journal.coffee

How do you remember what has already happened? Do you remember it clearly or does it feel like a fuzzy recollection of things? Think clearly and be honest. You don’t remember it. You remember bits and pieces. Maybe you remember how you felt in a certain moment and the memory of that feeling dictates how you remember the event. Our memories aren’t how we thought they worked. It’s a trick; it’s a trap. The only way to look at things is to look at how they are now. Maybe, preserve a good memory to feel good when you remember it, to serve as dessert after you savour good experiences or to serve as a shot of booze for the bad ones. Maybe, let a good memory help you escape occasionally. However, never trust it. The past is always hidden behind the veil of time, and time blurs even the largest of monuments. How strong is your memory then?

I lost myself more than once in narrow alleys of the blue city. I lost myself more than once this year. I’d stop walking for a second, look around, and I’d just see blue confusion all around. Sometimes I figured it out on my own, sometimes I saw a familiar place, and sometimes I asked for directions from those around. Eventually, I found my way out. I guess, finding your way out works the same whether it’s a blue alley or a blue day. All we really need to do is try, remember, and if push comes to shove, ask.

You know, I don’t want a lot; not anymore. I just want to walk amongst crowds, losing myself in them. I want to sit in parks, play with squirrels, and sip a cheap cup of tea. I don’t care about anything that everybody values anymore. I just want to live my life, calmly and without large expectations. In a world where no one shuts up about how legendary their life is, I want to look up at a clock tower under the dark night sky just to bump into a stranger who would laugh and tell me it is easier to look at the time on the watch I’m wearing. That is all I really want now—to have an extraordinarily ordinary life.

The Blue City has really blue skies, not to mention the now decreasing blue houses and buildings. As I sat on a rock at Singhoria Hill this evening, something amazing happened. The entire city started to shower itself in lights, one by one. First, Mehrangarh Fort lit up as the dark brown fort turned bright orange under the navy blue sky. Then, one by one, lights started flickering on in different houses and streets. I think it was the overview effect, of sorts, that sitting on the hill gave me but it was really nice to watch the sudden shift from blue to yellow and orange. As soon as the blue city got engulfed in the evening darkness, one rock lit up, and then so did all of them, one by one. I guess, you could take that as an analogy for a lot of things or you could just let it be what it is, a city defeating the evening. At the end of the day, how you look at things will always be how you look at things, and I guess, however you do it is fine as long as you remember to turn the light on when the day gets dark.

In a world where everyone wants to get things done as quickly as possible and where data and information travels faster than people can, the word “waiting” has an extremely negative connotation. Tell someone you’re waiting for something in life and be sure to be under fire for wasting your life away over something petty. The problem is how people interpret the word though. The way I see it, whatever has to happen, happens anyway. If that’s true, and it is, then waiting isn’t sitting with your hands idle, one over the other, doing nothing. Waiting is to constantly work on yourself, and to do things, and learn, and be better every day. It is an active attempt to being ready so that when whatever you’re waiting for comes around, you’re in a position to make the most of it. Waiting, in its truest sense, is nothing but an exemplary display of patience, which if you didn’t know, is the most celebrated virtue in history.

Maybe, I’m not old enough to be preaching about life but I think I have one thing down clearly. I think there’s only one concrete rule here, and everything else is just up to us. The rule is simple – be alive. To be as excited of kicking a pebble down the street as you would watch a breathtaking view. It’s never going to be a perfect day or a perfect week or a perfect month or a perfect year. The very nature of life means it goes from zero to shit really quickly, and I think it is in those moments that we should remember the single rule there is – be alive. Don’t waste moments worth smiling with half-hearted smiles. It is all-in or nothing. It’s always been that way. The very nature of life is that it goes from being there to just stopping in a flash. I think it’s up to us to choose what we count until it does – our losses or times we were truly alive, even if those times have passed. The very nature of life is to go forward, and we can’t do that unless we learn to be alive.

A day in Mount Abu almost felt like being home. The sunlit trails, the trees, the casual attire, and the chilly evening were all reminders of home. The trail to the famed sunset point had me walk amidst people in carts pushed by other people, people on horses, and other walkers like me to reach very noisy spots to see what was an otherwise beautiful sunset. The crowd and the cacophony were so aggravating and in such contrast with how it felt in Pushkar that the first thought which entered my head, unfortunately so, was that people from my country just can’t appreciate beautiful things. They will always be busy buying the mundane snack, haggling with the vendors selling the snacks, judging other families who are on vacation, cursing the government even as the sun sets right in front of their eyes. You get the idea. So, I sat there, earphones in, as Bon Iver played but that wasn’t enough too for this lady couldn’t stop staring at an anomaly in the crowd who watched the sky silently. So, I decided to head back and watched the sunset from a faraway corner. There I met three people, slightly younger than me, who too wanted to enjoy a sunset, click a few photos of it and do nothing else. We talked, got to know a bit about each other, and became friends as we watched the sunset together. Too bad I’ll never enjoy the cheapest corn-on-the-cob like all those people at the sunset point though. It was a sad day indeed.

After roaming about the markets of Udaipur, I came and sat at the Gangaur Ghat to watch the sunset when a little kid caught my eye. He sat right between me and the sun, and he had taken his wristwatch off which to me was peculiar. Then, I watched the boy for over an hour. He was there alone and something about the way he sat there made me believe he came there regularly. This little boy complete with his tiny earrings and cropped hair stared at the sun in awe. Then he looked around at the people and the flocks of pigeons flying above us regularly. He played with the water at regular intervals. When the sun had set and the sky turned pink, followed by navy blue, he got up and left as casually as he sat there. He wasn’t there to miss someone or think about his life. He really was there to watch the sunset. It was inspiring to watch him just be himself. It was a reminder to never forget the little boy who wanted to sit by himself, play a bit, and watch beautiful things.

Pushkar is first and foremost the fifty-two ghats. Then, it is a market around them. Then, there’s a city around the market. But that’s not all Pushkar is, in fact, the most important part to it is the people. I’ve never seen such an amalgamation of different people and cultures in such a small area. A simple walk through the Pushkar market will have you pass authentic Rajasthani handicraft shops, followed by a falafel stand, followed by a cafe, followed by a pizzeria, followed by a kachori stand, and so on. It all works together. The people who live there, permanently or temporarily, all coexist and love each other. The pigeons love flying about continually. The market echoes with Namastes, High Fives, and friendly banter. Then, there’s the sunset point at Savitri Mata Temple where the sound just ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, how old you are, what religion you follow, or whether you’re a human or a langoor, all of you stare at the sunset in awe and silence. You take it in, together. Eagles soar in the sky as the sun descends over the valley and besides some soft conversation, no one says a word. I think that’s the most beautiful part of Pushkar—the understanding.

I came to Pushkar less than two days ago, and there are a lot of things I can tell you about here but there’s a particular thing that really caught my eye while sitting at the sunset point with a couple of friends I made today. There were birds who’d fly to a point in the air and then, just stay in one place. Their wings would stretch out as they floated and soared casually in the iridescent sky. They’d do that until the wind would change directions or perhaps, they’d get tired and they’d plunge downward, and then they’d rise up again, still trying to stand still mid-air. We talked about how we’d wanted to do the same thing. Then, it hit me, not that I said it out loud. We already do the same thing. We find a place, an orientation, in our life we spend some time into, almost standing still, but things change like the wind or we get tired and we take a plunge downward, sometimes really quickly. Just like the birds though, we rise again and float again, and on and on the cycle goes.

The only lesson I keep learning every few months, sometimes through myself and sometimes through others, is that there’s no perfect time to do anything. The best opportunity to do whatever we have to do was yesterday. The best we can do is to be a little late and do it today. We have to say things we haven’t said, make calls we haven’t made, write books we haven’t written, and so on, so forth. Time flies away whether we’re ready to take flight or not.

You’re sitting at the airport, waiting for the gates to open and for boarding to begin. You’re tired, you’re making a plan as you go and it’s only the beginning of a long time. At least, it feels longer in your head. Months have started to feel like years now. Perhaps, it’s the age. Perhaps, it’s the eventfulness. You’re not in the best state of your mind but you’re still making the most of the opportunities you have in life. As the daily cocktail of thoughts spins around in your head, you look at an old couple sitting right across from you. They’re talking to each other; smiling. The man folds a newspaper and keeps it on his luggage. You look around. You see a lady, way older than you, talking on the phone obnoxiously loudly. You get a bit irritated but then you let it go as you turn your head to the other side. A toddler walks a few steps and then falls flat on the ground. He gets up. He laughs. You see another man approach the seat beside you. He asks, rather excitedly, “Deccan Herald!?” The old man sitting across from you says “yes” as he hands him the folded newspaper. You smile just at the energy of that question. You look further ahead, you see a familiar face. It’s your cousin. It’s a happy coincidence. Before you get up to say “Hi”, you decide the cocktail of thoughts can sit at the back burner for a while. It’s alright. Everything is alright. Alright is enough.

I’ve been studying data science lately. It’s funny because you see, data science basically tries to make computers behave like humans, at least a major chunk of it works toward that goal. Yet, the more I study it, the more I have started understanding how humans work.

I guess it’s difficult to judge the human experience from our bird’s eye view of it – it feels complex and annoying and just chaotic – but if you start seeing things as individual problems, it gets simpler. For example, when you make choices, you’re just doing a decision tree. When you’re making decisions based on experience, you’re just solving a classification problem. When you’re trying to figure out who is important and who isn’t, you’re clustering.

Jargons, I know. Sorry for the math overwhelm. Still, I want to get this thought out there. Data science tries to emulate human behaviour. Yet, I’ve felt it has brought me better clarity somewhat on how a human sees things.

The way I see it, all we’re really trying to do at the end of the day is figure out the answer to this one question for countless problems – which side of the line do I lie on? That’s data science.

You can “just miss” a lot of things. A bus to work, an important package, an opportunity of a lifetime, a friend you hadn’t met for months, a lover you met at the wrong time. You can “just miss” all of it, and people will tell you that the universe didn’t will for it to happen. I call bullshit. I’ll run after buses, I’ll find the package myself, I’ll create another opportunity, I’ll find time for the friend, and I’ll wait for the lover. I’ll do all of that and more, every day. You know what? I’ll also stop for coffee while I’m at it. You know, just for the laugh. I hope your universe can deal with a stubborn little shit.

I missed out on reading The Catcher in the Rye when I was at the age most people who read it had done. I read it recently. The book, had I read it at the age, would’ve really helped for I was Holden in my own way. Perhaps, I still am. Perhaps, all of us are. The funny part is, I had read the last page of Catcher before I had read the book. It’s funny because you can’t understand what the last line means until you see the story of Holden or at least the part he chooses to tell; “chooses” being the operative word. In subsequent reading about J.D. Salinger and his life beyond Catcher, it seems he too believed truly in the last lines of his book as he became recluse and unapproachable. Reading The Catcher in the Rye impacted my life, and the way I go about it extremely deeply. If you need context, maybe look at my recent blog posts. It’s a really simple yet oddly complex book, with a really simple yet oddly complex ending. If you haven’t read it, do it but don’t tell others. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

I often dream about living in a cottage amidst the clouds and in the hills when I’m at the twilight of my life. It’s an odd sort of fantasy where I’d be on my own, and a lifetime later, I’d just live a life where there aren’t a lot of people, and obligations, and goals. There will be a life, and days that all seem similar, each peppered with little things that make me smile. I’d have a sort of an open library where I’d invite young people to come over and read whatever they want. I’d also have a counter where I’d make them some coffee or tea, something I imagine I’ll still want to do, irrespective of my age at the time. I’d listen to these people talk and find stories –their stories. I’d scribble sometimes at night, though I won’t call it writing. On days when I feel like it, and because of no other motivation at all, I’d take long walks and strolls along misty pathways. I won’t have a lot of friends, but people who’d live around me and talk to me would remember me and sometimes, they’d throw a little greeting if I passed them as I walked. I’m only twenty-one now but I think I’d like to do that, once I’m old enough, and when a lifetime would’ve passed. Wouldn’t you?

On some days, I’d want to do nothing and learn nothing. I’d want to spend time with a loved one, walk around town and then look at pigeons sitting on a wire, imagining whether the few who sat far away did it because they were disliked by the lot or was it of their own accord. So, I’d do just that, and then end the day with the following thought —nothing spectacular happened today; everything was spectacularly ordinary, and that is fine by me.

Every café adorns itself with shelves adorned with random books. It always baffled me, perhaps due to the limitation of my own understanding, that how could someone read random books for an entire duration of a café visit. You couldn’t finish it in that time, and reading it halfway made no sense. Hell, most people I know don’t visit cafés alone; they dread it and shudder at the thought of sitting by themselves. Even if I could do the task of sitting alone by myself in a corner, I’d bring my own book. Until some days ago when I found myself reading a Catherine Cookson book. The part which broke my heart was that I had to leave it almost at halfway mark as I left the café. Before I left though, I hid it in the shelf itself. It was my own ploy to make sure no one picks it up or relocates it when I visit next. I went again the next day and read through most of it, leaving a few chapters again, as I sipped some cinnamon joe. I went on another day, and I finished it. It was satisfying. The idea of going to a place, slyly hiding a book so that it’s always there, and revisiting a place consecutively only to know how the story ends was something I never imagined myself doing. Books on shelves in cafés don’t baffle me anymore, and all it took was a little side-quest of reading one from a random shelf myself.

I walked over a misty road, almost amidst clouds as the rain pattered softly on trees – conifers. I couldn’t see as clearly but I heard laughter echo through the narrow pathway, breaking the ambient sound of birds, and the monkeys, and the crickets, and the rain. A quick stride uphill taught me that the laughter came from a group of women who had just left their shift at work. The laughter was simple. It was unhinged. I think that’s the best form of laughter. That’s the only way to laugh really; unbound and uninhibited. This is the laughter which is contagious, I thought, as I chuckled on my own.

All I’ve ever wanted to do is to see things as beautifully as Keats did, to understand people as clearly as Shakespeare did, and to tell stories as honestly as Hemingway did. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to tell you about my life. But how can I do just that if not by telling you of all the beautiful things I’ve seen, of all the people I’ve met, and of all the stories that happened to me? So, I live life, day after day, trying to put words to everything, and everything into words, hoping one day someone, not much unlike me, will want to share their life like I did.