Minus Eighteen.

Life has a weird way of "equalising" things. Even good things. No one can have too much of a good thing, but yeah, however much of the bad - MUCHO!! Eventually it ends up initial good being equalised by bad, but initial bad being loaded up with more bad, and more bad. And still some more. So, shit happens.

The phenomenon of "equilisation" works with grades, too. Why. I don't know.

I spend a whole day cramming up facts for the Fine Arts Theory Test and then..

I lean back in my seat at school to take a look at my question paper and there it is. Horror of horrors. Out of the five questions - each marked a BIG six - I have no idea where the last three came from! I frantically demand my teacher appear before me right now. There she is. I ask her.

"All of them are in the notes."

"..."

"Yes?"

"They are not. I think I didn't get all the notes."

"Your fault." So be it.

"But these three.. how. When. What. Huh." Dazed.

She turns to one single other FA student. "What about you?" The girl nods, feigning sympathy when I can see, almost as if in her thought baloon -
"Yes! Yes! Yes!! Woohoooooo!!! Finally. Not more than me."

Eighteen out of thirty vanish away into thin air. Simply. Kaboom.

I can register only snatches of the teacher's dialogue "Didn't you know.. how come.. must've been absent. Distributed.. long back. Very careless." Or maybe I nightmare-ed up the last "careless" bit. But it sure was there in her mind.

Sniffle sniffle. I feel my eyes filling up. On the verge. Then I feel hot all over. Then I feel this tingling. I cry.

"No problem. Do the other two. We'll see."

No problem, she says. We'll see, she says. Yeah right. The other teacher meanwhile observes me like I'm some rare specimen of an endangered species. Get a magnifying glass, Ma'am. Isn't it very interesting, Ma'am.

"You have the Practicals too. Score there." Ha!

Finally, when I care enough to get decent grades. More than decent, in some cases. Here comes someone who tells me average is okay. No, it is not. Murder. Good, so that's it then.. how did this happen? One big unsolved mystery.

Then I stare off into the distance. Down below, I see the horses going round and round as if in a circus, in the field. Galloping. Whinnying. Green grass. Blue sky. Cool wind gets in through the window with no glass.

I start writing my paper.

Creeping Normalcy..

With looking forward to posting half a dozen posts per day to absolutely nothing at all for a couple of months. I wonder if it's lack of inspiration or something else? Not many people think of motivating others when they lack some themselves, I guess.

"Normal" has changed it's meaning for me. It used to be - everything goes. To.. Nothing Goes. Not even one percent of what used to be Life. Still, I'm here, same still darkness, the same faint sunlight though the light blue curtains, the same AC, the same old Guns N' Roses, and me tap tap tapping on the keyboard. Change is the only constant. I did read that somewhere. Well...

Being a Humanities student has it's pros and cons. Contrary to popular belief, it's not all "easy peasy".. and I wonder if India's gonna have a shortage of Archeologists, Geographers, Historians in another decade.. with everyone "aspiring to be an engineer". All right. No offence.

Thank goodness I don't listen to people's views. I should've been dead. But I'm as alive as I was the day I was born. India is a difficult place to be in but the people are more difficult. What with the "caste" divisons. I still get to hear a snippet from people here and there, travelling along corridors, through a crowd of shit-headed people. Even classmates. Unbelievable, considering they're 16 AND they don't believe in shitty nonsense. Or so I thought. I wish I could just erase all the surnames of all Indians. If they can show brotherly OR sisterly love to their caste-fellows. I'm sure they'd do the same if the only criteria was Nationality. Not even religion. I hate religion with a passion. More fiery than anything I can think of.

With the LHC experiments.. I hope they consider remaking the whole Earth. We get Earth II. So cool. Imagine a world without countries, religions, no higher or lower, no distinctions, no discrimination. But that's just my over-active imagination. What of all the money? The military? The wars.. the economies.. the histories.. everything rolled into one. We get another human-made disaster.

Consider living on Mars one day. As me and my Humanities friend were discussing it one day - we'd just have Geography to study. No History. No Economics. And anyway, if we get the same teacher. It's gala time! :D

Rabbi Shergill - Bilqis . Jinhe Naaz Hai.

I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

I sat under the dying mango tree and thought about how things had gone awry. The heat rising up from the ground made me feel light-headed. As I heard the buzz of silence, heavy on my ears and my mind, I felt a calm creep over me. Red ants busied themselves talking to each other on their way, gosipping. I wondered what they talked about. A half-eaten overripe mango fell flat on the ground making a squashy noise when it rolled on to it's bitten damp side. Work of the parrots. I hugged the tree, and the bark felt rough against my cheek. I breathed out.

A cool breeze lifted my hair and brought it down slowly. A couple of raindrops fell on my hands while the sun still half shone merrily on the grey, party overcast sky. And I thought of the sketches I used to draw as a kid. The sun hiding behind the clouds, grinning, smiling forever. Was it the sun who was always happy or was it I? I felt a lump rising in my throat. I gulped and pushed it down. But the tears still came. There was no stopping them. No end to them. They went on, came back like the birds did to their nests every evening. Without fail.

I let go of the tree and raised my head towards the sky. A tiny drop fell on my right cheek. I didn't wipe it off. I never did. I prayed an Atheist prayer that it would soon start raining heavily. Anxious that I'd miss the first raindrops, I ran to the hall through the kitchen, up the stairs and stumbled on to the roof. Breathless, I reached for something to hold on to. I couldn't find anything. My eyesight blurred for a moment while my eyes looked at nothingness. Then I settled on the ledge. Mum always got scared when I did that. I didn't think there was anything dangerous. I wouldn't fall off. That would be stupid, and I was anything but that.

I swayed my legs to and fro, touching the wall and then not touching it. Hitting my heels lightly on the wall.. and then hard. Side by side, but that made me queesy. I resumed the to and fro moves. Harder. One two one two one two one. It hurt. I alternated the movement between the feet. That felt rhythmic. Then the rain started pattering on the jamun leaves right overhead. I was shielded from the rain. I felt cozy. Safe. For then, atleast.

Food for Thought..

“The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.”

- Galileo Galilei