66, Fergus Drive…..

The last few weeks have completely drained me.

Everytime I think I should write something down, something even more interesting happens…..
The earlier name of my latest piece was acquaintances, addictions, accomodations, accents, americans, etc…..

Wanted to write about my inability to give up smoking….despite nicotine gum

To write about the interesting conversation that I had with an American desi who gave me a completely new spin on the entire issue of emigration and reasons thereof…..

Thought of writing about a hilarious and binge eating weekend at Pima’s with rashes and the pretty cool time we had…..

And finally of shifting to my new place on Fergus Drive and the insane activities of my roomies…..

Not to mention the total Hindi film style repercussions of chatting with an online flicker for the past 6 months…….

So let me just paste whatever shit I had been shitting about initially and then take off from there….

"Acquaintances, Addictions, Accomodations, Accents, Americans, (in)Activity….."

Why is it that my brain is stimulated by nicotine?

Why is that when everything seems confusing and overwhelming, the slow spirals and fantastic shapes of smoke, soothe and calm me down?

Why does nicotine actually sort out my thought process to the extent of solution?

I had been staring at the screen for ages it seems, waiting for the words to come churning out, akin to regurgitation and yet nothing seems to move without that infernal puff.

For that matter, why do I have this need to put on paper, that which is inside me, a part of me……..its a painful process to even put together this damn thing. I mean, give me a plot and characters anytime….I can build damned castles in the air and lair’s beneath the ground…..

This is like giving birth….well at least mentally…….

Dad recently asked how I got my hand burnt…..told him to read my blog

Bro asked me why I was even considering marriage……read my blog

Friends ask whats happening…….Blog, blog, blog…..blah, blah, blah

Everything is on my blog…….so where am I?

Online, usually would reply palz……..

Now, who’s palz?

Interesting query…….

Met her online at this weird chat line forum I occasionally visit in my moments of insanity ……the more weird fact was that I have no idea how long ago I met her……probably about a year or two back, might even be more……and for most of the time between that and actual communication, I didn’t even realise that she was a girl……

It was quite a bit later that the essential facts became clearer as the chatting frequency grew higher….

Now, the how, the why, the whatever for……don’t ask me…..uh huh, I don’t deal in them …….. I was there primarily for conversation to while away my mad moments between dusk and dawn……yeah, I got bitten by a bat when I was in diapers……

As I tell her, I don’t trust myself in actual reality anymore……Or rather I don’t trust the world…..the virtual world is safer…….I had no wish to know her sex initially and still hold that I have no wish to meet her….And I do believe that the feelings are reciprocated

In a net world where the overwhelming majority of people are online for the sole purpose of creating actual reality out of virtuality, the number of people who exist for the sake of virtuality becomes a rather dominated minority……

Neurotic perhaps…….so is she……anyone else feels like joining the gang?

But am sure, as I have stated before…..this too shall pass…..

So, what do I write about?

That she’s devastatingly witty and yet with no pretensions to brilliance……naaah, the minute she reads this, I’ll never hear the end of it…..bloody female is a pseudo…or so she claims…..But then, it passes the time……

That she is too pretty to be trusted……been telling her that for ages…..but in a weird kind of bonding, I do trust her……funny that….but I still don’t….if you get me.

That she has seen far more sorrow and has handled herself far better than anyone I have known or could perhaps know……..and that I have yet to see such courage and fighting spirit……never had the guts to say such a thing in our regular chats……maybe there was no need to…..

That our conversations are meaningless and insubstantial as wisp’s of smoke that drift towards the ceiling from my cigarette……and yet, they mean the difference between existing and moving on from day to day…..

Have never clapped eyes on her, or even heard her voice…..probably wouldn’t be able to spot her in a crowd, probably wouldn’t be able to even say hi to, even if I came face to face with her…..

She is not a sister, not a friend, not a lover, not a girl, not a person, not anything beyond just a flickering name tag that shows up on my gtalk messenger board……a few pictures of a reed thin female like creature who’d resemble Gollum if it were not for the huge masses of cranial hair and a grin bigger than her entire being…..and that she’s someone I fell safe to talk to…..incessantly idiotic perhaps, unbelieveably irritatingly perhaps……but we talk…..

Enough already, that scrawny thing will be floating near the ceiling, weightless as she is……

P, to even define you would be a task I am not even ready for……..and will never be….and perhaps that’s exactly how things should be…….for now at least…..

(This was written a few weeks earlier to today…..and what is significant about today? – I’ll get to that later….)

After a rather harrowing month of exams, house-hunting, working at the NHS, I finally took a break and went off to see my cousins and aunt in Newcastle…..

My aunt is like a mom to me and feeds me like there’s no tomorrow……..Not a great definition, but I cant think of a better one presently….I love her….

Landed up there with rashes who had come up from U Man;

As Sean asked me; "……another cousin ? They’re really climbing out of the woodwork, aren’t they?"

Tony introduced himself to rashes very civilly I thought……he was like, I believe we share gene’s somehow and managed to shake her hand, before homer and max jumped on her…..homer and max are a Labrador and a Rottweiler respectively, who lay claim on tony’s gene’s as well…..both rather abundant in their proportions with a very specific agenda as to their existence – to lick anything and everything, be as smelly as possible and shed dog hair everywhere……in short be doggy nuisances and adorable……

On my trip to Newcastle, I happened to share seat space with an Americanised Indian….a transplanted south Indian gentleman who was travelling Europe with his wife and kids for their summer vacation.

Well…..that’s too much for one blog…..

(This was about as far as I got…..and then I shifted house!!!)

My new place is brilliant or so I think……not everybody shares that view!!! (pun fully intended as you’ll find out…..

Hey, I like a good view……it’s my way of recharging my batteries and of course of dreaming….

The only problem is that I have to huff and puff my way up nearly a mile to reach my apartment building and THEN drag my sorry & obviously out of shape arse up 4 flights of stairs to get to my door….nearly on the verge of collapse….

Shantanu my beloved idiot savant, who has followed me in my adventures from Queen Margaret Residences to Winton Drive to Fergus Drive derives a lot of amusement from the sight of the huffing & puffing whales of Murli & self….

Murli, the other net barbarian has also followed the damn train and taken up residence with us……

Which leaves us with the last occupant……khan the almighty who’s presently too engrossed in the pleasures of the flesh or at least the pleasures of sight-seeing flesh, to even live in the flat……!!!!

Its an interesting mixture of characters and between us, I do believe we quarter the entire bloody map of undivided India……East (self) West (Shantanu) South (Murli) and North (Khan)……

Anand recently asked me when we’re getting hold of a Chinese and opening up the South East Asia Representative Chapter of Glasgow……

Coming back to the flat…..we have a 20 mbs net connection and absolutely no dearth of movies, music or porn at a ridiculous price…….murli & shantanu hooked up the whole damn flat into a wireless network….particularly impressive in the fact that they did it without a wireless router!!!! And then they encrypted the whole damn thing so that no one else could hack into it…..

I managed to buy a telephone on eBay for 15 pounds, thinking it to be quite a bargain……when khan appeared at the flat and blasted me left right and centre for having wasted my money……and appeared the next day with a huge sack of items for the house…….the provenance of which the rest of us were a leery to even enquire about…..but we used them nonetheless……

Jay, another famous character and an engineer by profession, came to wish us happy housewarming, finished off a bottle of vodka and then disabled the entire smoke detection system so that we could all smoke in peace…..

So basically, I have a house full of items of rather dubious antecedents and characters of even more dubious abilities and character…….

Anand & Jassi are turning up this week and I am just waiting to see what those two come up with……

As I never get tired of saying…….

Glasgow just got invaded by the greatest horde of pirates, thieves, robbers, thugs, tinkers, con-men and lawyers……..Scotland had NO idea what it let itself in for when they opened the Univ. doors with the 3 year work permit FTS scheme…….

So anyway, my mornings are rather interesting presently……I usually wake up with rather long & fragrant tresses and locks of wavy black hair all over my face……which is a pleasant sensation I must tell you……I mean……its like you know…..

And then, I get rudely awakened by the amazing hippo like snores emanating from near the source level of the hair……..

Which is when I realise that its murli’s shoulder long hair on my face, since we share the big queen sized bed…….and which is exactly when I decide that waking up is a better alternative to ……well, it’s a better alternative to ANYTHING…..

The minute I wake up, I am subjected to the view of a pair of appallingly gangly legs on my path to the bathroom clad in a pair of desperate shorts on the verge of rebellion against their very threads holding them together in an unhappy coalition…..

I truly pity shantanu’s wife to be subject to such a sight every morning!!! But then I get reminded of another paid of desperate shorts which have been consigned to flames on the very first week of marriage (Rah & Panks are finally married)…….

And I switch the pity to shantanu…….those desperate shorts are definitive of the last bastion's of male freedom after all !!!! I have a pair myself.....

I also have some pity for murli’s wife……but all that in a later blog…..

My bathroom is quite decent but my kitchen is small……well, we all make adjustments…..and as of now, things seem going okay….and its kind of nice to peck away at my laptop, stretched out on my sofa and staring out of the bay windows and observing Ben Nevis in the distance being lit up intermittently by playful beams of late evening sunlight shafting through the clouds....

Ben Nevis is a famous Scottish mountain which can from my lounge windows......It’s like something out of a fable.....I almost expect to see dragons come rolling up over the horizon and the clans in their kilts and claymores standing on the hillside heather facing the setting sun………

Yeah, I have an over-active imagination, the benefits of which some of you will never know…..
But honestly now…..ever seen purple clouds, on a cerulean blue sky? And a green hill lit up in patches by golden sunlight? Shillong is pretty....but this is seriously what I pay so much for my new apartment.....The bloody view is just breath-taking....

But then as I said, the walk up to my apartment and the 4 flights of stairs also takes my breath away...to be honest

I don’t quite know who’ll read these rambling writings of mine……well, at least until I get down and put them all together in a readable format with a plot and proper characters…..

Speaking of plots……apparently, my life is never simple…….seems like the gods above consider me an interesting case study and most of the same gods are on a steady diet of candyfloss Bollywood shit…..especially the shitty 80’s Bollywood shit…..

I just talk to this flicker on the screen……and half the world and their cousins are making assumptions and presumptions…..not to mention the true "filmi" style upset brother (I kind of get why he’s upset) and the supportive sister-in-law (Her – I just don’t get!!!) and lets not get into the entire side cast of characters from either side…..which is basically time to make a gracious and courteous exit, methinks……

So, I guess……that’s that…….I really enjoyed talking to someone after a long time…..and though I am way too confused and scared to consider anything else than talking, I realise that I will miss her and a lot else besides…….

I am still wondering if I should add something more here……the words are easy, the truth is not……and to be even more honest……I am being indecisive for the first time in my life…..which is damn irritating, let me tell you….

But if the past 9 months here have taught me anything, it is that I must just go with the flow and refuse to force things, to bend them to my will……

The one thing I have to accept and have learnt at bitter cost is that the best that any of us can do is to be ourselves and do the best that we can…….and that this too shall pass………

Pretty shitty ideology it seems to me……I am accustomed to fighting, to overcoming odds…….however, I am going to try it………material success is hollow and the only thing that matters is peace within myself……and yet, my wilful mind asks how do I know peace if I will not strive for it, if I will not fight for it, if I let peace or even happiness slip between my open fingers……..not necessarily in a specific case, but in general, you know……..

And I do not know the reply……any ideas…..