refreshingly exploited,
In a way no one would have made you feel in a long time
Or maybe in a few weeks.
For your demeanor discourages initiative
but I know better, because I have come close more than once
And you have allowed me to, in spite of yourself.
And so I will toe the line
- this once, just this once
and you’ll know if you want more.

The Hidden Human

They say man is a social animal. There are two parts to this saying, both of which ring very true.

From the time we are born, there is a web that society slowly starts wrapping around us. We are largely oblivious and innocent as kids but as we grow up, we pull that web tighter around us. And all along, this action is voluntary on many levels.

"What is this web?" you might ask. Well, it's a web of societal norms, obligations, expectations and validation. And we happily fall prey because we are trained to find happiness and satisfaction in the fulfillment of the above.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of a society and it's norms, but when these norms have their genesis in a selfish motive or blind faith, every action performed towards fulfilling that end makes us lose our humanity. It's a gradual process which takes up more than half of our lifetime. Deep inside we all know the error of our ways but it's a selfish world and one has to be selfish to survive. The fact that such type of survival is also the reason for our contentment
 paints a morose picture of the animals we have become.

In the circle of life, we get only as much as we give. And so it holds true for humanity too. There are folks tearing our world apart in ways unknown even to themselves and there are a few others who only want to give and to help.
The bad news is, most of us selfishly fall in the former category. The good news is, there is a human being hidden inside all of us. We only need to look.

A Walk To Remember

I walk to work and back home everyday. It is a twenty minute walk and I usually listen to music on the iPod. Sometimes I call up and speak with whoever I feel like. Like most others, this routine too gets boring after a point of time.

This evening I started the walk back home. Automatically my hands reached for the iPod and earphones. I plugged in the earphones and started scrolling down the Artists list. There's another thing with me. While walking to work or back, I like to listen to songs by any one artist only. Sets the mood for the walk. Lends some kind of consistency, if you know what I mean.

Half-way through scrolling, I suddenly decided that I don't feel like listening to any music today. So I put the iPod back in my pocket, rolled up the earphones and continued walking.

Thankfully, I find it quite easy to let my mind go blank and so I did, for five minutes or so. Then suddenly, out of nowhere a thought struck me. "What would it look like if I could see myself walking from up above?" Like an aerial view.

And so I started picturing myself walking home on the road I know extremely well from my usual line of vision, but hardly at all from a higher vantage point. I started imagining how the streets I'm walking on would look like. As the thought process continued, a whole new world opened up in my mind - cars weaving through the traffic, people walking, crossing the road, children playing in the playground and on the terrace - all in one glance.

To make things more interesting, I traced the path of a car and myself, both far apart initially; slowly converging in such a way that it was difficult to say whether our paths will cross or not. Eventually our paths did cross and a pretty girl rolled down the window to ask for directions. Well, all of this happened in my mind's eye of course, so I moved on quickly lest things got more interesting in my imagination and the tug back to reality became more disappointing.

I imagined myself walking into my lane and all the way into the building in which I live. As I climbed up the stairs and reached home, I couldn't help feeling how this had been one of the best walks ever.

Try it sometime.

Man-made

I was commuting by bus today and gazing out of the window at the world passing by, when this thought struck me. Except nature, everything that we see around us is made by man. If you just let your mind absorb this fact, it's pretty amazing. Leaves you stunned if you dwell on it sufficiently.


Your mobile phone, the buildings, roads, signals, tube-lights, advertising hoardings, clothes, vehicles, airplanes, cups, pens, machines; the list is endless and encompasses almost everything.


It tells us that we humans are capable of extraordinary things. The proof is above, below, inside, around and on us. We have made tremendous progress in our thirst for knowledge and comfort. But at what cost to our planet? The answer lies in the simple fact that even the lack of nature is man-made.

The Featherweight of Expectations

Many religious texts and discourses by learned men and women tell us to live our lives without any expectations from anyone. They say that if these expectations aren't fulfilled, we are left with nothing but regret, sadness and disappointment.
Many people keep saying, "don't expect anything from anyone and you will remain content in life". It has become like a tagline of our times, to guard ourselves from the ever-deepening depth of the hollow lives that we lead. Prima facie, this widely preached adage is fair and true. I beg to differ, though.


We face disappointments in life at regular intervals. After every disappointment, we expect ourselves to stop expecting anything from others henceforth. And with this expectation from ourselves, we fail in our endeavor right at the beginning. Why not expect everything from everyone? Just don't let the fulfillment of that expectation be the basis for your existence or reason for your happiness.
A life lived without expectations is devoid of hope; it's just a passive existence. And hope is the fuel we all function on.

Expect others to irritate you. You'll be prepared for it then. Expect happiness from what you do and sadness from what you are missing out on. The entire purpose of living life is to feel. If you feign indifference all the time, you aren't living. Let yourself feel. Allow yourself to live an uncomplicated, vulnerable life.