tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61245464319716313252024-03-13T05:07:40.532+05:30THE WORLD IS SQUAREBecause the gods too, are fond of a joke.Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.comBlogger305125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-29255406159154814372019-10-11T02:46:00.001+05:302019-10-11T04:00:04.483+05:30"Resurrection" is not an amusing word, but I keep the strange company that chooses to laugh...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: normal;">Almost an entire year living in the same city. It's almost as if my deeply tumultuous relationship with the concept called nostalgia is maturing. Or... I've successfully averted the risk of making memories here. I float through this place as if only one of us really exists, and neither will ever find out which one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: normal;">Not all has changed though. Yesterday, a colleague who comes with the rare built-in features of great spirit and genuinely solid character, pulled the most overworked amongst us together and took us to a shooting range at the end of a particularly demanding day. Merrily, we rode a golf-cart. The gentle hum of its engine harmonising with the distant gunshots, as he described telling our co-workers about the plan earlier. Everyone he spoke to, made the same joke about the many perils of putting me and ammunition together. I may have had my sunniest impersonation of a smile on for the last 10 months, but there's more truth to my advertising than there are holes in my targets.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: normal;">This here is a place that was made with great, great love 10 years ago. Angst and rage and bewilderment and wonder, sure... all the elemental constituents of a great love. 2009 was when I came here to find a vat I designed to pour the excesses of my personality into. 2019 is the year I come here, to find parts of myself that were too heavy and non-aerodynamic to carry into the hyper-optimised adulthood I've designed to usually move at a slightly punishing pace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: normal;">I turned thirty this year. I've lived in fourteen houses. I've attended seven schools. I've lived in seven cities, but cycled between them thirteen times. I've fallen in love thrice. I've fallen out of it once. I've simplified my story by enumerating parts, often. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: normal;">I've lived completely by myself under solitary-confinement levels of isolation for months at a time. I've socialised till my knees buckled and collapsed into a pile of friends sleeping like puppies, and stayed motionless through the night. I have taken intercontinental flights to unfamiliar lands by myself for no particular reason, and walked the length and breadth of the cities I found myself in. I've traveled 17 hours to see my favourite people and crammed enough "living" in those few days than I would otherwise live in a lifetime. I've won over my critics, and been terribly negligent with what were the kindest of my people. I have given (and received) great measures of fondness and gratitude. I've traveled miles and eons into the unknown with strangers, but sometimes failed to find a familiar bone in my proverbial tribe. I've seen, heard, tasted, and felt things the intensity and perfection of which I cannot - on most days and in good sense - deem possible. I've romanticised my story by preserving snapshots like pressed flowers, often.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: normal;">***</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: normal;">The <i>dinkus </i>(three-asterisk punctuation used liberally in this post) reminds me of the formaldehyde smell of freshly-printed grade-school examination sheets. All printed in thin, unsettling <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Courier New</span>. The kind that were imperfectly punched and scattered tiny white paper circles on your uniform. The kind that used extremely thin paper, seemingly designed to self-destruct after the school year is buried under a thick layer of awkwardness, social trauma, teenage anxiety, and regrets. I got excellent grades in school, but this memory makes me nervous. I grew up in the format of a shuddering ball comprised almost entirely of nerves, and my childhood was a panic attack that lasted 9 years. Now I'm a Type A, ENTJ professional "fixer" with a reputation for taking no prisoners, so life sure ensures balance and symmetry in creatively cruel fashion. The many successes of overcompensation may have taught me some questionable lessons. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: normal;">My heroes have grown old and some are dying. This is a variety of heartbreak I was unprepared for, which makes me question the necessity of linear time and madly lust after the power of infinite memory. Knowing fully well that that which is my deepest desire is very clearly and predictably my ultimate downfall. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: normal;">The heart wants what it wants; and this heart has been known to hold a lifelong grudge against Newtonian physics.</span></div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-44285709062850901382017-12-30T00:33:00.000+05:302017-12-30T00:33:14.518+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So... you don't have any plans for the New Year? <div>
Don't worry, I've got you covered. <div>
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Step 1: Buy Benadryl. </div>
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Step 2: Watch the new season of Black Mirror. </div>
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Step 3: Read David Foster Wallace. </div>
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Step 4: Curl up in a ball on the floor and stay there till it's 2018. </div>
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Step 5: Take solace in having almost ensured an upward trajectory to the start of the year. </div>
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Boom. At your service, is the one-stop solution to all of life's happiness. </div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-9896834061613939442017-12-28T13:56:00.001+05:302017-12-28T13:57:33.258+05:30Teach me how to dent time.<p dir="ltr">They say that hindsight is 20/20. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Pithy aphorisms don't make it any less infuriating, do they?</p>
<p dir="ltr">It's not easy when your one true misgiving with the world is the linearity of time. For 2018, it is this hearts' earnest desire to have problems slightly more pliable than the laws of Newtonian physics. </p>
<p dir="ltr">That. Just that.</p>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-47085593131154500352016-12-26T01:34:00.000+05:302016-12-26T01:34:18.337+05:30Aftermath.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After the battlefield is finally cold, and the sun has set on the massacre it witnessed, it is memory that poisons those who survive. No matter which side you pledged, dwelling on each blow will kill even the victor. Eventually... and indiscriminately. </div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-56598145105830759292015-12-27T02:37:00.001+05:302015-12-27T02:37:47.121+05:30Lessons That Came Too Late - Part 1<p dir="ltr"><i>"</i><i>A</i><i> </i><i>nature</i><i> </i><i>that</i><i> </i><i>does</i><i> </i><i>not</i><i> </i><i>sue</i><i> </i><i>for</i><i> </i><i>happiness</i><i>, </i><i>often</i><i> </i><i>receives</i><i> </i><i>it</i><i> </i><i>in</i><i> </i><i>large</i><i> </i><i>measure</i><i>"</i></p>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-15610301139978111892015-11-23T21:39:00.002+05:302015-11-23T21:39:54.064+05:30Listen Without Prejudice.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Given enough time, everything decays into rage. It courses through the veins, thicker than blood. It burns brighter than most fires you and I have known. It lives. </div>
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Burning out is a gift, a blown fuse being the final line of defense before the carnage. The limit of human capacity for enduring pain protects not itself, but the source. </div>
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But there are those who don't burn out. Those misguided into striving for invincibility, can only come burning and blazing, or not come at all. They forget how to half-live, they know not how to half-love. Run enough pain through them, and they become live wires; obliterating everything they touch, knowing neither peace nor loss. The current, it's possible, would never stop.</div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-25640547870158009712015-09-12T22:43:00.000+05:302015-09-12T22:43:10.919+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"In a fine country, in a sunny country,</i></div>
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<i>Among the hills I knew,</i></div>
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<i>I built a house for the wren that lives in the orchard,</i></div>
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<i>And a house for you.</i></div>
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<i>The house I built for the wren had a round entrance,</i></div>
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<i>Neat and very small;</i></div>
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<i>But the house I built for you had a great doorway,</i></div>
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<i>For a lady proud and tall.</i></div>
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<i>You came from a country where the shrubby sweet lavender</i></div>
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<i>Lives the mild winter through;</i></div>
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<i>The lavender died each winter in the garden</i></div>
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<i>Of the house I built for you.</i></div>
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<i>You were troubled and came to me because the farmer</i></div>
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<i>Called the autumn "the fall";</i></div>
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<i>You thought that a country where the lavender died in the winter</i></div>
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<i>Was not a country at all.</i></div>
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<i>The wrens return each year to the house in the orchard;</i></div>
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<i>They have lived, they have seen the world, they know what's best</i></div>
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<i>For a wren and his wife; in the handsome house I gave them</i></div>
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<i>They build their twiggy nest.</i></div>
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<i>But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home</i></div>
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<i>To a leaky castle across the sea,-</i></div>
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<i>To lie awake in linen smelling of lavender</i></div>
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<i>And hear the nightingale, and long for me."</i></div>
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<i>- Edna St. Vincent Millay</i></div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-43736773896856946302015-09-12T16:04:00.001+05:302015-09-12T16:05:09.240+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"<i>There are things I have wanted so much and for so long, I would only consent to have them if I could keep wanting them.</i>"</div>
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Top of the list of things I would have said eventually, had they not already been said in a manner so faultless.</div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-20686315858592646092015-09-12T06:03:00.000+05:302015-09-12T06:03:33.824+05:30The sky is no man's land.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-72125575063578011352015-09-07T16:33:00.000+05:302015-09-07T18:16:45.694+05:30Fulcrum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One doesn't play with fire, without expecting to get burnt. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In doing so, the objective of the game is not to avoid damage. The whole point of the exercise, is to balance ones' instinct for survival against the predilection for self-destruction, and discover which one wins. The war, after all, is always internal.</div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-8430331526624365662015-07-23T14:42:00.001+05:302015-07-23T14:51:28.142+05:30On identity and the passage of time.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Cut to 10 years later, and the goth kid in me:<br />
1. has the most corporate of corporate day jobs.<br />
2. wears dark lace under button-up pastel shirts and business suits.<br />
3. grins at her painted-black toenails when things get too... insipid.<br />
4. reads Poe and prowls derelict, banyan-lined streets post-midnight.<br />
5. lights a candle to stare at contemplatively, every time it rains.<br />
6. definitely listens to The Cure secretly, between presentations and when no one is looking.</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-87847459871794480552015-06-07T02:35:00.004+05:302015-06-07T02:35:58.677+05:30This Is Not A Pipe.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is when people come to a point where they think they know you, they stop noticing you. When that moment is reached, you could simply keep feeding their illusions and self-serving need to believe that they understand and are in control of much more than reality would have it be. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It becomes so terribly easy to step behind a curtain of their own making, cast mere shadows on the cloth, and let mere assumptions vivify the act right into real life. The audience will love it so dearly, so completely (for narcissistic love of one's own creation is convenient enough), that every contradictory truth in the field of vision becomes immaterial. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Surely, evolution has done the world a great disservice. </div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-59998540720041916772015-06-07T02:11:00.002+05:302015-06-07T02:19:43.151+05:30Breaking silences and gentler things.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I often wake up wanting nothing more than to strip the world bare. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pull little parts off with my own hands, crumble them like clay, observe the texture of every slice, the cross-section of every joint, and somehow come closer to making sense of all these events that are entirely unlikely but painfully predictable, all at the same time. Instead of just watching them unfold before me, just as I imagined them a thousand hours, weeks, or years ago. Just as I could never really believe they would. It's the ultimate existential conflict. Subjective optimism is up against objective reality. The crazy, stupid things we do to keep the little flame of hope alive. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'd like to crumble every bit under the tips of my fingers, smudge them with the friction of the ridges that make up my fingerprints, and re-engineer reality to be little less obvious. To be a little more kind.</span></div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-51625903419158698752015-06-07T01:49:00.001+05:302015-06-07T01:49:22.486+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"If you entreat me with your loveliest lie</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will protest you with my favorite vow.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would indeed that love were longer-lived,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And vows were not so brittle as they are,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But so it is, and nature has contrived</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To struggle on without a break thus far,--</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whether or not we find what we are seeking</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is idle, biologically speaking."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- Edna St. Vincent Millay</span></div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-87117830321435631212013-07-16T22:57:00.000+05:302013-07-16T22:57:24.299+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">spin the roulette love</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">whatever the odds</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">let's play this game again</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">chalk down an ode to the gods</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">of psychological warfare</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-50298050141465085252013-06-25T01:50:00.001+05:302013-06-25T01:54:44.188+05:30Rise.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chock-full of sentiment is the air. Heavy and opaque, it settles down and crawls near the floor. Forever shifting, never spreading. At least, not until a gust of wind creeps in and whips around the remains of a day or a life strung together like pearls on a painfully delicate gossamer thread. I see more valour in fragility than anything else now; the mere fact of an existence being an affront to probability, odds or fate. There's a fire in me that continues to rise. I stand beneath this dark sky and feel it course through my veins. I stand at the edge, my body steeped in a heady brew otherwise known as thrill, and prepare to take flight. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've seen enough change now to know that given enough time, even this world stops disguising its narcissistic need to repeat itself. </div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-23542322048227566512013-05-30T21:38:00.001+05:302013-05-30T21:38:50.277+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><u>Appendix A</u></b><br />
A list of the fictional characters I have recently been likened to:<br />
<br />
1. Xena<br />
2. Irene Adler<br />
3. Donna Pinciotti<br />
<br />
<b><u>Appendix B</u></b><br />
A list of the fictional characters that I actually embody:<br />
<br />
1. The Incredible Hulk<br />
<br />
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
Close enough.</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-77561820959910709442013-05-19T22:15:00.000+05:302013-05-19T22:15:56.237+05:30Some general and (honestly, rather dull) artless updates. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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. </div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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. </div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I want so much more. </div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-70905824824021641192013-04-27T01:32:00.000+05:302013-04-27T01:32:16.622+05:30pentagram-heart.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rplfOetZFXk/UXrXtWrIBDI/AAAAAAAAM-w/56R0H-M5_vI/s1600/DSC_0062.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rplfOetZFXk/UXrXtWrIBDI/AAAAAAAAM-w/56R0H-M5_vI/s320/DSC_0062.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Beanstalk, at the Galaxy Hotel in Gurgaon has much to its credit; the cinnamon and caramel latte, the artwork on display, the grand piano and live music. Delightful pleasures, certainly, but none as charming as the latte art I encountered at a recent coffee date. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As if the barista started out innocently enough with creating a chocolate heart, decided that it was too much of a cliche, thence attempted to turn it into a pentagram, shortly before panic struck and resulted in the tangled mess you see in the picture. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Like a testament, to deliciously dysfunctional romance. </div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-86013225371076979822013-04-21T20:22:00.000+05:302013-04-21T20:22:17.452+05:30On (the obligatory nature of) charity.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Random chance is neither fair, nor unfair. No one has a moral obligation to compensate for it. Why must charity be forced upon a person, or he be ostracized for not following suit because he finds it to be an absurd ideal? The privileged aren't automatically indebted to the universe, and the underprivileged don't get a karmic trust fund. If one chooses to subscribe to such fancies out of selflessness, goodwill or guilt, then it is entirely a matter of belief. By all means, one is free go ahead and rid oneself of the perceived debt or obligation he finds himself carrying(the question of perceptual error notwithstanding). One needn't waste empathy on a generalization as gross as a specie. If you give to those you take from, are not frivolous with your compassion, and your unfaltering devotion lies with the few things and people you pledge it to, for reasons more logical than the basis of blanket-term charity; then you must, at the very least, be spared the quasi-self righteousness. Constancy of purpose over moral convenience, always.</div>
</div>
Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-43924046630006753432013-04-21T19:28:00.000+05:302013-04-21T19:28:18.359+05:30More.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b style="text-align: justify;">12.02</b><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">I miss certain things, so much more than I ever wanted them. And sweet heavens, I wanted them so so much, that the "wanting" and the "pursuit" was all that was left of me. As long as the hours are filled up with just a little more than they can contain, the days are bearable, and the nights are dispensable. It's when peace dawns that the real commotion sets in. When it's quiet, it's hard to bear being in one's own head.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><b>12.02</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">An unfortunate state of affairs, it certainly is, that we've landed in this situation. Had we met elsewhere, in a different life, this would have panned out very differently I'm sure. But this world is a complicated place, and the only point of contact is also the core point of conflict. </span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">So what chance do we have?</span></div>
<span style="text-align: justify;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><b>11.02</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">A shrink in the making says that if there's one thing that's changed over the years, it's the fact that I've succumbed to "being more mainstream". I think I've merely identified a need to create a character that is more "mainstream", acquired the ability to vivify it, and the capacity to switch it on and off at will. As the years roll along, I'm not quite changing as much as I am growing several different people in one exceedingly capacious head.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><b>09.10</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">If I say to you that the world as we know it is coming to an end, you wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow. Sure, I believe you can move mountains with a flick of your little finger. Sure, you tread the earth like you own it. Sure, everything is a victory to you. And every conquest pushes you higher up on your pedestal. But would you ever change things, not because you could, but because you wanted to?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<span style="text-align: justify;"><b>12.09</b></span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">It gets crowded. So very crowded. Inside my head.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">The puppetmaster is me, the puppets are also me. Each puppet a tiny part of my entire self. Each persona a tweaked and tuned modulation of the various behavioral patterns, memories and belief systems that make up a person, adjusted to just the right degree to attain a certain cause, a particular end, or a purpose, like the knobs and dials on a complex piece of musical equipment.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: justify;">All these blogs I write that chronicle each one of these lives are all headed in separate directions, all over the place. I don't like where either of them are headed. Neither these people, nor their stories.The puppetmaster right in the middle is having his limbs torn out of his sockets, struggling to hold on to strings that just happen to exhibit incredulous tensile strength.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>13.02</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">I woke up feeling 17 today. Led zeppelin playing in the head, spring in the step. It's been a while, but so easy ti is to map what was there then, to what is today. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Things should have changed. I wish I could say "Oh, if only I had known the things I know today...", but the truth is, I cannot. I knew. And these 6 years, </span><span style="text-align: justify;">I haven't found enough new. I now need to fill up feathers and filling into my paragraphs because there is nothing more to be said about the things I already understood perfectly </span><span style="text-align: justify;">6 years ago. Time froze, and so did I. C</span>ryogenically, I hope.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.03</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To have power over people, is to either assert a clear and overwhelming intellectual superiority over them, or to seduce and subsequently exercise control. All in all, the keywords remain the same- overwhelm and seduce. But having lost the will for the former, and the moral sanction for the latter, I'm left to trifle with my modest lateral devices. Ah well, Machiavelli shall share a drink tonight.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>10.02</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Across all of civilization and culture, there is no single insult known to be more effective than a well-timed "point-and-laugh". Fact</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.10</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Epiphany. Every thing, concept, incident, occurrence, phenomena and association is about control. Things controlling others, the number of things bearing the influence of control on a single object, and the degree of the control. And in this system, power is all about the ratio of the degree of control one practices over objects/concepts/people external to oneself, to that which is exercised by external factors onto oneself. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.10</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Owning a fully-customisable cellphone is no joke for the obsessive-compulsive. The sheer amount of time that can be spent moving RGB sliders to get the lower side of the incoming chat bubble to the perfect shade of teal... the boggled mind boggles.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>10.06</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One of these days, they'll finally catch up to what I've been doing all along.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.01</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Best laid plans backfire. Using humor as a defense mechanism comes to bite you in just the wrong places. The problem? My decision to be amused by every thing that bothers me has led to strange results. The world now thinks I'm drunk all the time.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.10</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The digitized world leaves one in want of romance. There is, of course, romance in uncertainty. In doubt, unfavorable odds, inconvenience, tragedy and in nostalgia. It's hard to place what exactly is lost in the quantisation of things. I think it's the depersonalisation. We rarely think of emails fondly. It's the handwritten letters we archive for years.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>09.05</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps irrational masochism isn't all that irrational after all. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.10</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I know the difference between strength and imperviousness. But in case of emergency, the latter is a serviceable substitute for the former.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.11</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Poignant it is, that all subtleties of the human condition now decay into abstruse facebook privacy settings. So very curious, this time and age.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>11.11</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
...and in a grand ironic spectacle, I realize that even my disregard is insufficiently misplaced.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.01</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was always told that my words were a gift. That they can do so much that most cannot. That they stir up the deepest of contentions, the strongest of passions, and the most obscure of sentiments. That they can control, contradict, charm and manipulate. Question, sully, extol, or taint. Inspire, persuade or demean. Refute, baffle, overwhelm, and glean. That till I have my words, all can be salvaged. So I've been trying to weave all my little words into alluring patterns and strings, to cast then off into the skies, hoping that somehow, somewhere, they'd land in a place that justifies their existence. Whether my cause has met the intent, I cannot say... but today, what I truly want is to draw ropes and forge chains out of all these little words. What power do they have, after all, if I cannot wrap them around a few things, and make them stay?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.01</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All I really want, is to meet one person everyday, who can tell me something I don't already know.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>13.03</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I don't even know what normal is, anymore.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.04</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You can either be one of the people who spend their lives talking about the others, or you can be the one they're all talking about. Not a tough choice to make.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.11</b></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Deceit, the world shall never decry.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Even the moon thrives on borrowed splendor.</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Did I really ever see its dark side?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>12.11</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is so much music to be found in this world. Everything that is, is music. All patterns, all statistics, all odds, and all objects. They flow, and so does the music. Words flow, and so do these numbers.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>13.01</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I can feel a storm coming.</div>
<div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>13.01</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This quill of mine,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
today explodes with colour,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
seeping into paper,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
bleeding into wood.</div>
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Pieces of Radiohead, REM, and RHCP came together, got inspired by Afrobeat, and became Atoms for Peace. Excuse me while I go nuts.</div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-91485565752541515572013-04-21T18:34:00.000+05:302013-04-21T18:55:04.043+05:30November<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sometime during the while I graduated from having nightmares about explosions to having nightmares about cyclones, reality certainly became less of one. It hasn't nearly been half as cruel as I'd become accustomed to, and a new kind of freedom has been found, it seems. Not the "spread my wings and soar away" variety, but more of a "today, I decide to stop pretending these chains are made of anything more than yarn that I would have slashed away with a fingernail a long time ago, had they not have been a metaphor for something that was rather valuable once upon an unreal and delicately fragile time" kind.</div>
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I understand more about this thing people call "human frailty" than ever before. I still call it cowardice, of course... and you, being you, might scoff condescendingly at the fact and shake your head in misleadingly unconvincing exasperation, continuing to unleash upon this world a false sense of security that will forever remain your ultimate, all-serving escape route. But so be it. Like I've said before, this is the way of the world and the world, I will not argue with. It's too predisposed to its own frailties for that. </div>
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Having witnessed my words lose all power the year before, this year was also about reclaiming faith in them. I said so much that needed to be said, in and to people and places, not so respectively. I said that everything in this life is compensated for, and my balance stands levelled and even. Keen and quivering ratio, yes, but balanced nevertheless. I said that these things happen and the victories are not absolute. Nothing, unless broken down to the microscopic level is binary data. And once we're there, we're both the same. Broken down, we're both the exact same sequence of 0s and 1s and QR codes. I said that proof by analogy is never a proof, and I refuse to use it to describe the degree to which our own intent governs our lives in contrast to pure entropy and probability. I said that my violent, passionate, disagreeable self will always be so, because it is the only thing I can be knowing the things I know. I said that I would always go to the greatest lengths to have my environment be a product of my actions, and not vice versa. That my life, my volition, my choices and my loves are entirely my own and so is the responsibility of bearing their consequences. I said that in this wild spinning world, we are specks in the whirlpool. Colliding, drifting, cracking, shifting, breaking, coalescing. When not a single point in these realms stays constant, what do we centre our world around except our own estimations of perspective and standard deviations? I proposed that we take the sum total of all existence, slice it in the dimensions of space and time, and capture a sliver of reality in our minds. Every premise sorted, every colour accounted for. That much of reality, you get to keep. I said a lot of things, and mean them as much today as I did then. I, being me, will continue to do so.</div>
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There is more than a glint of hope, you see. This year and a half has brought in a lot of change. Having previously escaped the traps of formal education, it was a concrete step towards making(not finding, for that is too passive) my place in the world. Places, people, cities, and a fair deal of altered states of mind. Green, amber, and the entire rainbow wedged in between. Inconvenient loves and some very convenient hate. Bright lights, and wild nights. It was also the year of fending off droves of the redundant, the fatuous and the wasteful, fighting gender biases tooth and nail, and fighting for the fact that I am responsible only for my own actions, even if the weight and blame makes good stuffing for a communal piƱata. The realisation that if the world insists on making me choose between wasting a lot of my time talking about it, or have it waste a disproportionate amount of its own talking about me, I might as well choose the latter despite the associated costs. </div>
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The understanding that if I claim that a person is to be defined by their thoughts, beliefs, premises and ethos, then death is far more threatening a proposition than I ever imagined. Death, of course, of an entirely different sort. There were mountains and beaches and everything in between a million times over again. Music that you could touch, music that killed and resuscitated, music that broke, music that fixed, music that connected a hundred people through one feeling, music that set the air on fire, and music that made my heart want to explode. A lot of things made my heart want to explode, in ways good, bad, and honestly quite messy and ugly. But there is freedom. Never have I felt so wholly responsible for, so completely in control of my own life. Taxes, bills, and paying the rent. Living on my own, and breathing in a decidedly unhealthy amount of rarified oestrogen on a daily basis. </div>
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But you shouldn't dwell, I implore. For "you", you must understand now, is not really you. </div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-30290819501276963072013-04-08T02:26:00.000+05:302013-04-08T02:26:54.131+05:30This Day's Blurb.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Right Said Saif</b></div>
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Mcleodganj, March 2013</div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-29695283616182652732013-03-07T03:28:00.001+05:302013-03-07T03:28:29.338+05:30Antecedent to rescue, abject.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Applause, for the irony deserves it.<br /><div>
Champagne, for the problem with this world;<div>
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but nothing will survive too much love.</div>
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6124546431971631325.post-64145264984597678552013-02-03T01:55:00.000+05:302013-02-03T01:55:00.322+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sherry Wasandihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02070127948095554465noreply@blogger.com0