To whomsoever it may concern,

Feelings are fragile.

Even if I sound contradictory.

Summing up my day.

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

Pinch.

Self-diagnosis. It makes one who is capable of doing so to himself/herself quiet amazing. I digress. One not only ends up with incorrect and messed-up diagnosis but also ends up wasting time reading into things that should be left alone for good. The biggest flaw is the acceptance factor. You end up accepting a problem where there exists none. Because where there is a diagnosis, there must be some disorder and in the course of curing the (non-existent) problem, there is spent time, emotions, money and all else that one can spend. By experience, I’d say there is created a multitude of problems that could not have existed in the first place. So as an expert, in my opinion, self-diagnosis does not work. Not really effective, eh?

I thought I was so amazing that I got rid of my own bloody problems. I decided a few days back to make the best use of what I have, to make an effort towards appreciating what I have. Blah blah. You know, all of that – trying to pursue what most people around me (now friends included who are apparently on an endeavor to put me on a right direction) call ‘sense of reality’ which I have supposedly lacked since forever. It’s called ‘practicality’ and their definition includes a lot more, it also includes being ‘patient’. Now, ‘patience’ according to their definition means expressing an infinitely polite behavior towards discourteous idiots, which brings me to their definition of ‘idiots’ - it means persons who can’t help themselves from acting like morons, because that’s what they have always been like or that’s what their generation has been like. I’m sorry but this definition of practicality sounds to me like suicide. I’m happy and content with my own sense of reality and self-esteem or whatever is left of it plus the permanent label of being a snooty person.

Last line, I can’t be THAT polite to anyone. I decided to get a grip over this fact today, not that I was making this decision for the first time, but a much firmer decision than the previous ones. I hope it lasts more than 48 hours. I just hope I don’t succumb to guilt or that yearning and useless emotions pinching some part of my brain.

I seem to have gotten used to making up my mind and changing it within 12 hours.

That’s it. Self-diagnosis, yet again.

Perfection

I'm glad I watched this. Better late than never. I didn't expect this movie to make such an impact; at least this is what I have to say from an individual point of view. This is not just another ballet movie, or a mere psychological thriller, it's a metaphorical brilliance, it's beautiful, that's what it is. And Natalie Portman outdid herself again.

...

Picture courtesy: xkcd.com 

Perfectionism costs much. You’ve to be perfect so that you can prove your worth. I can hardly call myself a feminist in the true sense of the term, because the thing is I never ever understood this concept in its ‘true’ sense. I am standing in the middle here, right between bra-burners and Femi-Nazis and people who do not give a damn. I hardly ever cared about achieving ‘absolute’ perfection because in the end I got what was due to me, or something pretty close to what I wanted. I admit, I am average. But that was school. 

I was made to read a book when I was fourteen by an aunt who is a surgeon by profession. I found it pretty boring and preachy back then. It was The Making of a Woman Surgeon by Elizabeth Morgan. Only now do I understand what it actually meant. Morgan gives an example of one situation where she had to treat a patient met with an accident, and she hurriedly and untidily put in the sutures to close the wound for the fear that he would lose his life. The chief resident, a woman, told her to take the sutures out and do the work neatly. The patient died as expected but the sutures were neatly put in. According to Morgan's chief resident, you can’t remain satisfied with being as good as men; you have got to do better than them. My point, that's where situation starts to suck.

That’s what it is. Perfectionism is not the same thing. One mistake and you are labeled. Not just you, but your whole gender. You won’t even know when you become a part of the gender politics. Because one day, you will start chirping the same tune. No one would take names if I draft badly in my internship. But the blame would be on all future female legal interns because they cannot draft well.  A standard has been set, a really demeaning, crippling standard. This is what people call “the glass ceiling” in such endearing and graceful terms. Its amazing how everything is taken to be a matter of scrutiny right from  speaking skills to one's integrity. One stupid mistake is all it takes.

I always found Cal Hockley’s character more believable and real than that of Jack Dawson in Titanic (not focusing on the fact that Billy Zane is kind of irresistible. Period). Frankly, love stories do not end with a kiss in sunset, nor does the guy let himself freeze to death. In fact, in a practical world, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack Dawson promptly pushes Rose DeWitt into the frozen ocean to save his dear life. Concept of love is made complicated because it is distorted. One could blame the bollywood or the ultra-feminine Disney princesses or the bigoted gentlemen and mystified heroines of Mills and Boon and the likes, and so on and so forth. 

I think I wrote something on the concept of eternal love before too, that how the whole thing is fictionalized, and I was refuting the concept even then. I’m no enemy of love but the truth is that the ultimate, never-ending perfection in love is just a fiction. And the whole concept is believed by majority simply because; they want to believe in it. What a travesty! It’s like make-believe, a deception. And it’s insensitive when a person is judged in every different relationship with the same yardstick. Creative writing and ‘chick flicks’ program the minds to an extent that fiction seeps into reality. Get the spark? That’s why it is so hard for some to get over the warped equation of Marriage = Love = Happy ever after.

I don’t know how others perceive it, but to me believing in concept of eternal love is debasing love. Fanatical love wears off. Sooner or later it does, and then it is replaced by subtle feelings more on the lines of adjustment, adjustment which may or may not be made freely at times. Trust me, that is what ‘practical love’ is about. Probably that part requires courage. Not everyone can do it.

Correction

Home is where your parents are.