The Plath Obsession, Again.

She committed suicide at the age of 30. Second attempt successful.

Imagine.

Cigarettes.

I have come to realize, that I cannot let go of cigarettes. They complete me somehow. They calm down my nerves during building pressure, due to work or due to thoughts. A sense of calm and relaxation flows through me the moment the smoke enters my lungs. Even more calm when I see the smoke flowing out of me. It has become a part of me now, perhaps in habit. I don't even remember when it started, but I do remember always being fascinated by cigarettes, from as far back as I can remember, when I would see my father and people around me smoking. I would even suck on one of them cigarette candies from New Market (Calcutta) as a kid just to get the feel of it. And today, frustration creeps in when my lungs don't get the sufficient amount of smoke that they need. Not a want, but a need. I could live without it, but I wouldn't be complete. At first, I thought it was a mental thing. And so I quit. She made me want to quit. And I did it for her. And for a long duration, that. What I was basically doing, on a completely individual plane, was denying the fact that I was an addict. I am an addict. I ran away from it, only to have it call out to me for more and more. It's a lot like love. It's easy only in acceptance. Hence, I accepted it. I accepted the fact that I cannot function without smoking. It is a part of my being. Just like feeling hungry and then satiating it by eating. Every time you smoke, just remember that you are being disloyal to me, She'd told me. The familiar "Tobacco consumption can lead to cancer" advertisement/warning was playing on the screen before us inside the movie hall then, which can make your stomach lurch in fearsome disgust if you think too much about it. But I still couldn't let go entirely, no matter how hard I tried. It was the forced attempt to escape that gave me great desire to return, and even greater satisfaction when I did. And then the feeling of guilt engulfing me afterwards. Followed by the horrible realization that I had got attached to something so material, and how it was so against my immateriality, and how much of a hypocrite that made me. It was too much to take. It started consuming my thoughts sometimes. And then, as mentioned before, I chose acceptance. And I stopped running away from it. And that's when it became easier. Now I knew that I could smoke whenever I wanted to. This reduced my intake to a great extent, so much so that I can go without smoking for days altogether till I feel the need arising again. The guilt vanished, and peace replaced it. And just like it was said in that movie, every time I light a cigarette, I feel that I'm rising up with the smoke, as the world falls beneath me like the ash.

What You Do To Me

“What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now than you've ever been?"

"Of course I am."

"Why?"

"Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”

― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

The Difference Between You And Me.

The difference between you and me is that,

I think that every minute that I don't spend with you,

is a waste of time,

whereas you think,

that every minute that you spend with me

is a waste of time.

The Escape.

Keep running

As fast as your legs can carry you

The feelings will keep chasing

You can't hide yourself

The feelings,

they'll sniff you

hunt you down

and kill you

burn you

destroy you.

So keep running

As fast as you can

With all you've got

and not.

Come out of the pit

you've dug for yourself

Come out of it and run

for your life

Don't turn around

Don't fall back

Not a minute

Not a second

Or you'll get sucked in

Deeper this time.

So just keep running.

Continue to.

Till you're far away

Far enough

That nothing

can bring you back

No more strings

to pull you back

Only then is it safe

To stop

And to look back.

Can't Breathe Easy.

It feels as if someone has pumped all the air out of my lungs.
I feel choked, something blocking my windpipe, some intangible thing.
The air goes in through my nose but just stops in my throat, forming a lump.
Tears running down my eyes, as I gasp for breath, some ground to rest my foot on.
I stop the tears but the lump keeps growing.
A cancerous growth that just refuses to go, blocking all the air from my respiration tract.
It keeps growing with every thought, and the constant reminder that you are not there anymore.
A growing knot in my chest, my lungs begin to ache.
The window and the world seem so far away.
I moan, I gulp, I try to stop the pain.
I grasp everything around me desperately, my nerves alert, trying hard to breathe.

But I just can't,
I can't breathe easy.

The Junior.

22.04.2013

I had just finished studying a chapter for my ADR exam due in the afternoon that day. I had stayed up the whole night. I went out of my room to take a small stroll in the corridors of the hostel. The birds had just begun chirping, daylight not yet fully broke. It was 6 AM. It was then that I saw her. Her door was wide open. Her lights still switched on. And there she was, lying on her bed, fast asleep, her blanket covering her up to her neck, her face pointed downwards, and her body held close in a crouch. It was obvious that she had fallen asleep while studying. In all likelihood, I wondered, she had not finished studying the entire syllabus and had perhaps intended to rest her eyes for only five minutes. It reminded me of the time when I was in the exact same place, three years ago, reading the very constitutional provisions and case laws, curling up in my blanket, cursing myself for not having studied earlier. And I stared at her, unable to tear away my amused gaze, as I saw, much wiser today, only a few feet from me, a reflection of my past.

Earth Day And All That.

Bummer.

Excerpt from one of my favourite books.

"People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice. and it is like if everyone in the world is tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn't be because there would be millions of people who didn't get 5.698 heads.

And there is life on earth because of an accident. But it is a very special kind of accident. And for this accident to happen in this special way, there have to be 3 Conditions. And these are

1. Things have to make copies of themselves (this is called Replication)

2. They have to make small mistakes when they do this (this is called Mutation)

3. These mistakes have to be the same in their copies (this is called Heritability)

And these conditions are very rare, but they are possible, and they cause life. And it just happens. But it doesn't have to end up with rhinoceroses and human beings and whales. It could end up with anything.

And, for example, some people say how can an eye happen by accident? Because an eye has to evolve from something else very like an eye and it doesn't just happen because of a genetic mistake, and what is the use of half an eye? But half an eye is very useful because half an eye means that an animal can see half of an animal that wants to eat it and get out of the way, and it will eat the animal that only has a third of an eye or 49% of an eye instead because it hasn't got out of the way quick enough, and the animal that is eaten won't have babies because it is dead.

And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal."

Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time