Nothing..

Wow.. Its been a while since Ive been here.. And for good reason.
Nothing new to write about..
I mean, we all know that our problems are all petty when viewed from a third persons eye..
we know that we should NOT let a relationship be any indication of us as people and of our personality..
we know that any problem can be solved by talking it out.. As long as you have the power of negotiating..
we know that our beliefs are ruining the planet.. well some of us do anyway..
yet we constantly, whether consciously or not, seek pity from others.
Pity and approval..
Why do YOU care? why DO you care?
what difference does it make if one more person out there has a negative impression of you? are you forever going to try to fit into preset moulds? that is the only surefire way to be accepted..
Why are people who drink, smoke and dope said to be doing a bad/negative/evil thing?
Boohoo you shouldn't eat this and you shouldn't be doing that..
Its like a constant attempt on our part to try and get into this huge fraternity we call 'society'.. only we all pale when compared to the absolute.. the perfect societal man... who exists only in our minds and text books..

most of our basic freedoms have been revoked by we ourselves..

yet instead of attempting to make a change, we go about indulging the very system that has a foot holding us down.

Remember, we're only as free as we realize we are..

Time After Time...

Do you ever wondered what life would be like in slow motion? Do you think we'd have a sudden respect for the nitty gritty aspects of life we often take for granted? Personally, I'd like to know what life felt like slowed down, with a good soundtrack throw in for good measure.. Life imitating art, to use that old clinker..
Days move fast.. way too fast for us to realize the true practical value of them.. Time flies when you're having fun? i don't for a second doubt it..
Days gone back will never return.. many of us spend hours staring into the looking glass at images of our fruitful pasts. we just can't let it go, not even if we wanted to..
Quarter life crisis.. Greatly underestimated.. keep hearing comparisons from elders about how we're losing it.. I mean the term didn't even exist when they were still fooling around..
Having an end plan.. too over hyped.. its a pity that you have to either conform or be shunned.. bend or break they tell me.. its a little late now huh? rebellion has already been hard wired into some of our systems..
Playing the game is easy.. It all depends on how you want your prize.. cash or kind..
Manipulating people is easy too, depending or how heavy you want your emotional baggage to be.. you'll never fly with too much you know..
None of us have the right to say that their life isn't going according to plan, because we're all capable of changing our life.. your job and relationship problems aren't what you should be losing hair over.. Stick around, the big guns are about to be unveiled.
People want to make mountains of molehills.. Correction, they do not 'want' to as much as they 'have' to... exaggeration is part of life..
So spare me the gory details of your past relationships, addictions and other problems, you know that you're only as strong as you want to be..
Emotions cloud all our judgments.. urge people to fly off cliffs and try to take on trains.. yet we'd rather be fooled by them time again instead of getting the upper hand of things..
Our lives would make a pretty interesting soap opera to extraterrestrial secretly monitoring our planet..

C'est la vie... OR is it?

Ever felt you were in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I wake up with the feeling everyday..
Its a weird deja vu involving me living the same day over and over albeit wearing different clothes..
Picture me standing me in a spot, with the days and nights whizzing past me while i go through a series of clothes and hairstyles..
Did you get what I'm talking about?
OF course not..
We have no time to analyze our own life, let alone bother with someone else.
We're all running around in a little exercise wheel, i mean they don't call it a rat race for nothing..
Wake up, work, try to make the most of your evening, sleep, do it all over again..
Wash, rinse, repeat..
some people manage to fit a drink in there somewhere and call it a life..

Is this really why we evolved? to become a slave to ourselves? to live a life of routine and monotony? To earn money to be able to spent it on items and material goods the idiot box says we need?

We work hard, um, hardly work? nope, i think its work hard,
so yea, we work hard, to save up, to go on holiday/vacation, to get away from our work related stress..
Or let me put it this way,
We work hard, to party hard/get drunk/buy the best appliances to divert our mind from the fact that we work hard!!

Some of us do enjoy our job.. You lucky lucky bastards.. Hidden inside every one of the rest of us however is our dream job..
Me? I have a list of dream jobs, none of them practical.. Don't ask, don't tell..

Anyway, since this was originally supposed to have been a rant, I'll cut it short and abruptly end here.

What i play as a musician..

I've always feel suffocated in bands and i attribute a lot of it to my early years in music.. In college, due to an abundance of musicians, no one bothered to form a band. or rather, very rarely did a particular group stay the same till the next show..
Thus having played in various bands all through college, each one of us was exposed to different and diverse genres.. Me? I've played everything from Guns n roses to chuck berry to Satriani to well, Sean Paul, Hendrix, clapton, metallica,

So people will/should understand and excuse me from being difficult to work with..

I've compiled a simple list of musicians and bands that i wish to cover/play the style of..
Anyone with a list that matches mine is welcome to join forces..
OR maybe i'll just form a band a la flight of the conchordes..

The List...

Blink 182
Green Day
Rage Against the Machine
RHCp


Creed
Joe Satriani
Tommy Emmanuel
Andy Timmons
Toquinho


Van Halen
Guns n Roses
Kansas
Journey
Mr. Big / Paul Gilbert
Winger
Queen
The Who
Ac/Dc
U2
Jimi HEndrix
Metallica


Fourplay
Screaming Headless Torsos
Dave Matthews
Kings of Convience
Porcupine Tree
Jamiroquai
Police / Sting
Incubus
Eric Clapton
John Mayer

Do you know who you really are? Are you, you? Or are you someone else?

Who am I? The most under-hyped question of mankind.
We often drift through life subduing our true personalities in order to fit into a mould created by society. We go about our short life accusing each other of pulling on masks when the truth is, we all are the same. No person, however important they may be, behaves the same with everyone. We all are different around different people.
Even the most hardcore, seemingly emotionless person will have a soft corner towards someone.
Who are we really then? How do we recognize our true personality. The lines defining our masks are definitely blurry. We all have a central character, someone we wish other people perceive us as and we try to live up that..
And when DOES the mask wearing begin? when we first open our eyes? when we learn to talk? first mix with people other than family?

My point is simple..
In our ambition to be accepted or even recognized, we all pull on masks to the best of our ability in the process of which, we forget who we really are..
The rest of our life is just changing those masks over a faceless body as the need arises. We lose our true selves as soon as we are introduced to certain objectives and ideals we're supposed to live up to.

How can we change?
We can't.. If any of you remember your mental state at your time of innocence, congrats.. That is however, tougher than it seems. For as far as we can remember, values of prejudice, malice, jealously, hate and selfishness have been instilled into us.. Unwittingly by parents, teachers and even friends.

What now?
Try to have a definitive personality that does not waver? Not possible. You can however try to recognize all the influences in your life and weed out the negative ones. One of the biggest negative influences in India being that of racial prejudice.
If someone asks you to behave a particular way, take five minutes to reason with yourself if that what is being asked of you IS indeed practical. You are not sheep.
Well not all of us are anyway.

To sum things up, I'd like to say, Being yourself isn't as simple as people make it out to be. We often have to do things to appease other people, its perfectly human and natural. Just also learn to make up your own mind about things and not take someones word as the bible truth..

We should definitely learn from the experiences and mistake made by others, but sometimes that process tends to bypass the lesson you were supposed to have learnt from it..
You don't 'know' fire's hot until you've been burnt by it..

Knowing ourselves as consumers.. Do we adhere to herd mentality? Read on..

People are strange.. To a certain level, most of us are by nature, not very confrontational. That is not a bad trait in the least. Except that sometimes a lazy attitude towards certain issues have very serious long term implications.
We all believe in different perceptions of the same absolute truth.. That we perceive it differently only highlights our human weakness. That we refuse to acknowledge another person's perception of what we believe in highlights our human ego.
Issues like pollution and corruption are common knowledge. Well essentially know what the outcome of our wayward polluting ways is going to be. We've all watched that documentary starring Al Gore. Yet, none of us wishes to take a definitive stand.
We know that the burning fossil fuels are the rate we currently are will lead to the earth being submerged one day. Does the fact that we're not moving towards implementing a solution bring to light our inability at a personal level or the fact that we simply believe we're not going to be around to face the ultimate consequences? I've used the term "implementing a solution" only because solutions to fossil fuels pre-exist. Organizations like Big Oil prevent them from ever reaching a wider audience and its easy to see why.
We taught (*READ: brainwashed) through various sources of media right from the time we can speak to use oil instead of seeking pollution free alternatives. Don't believe me?
What practical sense does it make to own a gas guzzler in a crowded city like Mumbai?
Males are taught to associate power with manliness. Hence the apparent popularity of vehicles like the Hummer.. Why haven't concepts like solar and electric powered cars gained popularity? Why has Mumbai seen the release of the NANO before the release of the minicat by TATA? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car) Simply because we as consumers refused to make wiser choices.
For the sake of the world, its time to shift from wanting to be "manly men" with bigger and more powerful polluting machines to being men with bigger and more powerful NON POLLUTING machines.

A day (30 minutes) in the Train.. ..

Traveling by the local train can be a thrilling experience. If you happen to live outside India, namely, Mumbai.. Standing on the platform, surrounded by men of all shapes and sizes give you a certain feeling of brotherhood.. A feeling of belonging.. You suddenly feel like a man of the land and one with the people.. That feeling however is soon dispelled when a train arrived and people starting punching each other to get a head start getting in..
The first train gets by faster than i could say "hey get off my foot you *@$%*&"..
Ahh well.. Some fool once said never wait for a train or women, another one always comes along.. That fool should be shot.. He didn't account for the fact that missing trains causes you to reach work late..
Few more trains get by without me even moving an inch closer to getting in any of them...
Some strange physics comes into play as every train draws closer.. There are always obviously more people than there is space, but as the train stops, suddenly a vacuum appears to form at the door of the train sucking every near it inside.. Everyone except me..
I finally did manage to get it though.. And with the rain related delays, only about 30 minutes after I got onto the platform. Not bad..
Inside was a totally different experience.. Got a full body massage, got introduced to a new scent, don't think you've heard of it yet, its called Wet Dog and also managed to learn a Micheal Jackson step.. You know the one where he tilts himself at a 45degree angle to the ground?

Good stuff..