The way you make me feel

I have been thinking a lot over the last few days (having given up on engineering completely and on life partly). About life, the universe and my skin (I can swear that I have aged considerably in the last 6 months) But given that it’s Valentine’s Day, and enough pink chaddis have already been washed in public, what better topic to write about than people, people you care about, friends, family, foes and uh, let’s just say loves.

I have come to realize that close friends are of two kinds only: those around whom you can be your worst and those who make you want to be better people. And of course, my set of friends is convex, because there are people who are a bit of both. (Did I say I have given up geekdom?) I was talking to a close friend last month and boy, did the claws come out. People were torn apart, institutions were rubbished, bad advice freely traded. No matter how much time passes, we have something in common, something that connects us. And of course, when you connect at the lowest common denominator, you form a bond that is not contingent upon frequent calls and catch-up coffee.

And I have met people who believe in you so completely and unflinchingly that the single speck of grey on your soul seems encompassing like an overcast sky. Friends who make you long for innocence, for doodles, for that last vestige of higher purpose in the recesses of your soul.

Of course you can’t pick between the two. Maybe you need a bit of both in your life, to be flung from one end to another like a ping-pong ball, to avoid being in one place for long enough for you to say, ah, so this is me, with an air of finality and a sigh of resignation.

And I must add that close friends don’t have a monopoly on strong emotions. It is the acquaintances who breeze in and light up an evening with their ridiculous banter. It’s the roommates who open your eyes to a whole new world in your world. The frenemies make you feel like shit with just a cock of the eyebrow and some unguided (but lethal) missiles of words. Keep it coming, I say.

I was an emotional cutter long before this kind of atyachar came to be in vogue.

–
It’s raining outside. Rainy days – and nights – are so fruitless that you rue being single. But the sound of rain makes me happy. And that’s more than I can say about most things these days.

-

Bang Bang

One of my pastimes in class is to pick up a phrase from what the professor’s saying and take it on a nice long stroll. While we amble, time moves by leaps and bounds and when I come back, I have no choice but to continue daydreaming, because the lecture does not make sense any more.

I am taking a really interesting course this quarter: Analysis and control of nonlinear systems. It’s a course that provides ample food for thought. It is both mathematical and allegorical. A large part of this course is devoted to a form of control that switches between two states, more interestingly known as bang-bang control.

My favourite line from my SoP to Stanford went something like this: In a world where equations are hardly ever linear, one certainly cannot expect lives to be. Yes, life in all its nonlinearity lends itself to some bang-bang control of a different kind.

Bang bang. Sex and violence.
In more elegant terms, love and fear.

Love and fear are the only driving forces in life. All human needs would probably fall into one of the two buckets (and just when I thought that the consultant in me had died…): food, sex, gossip, politics, art, careers, shoes, travel, sex. (Except my apoplectic abomination of pigeons. Now that is a tricky one)

Yes, when stripped of costumes and make-up, every impulse turns out to be one of the two stage veterans. If all the world’s a stage, Love and Fear are shaping the story, controlling almost all human actions.
But surely life cannot be as simple as a primitive control technique. Life, unlike thermostats, is dual not binary. Can love and fear ever exist independent of the other? They feed on one another, slaking and stoking at once. Isn’t love also the fear of loss, isn’t fear the loss of love?

However, behind this curtain of interwoven impulses, one can tell that the best decisions are the ones fueled only by love, and the safest are the ones driven by fear.

So what drives you?
And what holds you back?

The phenomenon of Friday friends

In Mumbai, we do not let our hectic schedules and jet-set lifestyles circumscribe our social lives. True to the spirit of the city, every true Mumbaikar’s life is full of several sets of friends, including:

School/college friends: Common interests and mutual enemies form the bedrock of childhood friendships. Before BFF was coined, people were happy peddling the term ‘best friend’. This didn’t always come cheap – you often had to listen to hours of whining and pining; but you knew that your friend would do the same for you.

Building friends: When you have several storeys of smiles, squabbles, foibles and eccentricities within a few breaths of each other, how can bonds not be formed? This is the stuff that childhood games and evening walks are made of. As strange as it may sound, I haven’t had a building friend since I was 8. My mother, however, more than makes up for this unsociable streak in the family.

Train friends: Local trains play an arterial role in the strip of land that is Mumbai. They are often the fixed points in otherwise volatile lives: many people take the same train every day for years and years. It is no surprise then that the 9.46 Churchgate fast has its own cliques. Women who share jokes, gossip and opinions, men who share jokes, gossip and opinions, making the monotony of metropolitan life a little less tedious.

Sundry: Work friends, gym friends, etc.

After I came to grad school, I was introduced to a new breed of friends. The Friday friends: people you run into every Friday, at a mutual friend’s place or at the club downtown. These are people who have seen you in your finest form, and you have seen them in theirs. You exchange smiles, names, some complaints and sometimes, phone numbers. Conversation, no, small talk brings you closer; but that’s because you cannot hear someone who’s more than six inches away. Occasionally, you get shards of fascinating conversation and confessions. Is it the alcohol? Is it the latent candour that you can summon only while talking to a stranger?

I can’t help but wonder about this eclectic bunch: what’s he like in the day? what’s she like without the make-up? do they really know my name? Of course, I can get to know them better if I try to, but Friday’s gone. I will have to wait another week to make plans with my Friday friends.

Some more poetry

Saudade (originally posted 5/7/2004)
You and I
Are we ever alone?
Inertia always creeps in,
plonks down
cross-legged between us
refuses to budge
and so do we
till a rude knock
by the hands of the clock
breaks the Reverie.

19 minutes 38 seconds (originally posted 6/6/2004)
For 19 minutes
and 38 seconds
I waited,
for what I wanted to hear.
All I got
was how many dragons
you slayed,
how many duels
you played.
A day of your life.

For 19 minutes
and 38 seconds
I lived and I died
I smiled and I cried.
Tell me
did it rain
where you live?

(Yes, yes, I know that slayed is not a word. Poetic license, anyone?)