Thursday, May 30, 2013

Appendix A
A list of the fictional characters I have recently been likened to:

1. Xena
2. Irene Adler
3. Donna Pinciotti

Appendix B
A list of the fictional characters that I actually embody:

1. The Incredible Hulk

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Close enough.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Some general and (honestly, rather dull) artless updates.

It's been a good run so far, I suppose. Two years since I escaped the many traps of formal education. Two years since the last time the walls came crashing down. A year and three quarters since the jerk from a metaphorical bungee rope. A year and a half, since control was seized, and things turned around. Eight months since the last remaining brick was tossed away. Seven, since I found something I'd been looking for, far longer than I can bring myself to admit. Two months since I was perched on that tiny, perfect little spot that marks the peak between the juxtaposed slopes of ambition and complacency, where everything was in equilibrium. Balanced, synchronised, and accounted for. It's been a month since I began walking down the wrong side of the mountain, and a week since I decided it was time for change. Again. 

Choices lie ahead of me. Two very good ones, because things work out that well sometimes. So what do I choose? On one hand lies the life of a more-than-well-to-do, stereotypical white-collared corporate monkey; while on the other, there is a world of great possibility, steep and rather trying intellectual challenges, the world to turn into my own quirkily-decorated little oyster, and equal measure of risk that comes along with all of this. Not one to err on the side of caution, I'm having a lot of trouble giving due weightage to both halves of the idea of "should want". Perhaps the decision was made long before the question presented itself. 

Perhaps. 

In other news, I am deeply concerned about a few facts that seem to have ganged up against me in recent times, also further urging me to "err on the side of caution". The adrenalin junkie in me is at danger of being slaughtered by nothing more than mere intraocular pressure, and a four year old memory of inopportune surgery for retinal detachment. The zest associated with a list featuring the words scuba, sky-diving, roller-coasters, weightlifting, and taekwondo is now accompanied by an unsettling fear of blindness. Adding to the aforesaid, there is a busted knee, the curse of the desk-job(weakened spine), unusually high myopia, and suspected tachycardia. How I wish this body I came with a part-replacement warranty policy. 

Meanwhile, in the last eighteen months or so, I've been making a place for myself in the world (with more success than I had dared to anticipate), moving out of my parent's house, dealing with the extremely painful job of apartment hunting in Gurgaon, living in three different houses, travelling to four new cities, witnessing quaint beachside sunset drum-circles, partying like nobody's business, catching up with friends I hadn't run into in over a decade or so, realising exactly how much our lives and the times change us even if we all started out at the exact same starting line, reading some of the best pieces of literature I've ever laid my hands on, trekking in the hills, and meeting, knowing, hating and liking a few hundred new people. And learning. Learning and experiencing so much in such little time that it blows my mind a little just bit, collating it all together into this modest time-frame. I'm pretty sure that sometime in the past this was exactly the life I had dreamt of. But there's got to be more. 

I want so much more.