Remembering resolutions

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice."

~ T.S. Eliot

Just five more days rumbling away for the old, haggard year to end. This morning I felt that bothering impatience, the sudden sluggish pace of something that inches towards its completion. Like the traveler who travels resolutely for miles and days, but feels depleted of all zeal when just steps away from his destination. By November I could already feel this year was history, but now it seems as if the time has stood still. How awfully slow the minutes crawl and for what! Shouldn't a handful of days pass by in a wink? Strange are such philosophical transactions, often questioned but always unanswered.

The time has come to look back at the colourful mosaic of flashbacks that this year has been, at all the possible permutations and combinations of the laughs and the trials. Then there's the rampant rummaging for resolutions (I heart alliterations, by the way!). I, for the record, have never been faithful to one. If I was, by now I would have - completed a significant part of my research plans, lost oodles of weight, written something staggeringly brilliant, been in touch with my singing side, and even read the Bhagavad Gita! Instead I chose to remain mediocre and reign as the undisputed queen of procrastination forever. I am just not capable of something so spectacularly life-transforming and rule-governed, you see.

But come the new year and I do have plans to work on a list. And hopefully it won't be another of my usual Bridget Jones rigmarole. The mantras that I intend, and quite vehemently this time, to stand by are:

1. Must decide on a suitable author/area for my Ph.D by February

2. Give meaning and matter to a bunch of randomly scribbled pieces

3. Chalk out a proper timetable for the haphazard yoga mornings

4. Boost my fiber intake

5. Be less obsessive-compulsive

6. Curb the monstrous Virgo in me

7. Pick the roses and ignore the thorns

8. Read, read and read

9. Blog regularly

10. Stick to all of the above!

November, faithfully yours

It is a beautiful, very beautiful yet desolate November afternoon. The dramatic melange of the pristine, white snow and the blood red winter-berries makes my heart melt. Despite the absence of the sun. Despite the want of warmth.

There is something contagiously ominous about joblessness. First, you scream bloody murder for every lost opportunity of glory. Second, slowly but steadily self-pity replaces self-respect. Not to forget the all and sundry's opinion of you as the sole person inhabiting planet Earth living an idyllic life, where everyday is a Sunday. Then certain expectations from distant quarters of the globe just crawl their way into your space, that carefully constructed comfort zone of absolute anarchy. Of course, the last nail in the coffin is the obnoxious label - 'jobless'. And the rest of the regrets just follow, one after the other, like a continuous line of resolute ants.

Lately, I have been at my wits end for no particular reason, except for a bunch of unsolicited destinies that have tumbled down my way. Perhaps we all tread this autumnal path, only some must endure it for a longer period. We drift along with the tides unwarily and attach ourselves to a whole new existence, one that must always walk as a shadow behind us. There is a tacit beauty in namelessness, in the terrible truths that certain revelations carry. They ensnare you in a world where one is left with very little of one's own, except for a futile bunch of 'what ifs' and the obvious layer by layer of emotional corrosion.

Words have always comforted me during such moments of utter despair, both the spoken and the written form. They work like an emollient on my fractured hopes. But of late, each time I have tried to give voice to my woes, (and mind you, I choose my people well) the content as well as the context just melt away into a clumsy - "Oh, I'm good. And you?" The moment I try to scribble something sane they disappear, back into the riotous corridors of my mind. I have realised my vulnerability, that arrant disappointment that crushes you when you have a whole kingdom of raging thoughts inside that just refuse to cascade out. And by the time I am done unhinging them, there is an impatient nascent batch waiting to join the pandemonium.

I have been struggling to keep up to the one promise that I had quite nonchalantly made to myself on the day I had created this blog - to at least publish one tolerable post every month. Now, howsoever perfect a procrastinator I might be, this is one thing that I have tried to stick to in spite of my reputation. In spite of the fact that promises are darn fragile.

November, faithfully yours.

Bridget and I

Many a times we get immensely fond of a certain movie without being judgmental of its characters or their situations. We can watch it time and again through the regular mindless channel flipping or by just peeping from the kitchen window. Bridget Jones's Diary is one such movie that has grown on me over the years. Not only I love the humorous plot which cracks me up every time I watch bits and pieces of it, but also the lead actors (Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant) are some of my personal favourites. After being thoroughly charmed by the movies (it has a sequel), I considered digging into the original brains behind them, the books written by Helen Fielding. Upon my reading, I could see a huge part of me in Bridget's disaster girl image and her clumsy, oh-god-why-me mishaps. The books helped me to laugh at myself which is not very ego flattering for a woman. Other than rambling the 'sorrows' of life in a personal diary (read scores!), Bridget and I share many other dilemmas.
1. Procrastination... Err can I not do this post later? Yes, rescheduling things till the point where nothing can be done about them happens to be our tragic flaw. Following a routine religiously is no less scary than anonymous death threats. We plan things well ahead of time, but in a strange, mysterious fashion the minutes just run and it becomes impossible to keep pace with them. People who always reach before time must therefore naturally lead sad and empty lives.
2. Social mishaps seem inevitable. We spill, we stammer and sometimes we even stumble. Innumerable chants of 'inner poise' fail us and eventually we land in a thick soup of public embarrassment. A crowd of unknown faces, more so if they belong to influential people, is often intimidating. Not that we don't know what we are thinking of, but when we utter the same thoughts they turn out to be in an alien tongue, a complete jargon. Be it crowd phobia or stage fright, social dos are surely nightmarish.
3. Weight, that persistent tormentor... Like Bridget, I too suffer from an abnormal obsession of weighty issues, practically starting the day slouched on a weight watcher. We love to crib about that agonising extra flab almost every single moment of the day without actually doing anything about it. Year after year, resolutions keep piling on gathering dust and neglect. We do manage to knock off a few lbs from here and there, but like the universe weight remains a constant in our lives.
4. Friends... Ah, how meaningless the world would be without them. Be it a major costume disaster or heart breaking turns of a wretched love affair, friends are the ultimate support system. Not only they lend you their ears and shoulders when you are down in the dumps, but these adorable angels also work hard solving life's puzzles for you. Whether one is 'Single' or 'Smug Married' (as Bridget categorises the world), whether it is sunny or raining miseries in one's life, friends are absolutely indispensable. Amen!