Winded out!!!

Totally!!
I am exaggerating. A bit.
If there is the smallest chance that you feel, you have pushed the envelope anywhere...yeah.. right! Probably if you are one of those who truly has pushed the envelope, I bow in respect. But it is highly unlikely that something of that sort is going to happen...the 'bowing' sort of thing.
That's the whole point, as much it wouldn't seem like. Even in our present form, we haven't
even touched anywhere close to breaking point of our bodies. Truly a limitless marvel is what we have at hand. It's been a while since I had been through this book, can't remember the exact name, it goes like 'Higher, Faster, Stronger'. The book caught my attention the second my eyes fell on the rack it was kept in. Yes, it was about the upper limits where our physical abilities will cap off. Interestingly, we have a long while remaining before we reach there. Things of this sort bring a sort of respect for your own body, that never existed previously. Mind you, it's not just limits of physicality that remain untouched. Our IQ is yet to see the upper bound. The music we hear hasn't reached it's 'awesomest' level yet,and so it goes for everything that surrounds us.
I just stepped out of my room to evade the gloominess of the evening. I was in a mood to do something new,not the usual pavement pounding. So I headed to this place where I was expecting a friend of mine to be doing his 'thing'. He had just undergone a transformation after training around national athletes of his state. He was there, as I hoped. Annd I started following his track. 4 rounds... I am sucking air harder than a vacuum cleaner.
It is a rare chance to witness yourself in such a situation. It felt good though. But my jaws remained wide open seeing this guy's commitment and stamina.
There's another story I am following. This is about a remote tribe holed up somewhere in the copper canyons of Mexico, if I recollect correctly. They are called the Tara-hu-maara(Atleast what the word sounds like). I saw a TED video where this tribe had been mentioned. These folks run about 300 km in a matter of 3-4 days....wait a moment.. at the age of 60-70.Crazy!!!
One more thing that leaves me flabbergasted is the Iron-Man races... a half-marathon,followed by some 2 odd miles of swimming, further followed by a long(not sure of the distance) bike race. All back to back, No stopping. These things make a marathon sound like a cat's squeak, which in all due respect, doesn't make a marathon any less grueling than what it is.
If you are wondering what all this means, rather what message I want to convey through all this, even I am thinking the same thing. Wait a second. Let me get my bearings right.
Ah! Yes! What I wanted to say amidst  all the sweat and grime is that.... I got my backside whooped at a time I thought I was invincible. Yeah, like I didn't know I was being stupid. Obviously that realization came after the backside-whooping, but never the less. What I want to say is( Jaa CHUDAIL!!) is that this contraption, that will be our home during our sojourn on this planet, deserves a bit of a better treatment than what we are giving it now.

Aaaaarrrgggghhh!!!! I feel good! (paeiuwaeiuwaeiuwe)

First things first... Try to pronounce the word in the brackets. Until you haven't heard James Brown singing the title of this post, I pretty much bet you won't have a clue of what the ruddy word sounds like. Never mind the word. …................................................................................................................

….................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Woops..Sorry. If you live in a hostel, very often, a few interruptions are inevitable...Yeah, it kind of sucks to have your train of thoughts shown the red light. Moving on..

Today, something happened to me, that I was pretty certain, would never happen to me. By the way, yesterday, something(good) happened to me, that I was pretty certain about. Okay, Let's look through the pretty events in order.

I was headed for my mess(apart from the fact that I am usually headed for a mess..), Don't ming the weired stuff coming at you from the brackets.. That's another guy..(This fellow is schizophrenic!!).

Ya, so on my way to dinner, one guy tells me about a senior, for whom, I hold pretty high regards, who got placed in a company that came to our college.

It is actually something that happens every year....Nothing new.. But I know not why, I felt this strange kind of happiness, which I find hard to explain. It was almost as though somehow, in some inexplicable way, I just got closer to being placed myself.

Here's what I felt up till now, what I thought would be impossible to feel....Feeling genuinely good for another person. Yeah, a line like that very conveniently puts me into the category of 'The worst people on the planet'. But not that I give a damn.

I am not going to go to great lengths to convince any soul on how elated I felt after hearing the good news..It makes the whole 'feeling good' feeling seem synthetic.

So? Moral of the story? Huh?? What?? All of it?? What's the whole point?? Minutes of the day?? Summary??

Frankly speaking...I don't know. My situation is of the kind that any source of happiness sounds worth recording in any manner possible. Not that I am running short on such events..but just feels good thinking about stuff that makes you feel good....

Realization 101- Main purpose of life(needless to say) is to be happy..

Realization 102- Equation for happiness isn't linear, quadratic, cubic, bi-quadratic or of any higher order(The guy doesn't know the names of higher order equations by the way....)

The second pretty thing is what happened yesterday...

I left the computer center of my college somewhere around 4.50 in the evening. I was walking out of the college to get to a place(outside college...). I kind of predicted...foresaw....err....hoped....desperately to run into....sorry...walk into(I wasn't running for a change) her. There is this book called 'Blink' written by Malcolm Gladwell, where he writes about how we happen to identify things unknowingly, within a fraction of a second. Something similar happened. She was walking out of the hostel gate. It didn't take me a fraction of a fraction of a second to see who I was going to walk into..and for as long as I remember, I did it very much knowingly.

My mind went for a stroll...as usual... We looked at each other (For the first time, I can confidently say that it was consensual), then we smiled....or whatever I did that came into a meek smile(My impression on what I did, whereas in reality, I would be either doing half of what I did, or I would have scared her with my teeth... Either ways, I guess, I did fine). In return, I saw this sight I had longed to see for over about a year....

Then one word jumped out of her and hit me.. not like a stone, thankfully...more like a serendipitous realization.... “Hi!”

I couldn't really respond as my oratory skills decided to accompany my brain for a stroll. So I somehow managed to muster up what in my head looks like a friendly wave.. I see now, how a smile can floor you....flat on the floor.

It felt good... Bliss has ways of getting to you, I guess.

And I would be extremely shocked to find myself having the balls to post this piece for public viewing.

So...

That feeling of being..

Tottallly out of PLACE!!!

Tonight's the night. I write a line, then I press the backspace button. I type again, again press the backspace. Somehow, after coaxing myself for a while, I simply force myself to ignore the ruddy button. And..the above two lines begin to take shape. Wait!!!

....................

…................

…................

I hate these phone calls that disrupt your train of thought... Never mind! Somehow, I am finding it very difficult to form a concrete idea of what's going on inside my head. It's almost like there isn't a reason for me to feel how I am feeling, but at the same time, there isn't a reason for me not to feel how I am feeling. Okay, now the problem with the previous line is that after reading it, I feel that I shouldn't have let it come out into the world...EVER!!

I feel the Blues!! Now, for the first time in my life, I got the meaning of this word right. It's like when you do not feel happy, neither do you feel sad...but rather you feel the frustration of not feeling either happy or sad. Brilliant. For a while,I'll have to walk around in disguise around people who may read this. There is a high likelihood that these folks will hit me with rotten tomatoes/eggs.

Somehow, my humor is totally out of sync.

I FEEL FUNNY! Yet I don't seem funny.... OH!!! How funny..... If this got you laughing, I must say, You have a problem!!

But THAT is not my problem. Somehow the simulator in your mind creates a very different video of things how they turn out in reality. Yes, point accepted that the world would be too boring if that wasn't true. But the thing is that.... NOTHING SEEMS TO MAKE SENSE RIGHT NOW!!!

WoW! Every word coming to my mind seems like a torturous foot covered by the movement of a sluggish glutton! No apologies for the over emphasis, by the way. Yes, this piece of work is as difficult to write, as it is to read.

I'll try my best to think of exactly what has happened.. Something has changed very dramatically in the past 3 months. Maybe temporarily. That is definitely something I have no clue about. It seems so 'UN-ME'. Now the 'backspacing' seems to be kicking in again. It seems to be my sense of self-preservation that sounds as if it is shouting from the top of a mountain. Here's what it is shouting....

“Dude!!! Shut your trap up!!! Someone's just looking for a reason to put a bullet in your head. Trouble with the bullet is that it ain't those things that come out of a gun!! This one's the motorcycle!!!”

And I am like.... “Which model?? Old or new??”

The voice on top of the mountain: “How would that make a difference??”

Me: “If it's the old ones, it will bleed itself of all it's oil and petrol before it comes anywhere close to me”

The Voice on top of the building: “...........................................................”

Yaaayyy!!!!

And then one may ask...”Why put me through this ordeal?”

All in the mind

How strange is it? If you come to think of it, it is pretty strange. What comes in our head, stays there...until of course you are a loud mouth.....or you are talking in your sleep.....or...ummmm yeah!! if you have the ammmazing ability to turn the contents of the mushy stuff inside your cranium into reality, which very apparently, and not so obviously is an ability each one of us possesses. Now, coming to the touchy stuff.. All of us have heard that your eyes reflect your thoughts. During my not-so-brief stay on this planet, as of yet, that is actually true..the thoughts-reflected-in-the-eye part.
But, as usual, there are many ifs' and buts', butts an buttocks that come in the way.
It can actually be quite a scary experience to see the thoughts of someone....literally.
I have a kid-sister. She's kind of the typical younger-kid-of-the-house by nature.. Goodness! I wish I could borrow a bit of her chirpiness and insatiable need to talk...err maybe not that one..
Anyways, I feel I am the typical don't-mess-with-my-kid-sis-or-I-shall-do-a-lot-of-unpleasant-things-to-you kind of the older fellow.
Here's the scary part. Usually, when I am back home, I do go out with my sister around places, movies and such things. Then there are the(rather those) stares that would make the ones, covered from head to toe feel squeamish. Forget the ladies, even men might find such stares repulsive(another thing that men thankfully don't get such eyes probing them..). And SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW A GIRL'S LEGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ATTRACTIVE!! SPECIALLY WHY MY HAIRY MUSCLE-CLAD ONES AREN'T A PART OF THE 'TOP 10 THINGS TO DROOL ON' !!! Err...I guess I answered the latter part of my question in the question itself... Hmmm,,,
Seriously!! Is it our usually-non-existing vivid imagination that take us to the place above the legs at the very sight of bare skin????? HUH? Things that scares me are my own androgenic instincts. And I wonder how we came down to be wired like this. I know, this isn't the sort of stuff one would mention out in the public, but it is disturbing. From whatever little I have read, the human senses keep a look out for potential mates all the while to provide them with best chances to see the light of day...and keep them doing so. Not just the guys, even the ladies. There is this mental calculator that is relentlessly working inside each one of our head. The ladies obviously hold the upper hand in the filtration process of the genes that will be allowed to pass through the gate called 'Potential Fittest Survivors' Bandwagon'(I have managed to horrendously mess my grammar in naming the gate...) but men have made way to bypass the sieve...which is, obviously not a good thing. Yes, what I just wrote seems and is inconclusive and I can single-handedly do nothing except for keeping a leash on my own eyes. Maybe I am taking it all too seriously, specially since we have existed this way for the past 'whatever-number-of-years', and we haven't done too bad. Right now, just the realization that we haven't done too good either, makes me just  that little bit more worried about the ones I care most about. I suddenly have a feeling....another scary(or maybe not scary) feeling that I may be turning into a FEMINIST!!
I am just hoping that some lady doesn't walk to me and give me my long overdue back-hand lash... Ouch!

Little stuff

In a couple of days, it will be a week since I stepped 'back' into my college campus after a pretty fulfilling summer holiday. The first day sucked. Then, it was all back to the normal...the coffee, the desperation, the frustration, the uncontrollable laughter, the leg pulling, pushing, new faces, not so new faces...blah....blah...annd...blah... Okay stop!
I still get the feeling that nothing is happening. The only thing I have done newly is getting myself some company for my evening runs. That's an upside..currently, the only exciting thing(or anything coming close to an exciting thing) that there is.
That girl!! She still ignores me. Just for a change,I try to ignore her too, and partially succeed.... or whatever that means. I happened to have the pleasure of crossing the 1000th page of a book for the second time in my life... Just that the last seven pages of the ruddy book still make me feel guilty for leaving them unread. The fear of getting a cold after running in the rain jumped out of my closed window after I ran in the rain a d did not get a cold. Thankfully, I didn't have to pay anything to the hostel authorities for repairing my windows...
What else?? I feel my mind is rusting out. It feels like a block of cast iron. Hmm...I don't need dumbbells while squatting anymore. As usual, I am over-analyzing my situations. If there is something called a 'Anxiety-due-to-inability-of-creating-humorous-string-of-words-caused-by-inexplicable-circumstances Syndrome', that is exactly what I am suffering from. I am also quite sure that I am going to excuse myself to the washroom for a leak after re-reading this post for errors, for the single reason of looking in the mirror(if there is one in the washroom) and BANGING my head on the nearest wall, for writing this post. I also do realize that if ever I run out of ideas(the thoughts of which wake me up in the middle of my lectures...) I shall remain blank for the remaining time I have on this planet as the contents of this post were the intended contents of the  last-resort-post.. Upside? I will have to think for new content for my last-resort-post. Downside?? I will have to think for new content for that bloody last-resort-post .....again!!!! 

The one

There are times when my imagination wants to take a walk in the park. Just that sometimes, the imagination part........seems too real.

Look carefully. It won't take you an instant to recognize the walk. Now how does one do a catwalk without doing a catwalk? However it may be done, this walk that you may see will be what comes closest. As she moves closer,you see, her arms swing in a rather languid manner. But somehow, it makes her seem to move faster than she actually is moving. There isn't much movement about the hips, neither sway, nor rotation. It kind of explains the 'not-so-in-a-hurry' manner in her movement, yet exudes some kind of athletic finesse,further accentuated by her slender contours.
There isn't anything about her hair that will be of any use to marketers of hair-care products, until unless they plan to sell you curls. But not the curls that get you to cry over a bad-hair day.
In a way,everything about her belongs to the 'not-too-loud' category of features....'Subtle' seems to hit the spot in my search for adjectives. 
Mind you, there isn't a thing about this sight that has any element borrowed from conventional dictionaries of beauty by a long shot. Nothing to droll over(Yuk!)
Moving on to the face...something very ordinarily extraordinary. Not the one to catch your glance, but the one that has the 'sticking factor' to it. The image gets 'saved'. Although I am yet to see a big wide smile on that face,whatever it might look like,will not be any less than a mesmerizing sight. Something very surprising(rather strange) is the fact that more emotions get conveyed a lot more from her eyebrows than the eyes.
Thankfully a change over how many have gone about mulling over someone's eyes for centuries..
It all looks like a lioness...not out for a hunt... Just for a stroll...Like my imagination... or may be reality..

Cost of value

It'll be a while before we will get the full hang of the monetary system all around us.(Apologies for using big words)
Thing is, I am slightly extra touchy about cash. It must be my upbringing, my grandfather's strict adherence to 'not spending more than required' philosophy and a few more things, which I am.... currently.... unable to recollect. Both my parents work in the commercial sector. My father relentlessly instructs me to go through the news paper. Although he never does tell me to be much concerned about the economics stuff 'that emphatically' (probably because I start pestering him with questions on terms and things that fly right over my head like a jet plane), I look it up any way. I actually got a thing for prices of commodities like metals,currencies...and more of yak-nonsense about the writer later....

Few things struck me very hard recently.
I woke up this morning, a couple of days ago on a pretty high note( Ċ ). [Ċ is a 'Sa', or 'Do' in the musical scale. The dot on top indicates a higher pitch of the normal scale.]
That was all that was high about the day. And it came plummeting down like a MiG 21...
My mom told me to get some bread. She told me that if the shop had eggs, I buy a dozen. I ended up buying a dozen loaves of bread.....Jokes apart..
And yeah. She also told me to get milk. Here's the trouble. There's something called M.R.P. on all products. We all know the expansion of the term, hence I let it be. Now, no shop keeper gets to sell his stuff above the M.R.P. I go to buy milk. On the packet, the mentioned M.R.P. is Rs. 16. The shopkeeper asked for Rs. 17. I was like 'What the....'. I had 3 packets of milk to purchase. The fellow was adamant,and I was short on time. So I payed the extra 3 bucks and walked off. I hated myself for the time I have known myself ever since.
For most of us reading this, reading this, one may think " 3 buck?? Huh?? The fellow is a miser!! Cry-baby!"
Maybe you are right. Jussst mayyyybe. Or not so. For the fortunate ones,whom we are lucky to count ourselves in, that extra buck might not count, whereas it should!! I happened to have the fortune/misfortune of hearing these stories where a few not-so-fortunate parents muster every penny and dime to do their bet at giving their children the 'luxury' of milk. I don't like sounding like a social worker, but as an example of such a situation, look at our own Olympian Sushil Kumar. The guy's family had been in financial distress. His father was himself a wrestler. He gave up because the family couldn't support the demands of two wrestlers. In such a situation, that one buck that I decided to part with for the sake of convenience will matter. The example I took was something that came out into public. What about the ones that didn't? And when one among us decides to pay as per the seller's whim, he gets a chance to throw his weight around others. Maybe who are not so fortunate as I was to get away with it.

One thing very common is the usual association of price to value of a commodity. A might-not-be-exact example is "Oh!! The iPhone costs 40-odd grand!! It is very valuable!!" Those who buy it,..... Ahh, forget it! Thing is, they purchase the thing, go about flaunting it, then overtly worrying about it...then somewhere, a newer version comes in,and brings along with it 'insecurity'!!
I have seen this one case. This bloke is obsessed with brands. He went about buying an Android phone. Yes, aspirations are good, even better if you have the capacity to fulfill them. But if it blinds you, what's the point? So this chap and another one were upto downloading some song or something. The other fellow was about to download the song. This 'brand-y' fellow said: "अरे! मेरे फ़ोन से डाउनलोड कर लो , Android है, जल्दी डाउनलोड हो जाएगा "(Download the song from my Android phone, It'll be faster) The few of us who heard it...we were like "Hmm....".
We all love branded stuff! I very openly announce my 'thing' for brands.
I have my own story. Ever since I was a kid, I have been a big fan of shoes. Not so about getting the 'Jordan collection' or something, but I like the ads shoe companies bring out(Loved Zigtech!!)
When I was a kid, my dad kept from buying me the branded shoes(I actually thank him for it). He said that since I was growing, the extra money wouldn't be worth it. It was and sounded perfectly logical. But once, when I was about....12 or something, he let my shoe budget exceed a grand. I remember, it was a navy blue Nike!! And how I fell in love with it. Another reason why(I realized this a lot later) he kept from buying me the expensive stuff was to help me appreciate the difference in quality. How that Nike felt less than half the weight of the conventional ones I'd worn till then. My successive shoes that I purchased luckily were bought using the bonus coupons that my dad used to get as 'credit card reward points'...(more on that later!!) But the graph of my shoe price was sneaking higher every time. I had almost decided that I would progressively increase my shoe's budget. Then I got into running. Nothing professional, but I sort of took it as my birthright to get myself expensive shoes, specially since I didn't demand for much else.
Thankfully, someone threw a stone at me. It had a word embossed on it. It hit me on my head pretty hard. The embossed word turned out to be 'minimalism'. So with this stamp on my head, enlightenment struck me....without doing Yoga!!
I figured that the stuff that the branded fellows sold,the same stuff, if you searched enough, you could get for a third/lesser the price. Downsizing... something many around me saw as lowering one's standards, I just saw the upside. Yes, the status factor may go right out of the window. But who gives? As long as it keeps me running happily, what else??
Discounts, Privilege Cards, Special Combo OFFER!!, Sale, SEASON END SALE!! BALLS!!!
The ways sellers have figured out to trick the buyer into buying more stuff freak you out. Most of these schemes can be avoided pretty easily. I personally cannot claim that I have escaped all the tricks myself, but I am hoping I have,specially after looking around for stuff,de-cluttering my available options and doing all such fancy things...
These schemes,more often than not(if my observation is correct by far) catches those who aren't specific about the thing they are looking for. Hence 30% on purchase of one sounds worse than 40% on purchase of two(specially if one went about looking just for one.) Such things take you by surprise,specially with too many choices at hand. That is another thing that has come to the limelight...Choice. Lesser you have, easier to choose.
Season-end sales.... Goodness!! Ladies!!! Why would anyone sell their stuff for 50-60 % off??? True that this might be the best time to stock up the wardrobes, but why pile up stuff that was originally worth 40% of it's price?? Okay, after reading this one, many will curse me for not getting sleep after their recent SALE-binge.... Moving on...
Credit cards-The folks who devised this system were smart. They are so blatant about the amount of money they make that they actually 'incentivise' expensive purchase. I don't realize why, but folks are happy with the 'customer bonus points' or many such gimmicks they get as an added 'benefit'.
I'll (hopefully)soon have to wade through the same quick-sand as many of these folks are. Why 'hopefully'?? you say?
भाई साहब/देवीजी !! नौकरी आप दिलाएंगे ??(Dude/Lady, You're going to employ me??)
Now... If this gets read by some future employer, who by mistakenly decided to employ me in  the first place....even he'll change his mind....
Now I see what studying engineering does to you......