Life, Laughter and Everything Else

“Aint no sunshine when she’s gone”. “Aint warm when she’s away”. The music floated from somewhere on the platform as our train paused at the station before it moved onto its final destination to Berlin Brandenburg airport. Up to that moment, the trip at daybreak had been filled with the typical unspoken marital tension. A tension that originated from differing expectations on how to prepare for a trip back home, a trip I had decided to skip this time and a trip that would be her first, alone and across continents. Though like all disagreements, the current one brought up memories of past ones, adding fuel to a fire that if left alone, would have died on its own. As even Winnie the Pooh rightfully knew, “Sometimes the smallest things takes up the most space in your heart”. So the fire persisted silently as terrible May seemed to encroach into June. Till Bill Withers husky voice floated into my ears with the lyrics I had heard countless times before. The only difference being up to then ...

I can't remember the last time I felt I had this much time. Not that I was never the beneficiary of a balanced life within socialist Europe, but I had squandered much of it away, jumping from the consumption of ever immersive electronic devices, forgetful routines and the maintenance of social relationships. A digital detox felt timely. Faced with a swath of unfilled time, here I was blogging again after ages (does creative pursuits such as writing does not fall within digital detox?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Time had flown. 2020 is a year that will live in all our memories till the end of our lives, not so much because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. A year that started promisingly with two memorable marriages of family and friend came to a halt as a tiny microorganism proved how vulnerable we humans still were. I remember when colleagues in the office laughed as a Chinese friend hoarded masks so she could send them back home. A month later they were asking her where the...

I used to have a friend who did not come from the most well-off background. After graduation, he made it a point to jump from job to job and with each jump came a significant pay bump. When I hung out with him, his overflowing paycheck was something he would bring up at some point. "I think including bonuses, I am easily making more than a 100k Singapore Dollars monthly", he would proudly declare. Other than wondering about why was it that he brought it up, this comparison would for that moment make me, who earned about half that, feel poor. Unfortunately, it was not just him. The progression from student to adult life brought about some unexpected changes in day to day conversations. Instead of sports, girls or travelling, suddenly there was increased discussions about salaries, investments, making one's wealth grow. What one earned was often asked and the answer would almost always end up making some people happier and some sadder. I remember once when a friend would op...

It came without warning, though like the seasons, a week of summer had to be balanced by another week of winter. Was it fatigue? Was it loneliness? Or was it both? I could keep my mind off it during the day, clicking between tabs, choosing between entertainments, alternating between colleagues' requests. However, what had begun on a quiet Sunday, laid dormant, waiting for me to finish my tasks so it could drag me down again, into an uninterrupted melancholia. Longings for home, family, friends, anything that was familiar and comforting replayed in my mind. Old and once dismissed hurts came back to sting. Though worst were the questions, why I a feeling this way? What happened to drag me down for the optimism of the previous week? What was making me sad? I turn to literature, spirituality and writing. Rumi verses placate me and gives me hope. This human being is a guest house every morning a new arrival A joy, a depression, a meanness some momentary awareness comes an...

"How was your day ", I messaged her. "Boring and uneventful...how was your day been so far" , she replied. Again? This was becoming a recurring and somewhat worrying theme whereby I would go onto discuss in length the events that broke the monotony of adult life and added some color to it while she patiently listened. In some ways it was ideal. I had a hundred things to say while she was more than content to listen and (more importantly) laugh at it. It was not everyday I had someone who displayed that level of curiosity in my awesome life (warning..narcissism ahead). However as much as I do love talking about myself, what I appreciated as much were people who were equally and more expressive. A common trend that was emerging of late was this lack of expressiveness and openness, something I blamed largely on the distracting nature of smartphones, social media, Netflix etc, which resulted in terrible table conversations and way too many moments of silences. ...

I wonder why I came to Berlin at times.  Not because I do not love this city, with all its weirdness, energy, loneliness and freedom.  But because every moment I spend here, back home family and friends plan and celebrate marriages, childbirths, new jobs, new houses, new adventures, triumphs and tribulations and I can do nothing but watch from the stands and cheer them on. All the while knowing and paining in my heart that I could and should have been on that field, playing right there with them. To all the ones I could not be there for...

She is startled to see me in the room. Unfortunately, when my physical presence is felt without warning, I have realised that it scares more than it impresses. However, I wait for her still. I do not have that strong of a romantic affection for her, the one where she fills my dreams and my thoughts endlessly, where the longing for someone would spin blissful imaginary tales for the future. An innocent crush would be a more appropriate word, where you like someone, but that liking stops at a certain boundary. For the liking I do have for her is because I feel comfortable around her, a comfort characterised by the need to talk about what is going on in each other’s life. She is like an open book from which the words flow freely and who still possess the empty pages on which I can unashamedly write my own story. I can imagine taking her to bed, but that imagination lacks emotion. Instead, I would rather take her for a walk, to that pretty pastry shop I saw the other day, to the wine...

Why do people want to have children? If as the Buddha said, life is suffering, doesn't the whole idea of having children mean bring someone onto the Earth only to see them suffer? Where is the satisfaction in that?

"So what does he do", I quizzed her, zealous in my attempts to paint a picture of this stranger who had taken over what was once mine. "He's not always reading like you", she gave a hint, a slight rebuke at a habit that she used to always mock me for. To read. To write. To think. I had to admit they never gave me the bliss she did. Nor did they give the memories. Or the pleasures. But unlike her, they were always there by my side, only absent by my own choice to not be with them. It was they who made my dreams as a child, endowed me with that lively imagination I still have to this day, helped me make sense of all the chaos in the world, comfort and inspire me in my darkest movements, fill the vast swathes of time that threatened to bore me and lifted me up when she let me down. It is reading that made me who I am, and I am damn well proud of it.

The memory of him came into my head rather unexpectedly. I did not recall much, but this pitch dark, round, bald man, forever in the white shirt and lungi who would cycle to my home almost ever other evening of my childhood in Ernakulam. He would sit in the verandah while one of the other adults in the house attended to him. Sometime I recalled he sat alone and I would be told to keep him company. I barely remember what we talked about, but he had an open hearted and down to earth personality. Once when the mango tree in the front garden was drooping with ripe, delicious mangoes, I remember he helped to tie a few long poles together to fashion a long mango picker. We plucked sacks of mangoes that day (he would take one sack home to the dismay of a couple of the some in my house).  We called him Appachen. And he had long passed away. Just like many other people, who had been once mainstays of my life. Like Mummy. Papa. And recently, Sherrymaman.  It brought to min...

For the whole day, I had been pervaded by a certain restlessness, a restlessness that drove me more and more into social media and the internet without end. Expectedly, the temporary distraction only made things worse. Then I went to look for him in his room and told him to hang out with me over some beer in the balcony. He joined a while later and we sat there and chitchatted over the next couple of hours. As we sat there and talked while the Berlin skies darkened into a beautiful blue black gradient, it reminded me of earlier times, when around two decades ago, my family had moved to Singapore. Every evening, my mother, my sisters and me would sit and chat on the balcony of our apartment on the 24 th story while staring out into vast urban landscape that lay in front of us.  Somehow, it felt like these were the real highlights of life. There was something so soothing about sharing a quiet evening like this with a good friend, reminiscing about little events that he...

It was my third nap of the day. As I wearily got out of bed, it came to me like a euphemism, that maybe, I just had to accept it like it was. That there was nothing much really going on and it was best to not force myself into any kind of productiveness. Once I used to fiddle with the idea of monasticism. Then, there was nothing more alluring than leaving all the hubris of the world to retire into a world of self-examination. In the exploration of this idea, I had thrown myself into a 10 day meditation retreat and came out wondering how was it that these monks could pass whole days and lifetimes doing literally nothing. The alternative was to be busy, to immerse oneself in the myriad of everyday distractions, until one approaches death, and then look back and wonder what had happened. Unfortunately, the little island where I came from, this was often taken to the extreme. One was always busy, for one’s friends and one’s family, and I realised I had to get out before it was to...

“Most people I hate. The rest I tolerate”.                                                                                                                    – Everybody Loves Raymond I walked into the kitchen and he was washing his plates at the sink. I nodded a polite Good Morning and waited for him to finish. Feeling something hot behind me, I turned to see the stove turned to the maximum without any dish placed on it. He noticed my annoyance at having seen this, for the second time in a week, and rushed to defend himself. “Its very cold so I turned it on”. Not that I am a staunch environmentalist, but his statement just triggered me. Instead of increasing the heater temperature...

Change is hard, all the more when one is very comfortable with the present. Family, friends, job, security and the time to pursue my hobbies, I had everything here with me. But I felt discomfort in the comfort, for comfort rarely taught a man anything. Going through 2 years in the army, spending extended time away from loved ones in Houston, the phases of my life I experienced the most pain, those were the experiences that shaped me and made me better. So I decided to uproot myself, thousands of miles away for a couple of years, where I would be by myself and less protected, for the sake of putting myself through that discomfort. Something about it did not make much sense, Why volunteer to go through pain when you have happiness at your doorstep? Besides, what about the opportunity costs? 2 years of lost incomes, savings withdrawn to the point of exhaustion, a Masters that might not amount to anything. And so on and so forth. Though it somehow occurred to me that my concerns w...

There is something about the way hate consumes you. It locks you in a state of mind that cuts out everything else around you. Your whole mind is focused on that object of hate, how it wronged you, trampled on you while sadistically benefiting from your pitiful state. As you recall event after event, suddenly very word and action it spouted had an intent to hurt you and bring you down. These events are interpreted to justify opinions you have about it. More events, more feelings of despair and humiliation and rage. Your body is very tense. The breath is shallow and quick. Retribution! You mind scrambles for ideas to get back or ways in which you could have got back. You go back to the events and hypothesize alternate scenarios, scenarios that would have turned the tide and made him the victim. You imagine your victim cringing in pain, hiding his face in embarrassment and most importantly regretting having ever hurt you. You feel the triumph of having restored justice. But wait, not ye...

It starts in the morning. "Hasn't she woke up. Its already 7? She s going to be late again. Why can't she be more responsible?" "Hurry up. You dad is waiting. Drink the juice first".  "But it tastes like crap". "Whats for breakfast?". "Cereal". "Again? Its the weekend!" "Then you come to the kitchen and cook". Complaints. Arguments. Mockery. It was part and puzzle of the package. Put any two people under the same roof and they will find a reason to argue about something. As such, imagine putting five. The modern, globalist single would brand it an outdated institution, one that would limit his freedom and career and replace it with responsibilities and chores. Why bind oneself to one partner? Why have children? Why not just cohabit-ate? Why not just get a pet? Why go through all that trouble? Yes it is chaotic. Yes, it does not always work out the way one wants. Yes I wished he would stop tell...

"You know he feels somewhat not so appreciated. That he is doing so much at work, sacrificing so much for his family, but nobody seems to acknowledge that. Maybe that is why I feel he is withdrawing into himself more and more". It was possible, but it never occurred to me that this thought would predominate his day to day life. When you care about or love someone, sometimes it might seem like that would suffice, though truth be told, it might not. I once remember hearing  story, when a frustrated husband, late into his marriage, complained to his wife that she never told him that she loved him. "I have washed you clothes, cooked your food and reared your children. Is that not enough?' A man asking for more would make the perfect fodder for today's feminists. However, we humans are fickle, irrational and ever so emotional. We want our efforts to be acknowledged by our bosses, our status to be seen by the society, our love to be validated by our partners and...

Sundays are when it makes its appearance, for weekdays are taken up by work and weekends by matters out of work that could not be done on the weekday. What triggers it I cannot pin point. Perhaps its the large swathes of idle time on a Sunday afternoon, or the lack of any human presence in close proximity, or just being at home in my room all quiet, all alone or my refusal to excite my senses with music, videos or any other form of novelty. I wish I could describe it, but you have to feel it to best know it. It is like a void inside, as if something big that had lodged in your heart for the rest of the week decided to suddenly get up and leave. It is overwhelming but not to the point of breakdown. It fills me with gloom but not without reason. Insecurities rear up their ugly head from moment to moment. Where am I heading in life? Where are the so called friends that I was surrounded by? Am I getting too comfortable with life? Isn't that a bad thing?  I reach for my phone. ...

"How about I get married?" "Are you serious?" "Yea" "No really. If you are serious, I can start looking for one" "Uhh....Nah. I was just kidding" After a while, she stopped asking me if I were serious. Instead, she would laugh it off every time I suggested it, which was the original intention of my question. For me it was just comic relief, this idea of marriage that parents back in India would pester their children with once they reached just about where I was right now; young, working with a steady income and of totally no use at home. Though when she did ask me if I was serious, I do remember feeling a palpitation in my heart, the kind one gets when having to make a yuge decision (#trump2016 #makeamericagreatagain), knowing very well that she, along with an army of aunts, waited for my green light to start searching for a bride for the most promising of their nephews. A NRI (non residential Indian used to refer to the ...

I had to go back to work on a Sunday. For 4 hours, to solve some technicality issue that a colleagues was neither qualified nor had a pay grade high enough to solve. In normal circumstances, this would have been painful, the time meant for leisure being spent at work. But the pain was eased. Because they paid me 25 dollars an hour. "100 dollars in the bank", I boasted. Easy money. They concurred, for they did not enjoy the luxury of overtime."Like that, not bad lar", they affirmed my statement, my opinion. Of course, I was paid for what they did for free. My time was not wasted. Because they paid me 25 dollars an hour. "I do OT daily. Go to work an hour early and there is enough work for me to stay an hour more later", I claim proudly. "Your treat today man!", they respond, hoping, only to see their hopes dashed by my own stinginess. The more you have, the less you become willing to share it. The greed to accumulate, not that it made me s...