Destination Himachal Pradesh: Day 1

(Hyderabad to Delhi)

Day 1
I caught the HYB-FZR special train at Nampally Railway station today. Its scheduled departure time was 10:15 A.M but I'm pretty sure the train didn't budge before 10:40. So the trip starts off with a delay; perfect. My co-passengers are decent people. I have two families in the same compartment with me; four parents and two children. The children are cacophonous and have the energy levels of a ferret on speed. What I wouldn't give for intelligent (and attractive) female company... The first couple of hours of the train journey were alright. The temperature was decent enough and the families decided to spend the time napping. I thought I'd just sit by the window but since it was an overwhelming majority against me, I had no choice but to put up the berth and lie down with my IPod on and rolling through my playlists. I was drifting in and out of sleep thanks to the ADHD kid constantly trying to scale and descend all the berths a thousand times over. I finally woke up to a guy prodding me firmly and shoving biryani in my face. I was too sleepy to decline and since I was hungry anyways, I bought some and polished it all off within a manner of minutes. After I finished my pathetic lunch I realized just how incredibly hot the compartment was. In a matter of hours it had become a veritable hot gas chamber. The antediluvian fans stuck on the ceiling groaned and churned out even hotter air as if to spite us further. I tried to sleep again but trying to sleep when you have the sensation of your skin sizzling is not easy to do. I resigned myself to my fate and decided to read a little bit on the laptop. The ADHD simian child donned his destructive avatar once more and almost stepped on my laptop in his compulsive attempt to scale all the berths in a counter clockwise motion. A silent scream died inside of me and I begged his father to let me escape to the top berth. The man was more than happy to let me do so and I'm here in my refuge typing now to try and escape the heat and distract myself. I think I’ll go smoke a cigar or chew pudi cause this is getting to be a little tiresome.

Day 2

After suffering through the oppressive heat and the unceasing din of the raucous children, I finally experienced some form of respite when night came about. Having spent the entire day with the IPod plugged firmly into my ears and laying down on the top berth drifting in and out of sleep, I was extremely joyous to feel the cold wind rushing in through the windows. I wasted no time and took the pudi to the doorway of the train. I caught hold of the yellow railings and leaned outside and experienced bliss. I opened one pudi slowly and purposefully and chewed away. I felt the dim ecstatic high wash over me. I spent more than an hour feeling the rush of the wind on my face and all the noise of the train seemed like music in that time. Nagpur was soon approaching, however, so I brought myself back to the present and prepared myself to make a mad dash out onto the station to buy myself some edible food. As soon as the station arrived, I dashed outside and bought kachori and poori sabzi. The meal cost Rs. 40; the joy was priceless. All this while, my phone was steadily losing juice and I glanced over to the ‘charging area’ only to discover a herd of people trying frantically to get to the point. I decided against my chances of making it through there and put some Pink Floyd on and lay down with the idea of going back at a later time. The next thing I remember is waking up at 7:30 A.M, very surprised. Back home, my sleep cycle was utterly abnormal and I had not managed to fall asleep before 2:30 A.M for about 4 months now. And here I was, on the train, fully rested after a good night’s sleep. I was extremely happy about the state of affairs and decided to have some breakfast. The only breakfast I could find was watery milk tea and a bread omlette; I threw away the bread. I found out from my co-passengers that the train was running behind by approximately 2 and half hours. This dampened my spirits further and I chose to retreat to my top berth palace yet again. I woke up sometime later and went to try getting my phone charged up again and struck up a conversation with a guy who told me emphatically and in no uncertain terms that my phone was utter trash. I thanked him for his expert assessment and then got the hell out of there lest he got more personal about his judgments. We arrived in Jhansi and one of the brats disembarked with her family and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was however a little touching and sad to see the other kid’s sorrow at her departure. Once the train started moving though, the kid decided to channel his sorrow into destruction and set into motion Plan Hell spawn whose sole motive was to bother every single passenger in the compartment one way or the other. He flung bottles, threatened people with straws, and went so far as to spit at a bovine looking woman. In the background of this carnage, I hurriedly enquired of his father where they were planning to get off and thanked my stars that Gwalior was only 15 minutes away. And then Gwalior came and the child left leaving behind silent, sullen and tired passengers. At Gwalior I was informed that the train was actually running 3 and half hours late and that I wouldn’t reach Delhi until at least 6 P.M. I bought a couple of sandwiches and a packet of chips and this was my glorious lunch. After that I settled down to write. I’ll sign off now and finish my report after I reach Delhi.

The third and final phase of my journey was pretty uneventful. After Gwalior the passenger strength dried up and consisted mainly of fatigued veterans who just wanted to see the end of the long and arduous battle. I spent my time standing in the doorway, lying down, talking to old people, avoiding kids, and eating trash. I finally reached Delhi Safdarjung station at 7:20, exhausted, and glad to see the end of the 34 hour train journey. I wanted to take a metro to Mayur Vihar, where I’d be spending the night at a friend’s place, but instead opted for the comfort of an auto. I walked all the way onto the road and waited 15 minutes for auto and then realized that Mayur Vihar was the other way. I trudged across the road and got into an auto to go to Mayur Vihar. 5 minutes into the ride I realized that my phone was missing. I spent the next 5 minutes experiencing a minor cardiac arrest and then frantically screamed at the auto driver to turn back. He acquiesced and stopped on the opposite side of the road from where he had picked me up. I searched there first and realized that I might have dropped it on the other side where had picked me up initially. So I told him to take a U-turn and take me there. He told me to cross the road and begin searching while he’d go and take the U-turn and come back. In my thoughtless frenzy, I ran across the road and began combing the pavement for any sign of my lost phone. I didn’t find it despite my efforts and my heart sank. After 5 minutes I realized that the auto driver also wasn’t showing up and then it occurred to me that he might have stolen my luggage and left. The entire world’s weight suddenly descended onto me and I was left reeling. Then, like an angel of the Lord, the auto driver showed up and I was thankful at that moment for at least having my luggage intact. Depressed, I began to get into the auto and found the phone on the seat. I was sitting on it the entire time. Feeling like an utter fool, I apologized to the auto driver and asked him to go on. He thoroughly empathized with the situation and offered me some water and asked me to calm down. After reaching Mayur Vihar, I paid him a little extra and thanked him. Then I went to my friend’s home, had a long hot shower and a grand meal and decided to call it a night. The consequence of the train’s delay was that I couldn’t make it to Kashmere gate to book my ticket to Reckong-Peo and I had to postpone my trip to the evening of the 6th. It’s a small compromise on my schedule and it’ll allow me to plan a little better and meet a few more people here before I leave. It worked out well in the end  Lessons learnt from this train journey:

1)NEVER EVER TAKE THE HYB-FZR SPECIAL TRAIN!

2)When traveling in a sleeper compartment, carry a three-pin extension plug point with you. This will help greatly because there’s only two plug points available and if you carry a three-pin point, that’ll increase to four greatly endearing you to other people and putting you ahead of others for cell phone charging rights.

3)Pack some food and water. The availability of both is not guaranteed when you require it and also the quality of both is a little suspect

4)Bring an IPod or a book or a laptop or all three. There are high chances you won’t find anyone to talk to and in that scenario, one of these three will be your saving grace

5)Take the top berth when traveling alone; always.
That’s it for the first leg of my journey. I’ll write more when I get on the bus to Reckong-Peo. Cheers!

Trip update

Today I completed phase 1 of my preparation for the trip. For a while now I've been going through countless articles and write-ups to try and get a sense of what I'm in for and what I'll need while i'm on this journey. I don't know how helpful those articles have been but the singular feeling running through me as I read them is that of exhilaration. Maybe that's a testament to just how disdainfully I viewed my life all this time. I can't believe how much I've built up the concept of this trip in my mind and how much I expect of it. I don't exactly know what I think I'm in store for. Maybe I think I'll have an epiphany of sorts, or some spiritual awakening, or the resurrection of a long dead zest for life. I don't know. I truly hope that I can keep myself grounded and simply enjoy the trip for what it is and not put it up on a pedestal in anticipation of it falling down to perdition. It was also extremely amusing to see the reactions I got from different people when they learnt of all of this. I got a little bit of everything from envy to apathy to open contempt. It can be quite a revelatory experience in terms of understanding where you stand in the eyes of the people around you. Nobody really seemed to get why I was doing this, why I'd shy away from the apparently 'luxurious' lifestyle that I have, to go and rough it out in the mountains, even if it was for only a period of 3 weeks. It felt really difficult to try and explain to them or maybe I'm just terrible at expressing myself. Nobody can see past the surface and into the disarray and confusion that you probably really are. And it's confusing for people around you to see you engage in such eccentricities when you seemingly have it all going for you. I just think that everybody's broken underneath in one way or the other and they need to find a place to heal. I'm hoping this is my place. As simple as that. Onto more exciting things now :D

I bought a new laptop today; an HP Pavilion DM1. It suits my needs, it's a 11.6" laptop making it extremely light and portable. I don't know what it is about me, but I simply cannot seem to write on paper. I need a keyboard and a screen staring me in the eye before I can write something. It's extremely inconvenient at times, but I have to live with who I am, so I went out and splurged on this laptop. I'm going to take it along on this trip to document all the experiences and relevant information. I always try and make it a point to write about any trip that I take. Not only does it impart valuable information to those that care for it, but also I think it offers the opportunity to the reader to vicariously live through the trip and experience a semblance of the beauty of the whole experience. I have read hundreds of travel blogs and articles and experienced all the colors of emotion contained within. I can only hope that what I write will help others feel the same, even in the most infinitesimal of manners. So with the help of my trusted HP, i'll be posting updates and pictures as I go along. I also bought trekking boots at woodlands. They look sturdy and weigh a ton and the guy at the store assured me that I wouldn't 'slip and fall down', a tall claim considering who's going to be wearing them :) I just need to get a few more logistics into place and procure a few more items. My friends have been extremely considerate and gracious in helping me with all of this. Every blanket, swiss-knife, sweater, set of camera batteries, and plenty of other stuff helps. I can't help but feel like the golden child of the village being sent away to a better place with blessings and goodwill. This trip hasn't started and already it feels right. The beautiful snow-clad mountainous landscapes await me and I can't wait to be among them.

Destination Himachal Pradesh

So the moment of truth is coming up faster than I thought it would and I decided that I had a very limited timeframe within which to work in an escape of sorts. Therefore I decided that I would leave on my little odyssey in May rather than June and started charting out a plan. Regardless of how attractive carefree vagabonding sounds, a little attention to detail and logistics goes a long long way in making your trip memorable and free of stress. People, who are for all intents and purposes sane and rational, suddenly seem to become neurotic when it comes to planning a trip or a vacation. You have to work out a rough draft of what you want the trip to turn out to be but if you're obsessed with the specifics you'll miss out on the wonderful detours that you can take and the little segues that life throws at you. Traveling alone helps hugely in such a situation. I digress, however. I plan to take a trip through Himachal Pradesh right into the heart of Spiti Valley. My rough sketch of the trip runs like this:

Hyderabad to Delhi - Train
Delhi to Reckong-Peo - All bus travel hereonafter (unless I'm fortunate enough to share a taxi with decent people)
Reckong-Peo to Sangla to Rakcham to Chitkul
Chitkul to Kalpa
Kalpa to Reckong-Peo to Nako
Nako to Tabo
Tabo to Kaza
And then the incredibly long trip back to Hyderabad.

This is obviously a very tentative plan and I plan to adjust accordingly to situations thrown at me. The only constant through this haphazard sounding trip is that I'm going to try and travel as cheaply as I can covering as much ground as possible. I might omit a place or two but it would be nice if I didn't have to. Just the planning part is getting me very excited and I'm looking forward to be back on the road and in Himachal Pradesh. I haven't been fortunate enough to meet interesting people on my trips before and hopefully that changes this time around :) I'll be taking plenty of pictures and will be writing about my travels every single day. At the end of the day I plan to put together a nice little journal from the trip that can help/encourage other people to take a trip out there. I'm torn between wanting people to discover the beauty of inner Himachal Pradesh and keeping it a secret :) Lahaul and Spiti are supposed to be two of the most pristine places in Himachal Pradesh and I can barely wait to visit them. I'll try to cover the usual touristy stuff but also try and document the culture and life. A friend offered to lend me his Eneloop batteries and charger so that I don't have to worry about taking photos :) It just goes to show how much your trip is influenced by the many small generosities and courtesies by people. I don't know if anyone is going to be the least bit interested in all of this, but let's see :)

Untitled short.

Adam sat on the edge of the rock looking down into the still water of the clear blue stream. His reflection stared back at him haggard, tired, and it seemed to him, slightly judging.

‘It’s not my fault’, he said aloud.

He tried to tell himself as he had for many years now that he wasn’t at fault. He tried to think back to the beginning of the conflict and the erosion that inevitably followed. Time wore memories down and erased just enough to leave black residues of dark emotions behind. The times of happiness seemed vapidly surreal now. He knew that they weren’t always like this. The first years with Eve had been the happiest of his life. After wandering immeasurable distances he had found her in the most beautiful of gardens. She was singing in honeyed tones amongst the trees. When she turned to look at him she seemed to be resplendent, set against the evening sky. Her hair was golden and her beauty was absolute. He felt love for the first time and his feelings were reciprocated in equal measure. The years that followed were magical. With no encumbrances, responsibilities or objectives and with existence stretching out into the infinite, they loved purely and deeply. They decided to leave the garden and wander together.

They travelled a great number of lands together and all was seemingly good. Little did they know that dark days were looming ahead of them. Adam could not remember how it started anymore, but he remembered that conflicts raged between them that threatened to overshadow the storms in the skies. Any amount of happiness was fleeting and infinitesimal. Slowly the conflicts worsened and gave way to silence. Hours turned into years with the silence never subsiding. They wandered together never saying a word, all love forgotten. Time passed indefinitely and they continued wandering; two shells, withering away.

Adam crawled out of his memories and the world came back into focus. He threw a stone into the water and watched his face distort into ripples spreading across the surface. He couldn’t take it anymore. The pain was overwhelming but the silence was unbearable. He watched his face form again on the water, an expression of misery and anguish etched sharply on it. It slowly morphed into a mask of desperate determination as he decided that he would end all of this. The relief that followed was venom through his veins flooding his brain and conjuring visions of what he needed to do and how it would end. Like a man possessed, he relived the thought a hundred times over and felt his heart exploding in delight. He could wait no more. It had to be that very night.

Eve wasn’t back until very late that night. He had a large fire going and the stars were shimmering in the vast clear sky. There was a gentle cool breeze flowing through the night that seemed to calm the very earth around them. Eve walked expressionless into the clearing. The atmosphere had no effect on her and she sat down on the ground staring blankly and forcefully into the fire. Adam watched the fire cast dancing light on her face and breathed deeply to settle himself. He clutched the heavy blunt rock tightly in his hand and moved closer to where she sat; his heart pounding. He hesitated for only a second before he threw her back roughly on the ground and started bludgeoning her. He could feel the bones and teeth shatter, the flesh ripping, and continued feverishly in a maddening frenzy. Dark crimson stained the palette of the ground in an engulfing cloud. Gasping for breath, and tears running down his face he mused about how this was proving to be quite a cathartic experience.

When he finished, he stepped back and gazed at the scene. Her face had been ground into a bloody pulp and almost hammered into the ground. Her shattered face rested in a massive pool of blood that looked like a formless halo. He stood there, uncertain and confused, with the rock dripping blood slowly into the dust. His breathing gradually returned to normal and he waited, having done what he needed to.

Slowly and barely visible by the dying fire, the blood seeped back into the body and the face began to take form again. The bones fused together, the lacerations healed and where there was a mass of bloody flesh, a beautiful face appeared again. Eve stood up slowly and gazed at Adam tenderly out of her tearful big eyes.

Shyly she said, ‘You haven’t done that to me in thousands of years...I missed you so much. I love you.’

Adam said, ‘I know, I’m sorry I didn’t do this all these years. I love you too. I just lost my way I think and I didn’t have the courage to fix it. Please tell me we’re okay now. I want us to be happy together once again.’

A gentle smile spread across her face and she nodded. Adam walked across the embers and placed the rock in her hand and said playfully, ‘My turn.’

She giggled.

The weirdness that I am....

Life is about twists and turns, ups and downs, the good and the bad, and the downright ugly; right? Most of us would like to live out their lives to a point where they can look back and not regret their journey. We, as a species, seem to be endowed with the capability to withstand insurmountable odds and attempt triumph. We have the cognitive capacity to understand abstractions like responsibility, accountability, morality, religiosity and other words with -ity at the end. And certainly, evolution played it's part in deeply instilling the survival instinct into all of us. Everything seems to tie into each other and play it's part in having us attempt to live as comfortably as possible through our path from birth to death. Not everybody likes everything they do during this journey but they seem to have the ability to adopt a fatalistic approach and shrug it off as something that was needed to be done. I swear, the holy God as my witness, I envy you all.

In one of my earlier blogs, I remarked that I might be an oddity stuck in an alternate reality. A good friend corrected me saying that I was an oddity stuck in this reality. And I am. My difference in a sense of self and a basic understanding of all of this started to develop by the time I was in the 6th grade or the 7th grade. I was not the brightest kid around and I knew that I wouldn't excel in academics a great deal. The reason was not that I wasn't the brightest. We all know human beings who, by nature of tremendous perseverance, have achieved great things. I knew I wouldn't excel in academics, or anything for that matter, because I simply did not care. That seems a vague statement and could have the reader's mind catch one of several trains of thought. And it is my intention to impress upon you to interpret it in the broadest possible manner. When I say I did not care, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't have wanted to get good grades or do well in something or that I wouldn't have derived any sense of accomplishment from doing above said things. I mean that whatever i perceived as meaningless, success or failure in the same also became meaningless to me. Small academic successes occurred sparsely and while these brought a little ray of joy into my life, I never managed to sustain them through and through because I always ended up asking the question, "What's the point?".

It might seem a foolish question and one that is borne of immature impertinence. It might also be one of those questions that doesn't really have a fixed answer and the answer is different for all of us. But everyone will unanimously agree that there is a point to everything we do in life. I am yet to find the point or the meaning. Even at a very young age, the thought of enduring drudgery simply to survive till death felt like a foolish notion. Somehow, the omnipresent idea that life was a gift and meant to be preserved at any cost seemed incorrect and devoid of proper reasoning. At that age I couldn't really explain my feelings or even understand why I felt that way. I was detached from my childhood in a major way because of this. Maybe it was because of all the psychiatric drugs I was put on to restore me back to 'normality' or maybe it was because of who I was and the way I perceived existence that I cannot remember more than the most meagre details about my childhood and school. When I try to think about it, it just feels like wading through a dull suffocating haze. Whenever I attempt to recall something specific about my childhood it leaves me with a feeling of utter discomfort. I don't know what exactly happened. To my knowledge I did not suffer any kind of major trauma. The only explanation that I can offer that makes any kind of sense is that I disconnected myself from the world. And why? Because I found it all meaningless. I've been obsessed with thoughts of death since very early in life. I even attempted it once. The thought of Death as a first resort has always been fairly common to me. And when the survival instinct in me kicks in and argues furiously against the idea, my mind always comes back with that damn question, "What is the point?".

To this day I have no answer and I honestly feel it no less than a small miracle that I'm still around to say all of this. This search for an idealistic concept of meaning has led me to destroy almost every single opportunity in my life to progress or do any good, to myself or the others around me. It's like a singular thread of failure running throughout as a result of 'giving up'. I have taken up (and given up on) nearly anything that I could try. I have a great initial fire to do something and days, weeks, or rarely, months into it, I start questioning the point of it and the lack of meaning and then ultimately quit without a thought about the consequences and the long term implications. I barely passed my 10th and the 12th. I abandoned two attempts at trying to earn a degree. I blame circumstances for my first failed attempt but maybe it's just denial at work. Maybe I lost faith in my endeavor and I set into motion a chain of events that ultimately led me to give it up too. I don't know what my problem is. I'd like to think that i'm still searching for an outlet that will let me focus my energy and when I find it, everything will be okay. It's very scary to think of the alternative (and possibly probable) point of view that it is in my nature to lose interest and then quit. If that is the case, I don't know what it makes me. A failure? A loser? A victim of his own mind? Does it really matter? I've been fortunate enough in life until now to always have someone waiting to catch me when I fall. That's not going to continue a whole hell of a lot longer. What will happen when I'm at the end of the road with nothing to my name? I don't know. The fear or anxiety I feel at that thought is never enough to make me reconsider my decision when giving up something. My mind is a scene of conflict and no side seems to be fighting with my best interests at heart. And the brunt of the collateral damage is inflicted upon the people that care for me, my friends and my family. The damage is both tangible and intangible. The people who care for me are the ones that are most vexed with me. It seems nothing short of an impossibility to try and make do something that will end up doing good for me. Injecting positivity into me is as good as trying to stick a needle into a rock and injecting water into it. Everybody tries to help and after sometime everybody throws up their hands and walks away.

I understand how tiring it might be to have someone like me as a friend or a family member. The whole idea of community is to try and help each other through life to achieve something good for yourself and each other. And when one of your ranks has fallen down and refuses to get up despite possessing the physical facilities to do so, it is confusing and frustrating. After a while though, people just give up and express thinly disguised apathy or disdain. Maybe i'll end up in life without a single clue, destitute. And maybe the thought of such a thing happening might be tremendously difficult for you to comprehend. I would just like people to understand that it is not a preferred alternative for me and if I could, i would take any and all steps to avoid it. I just want people to understand that the state of destituteness is much more preferable to me than doing something I hate simply to go through the biological mechanisms and live out my life till death. If I get to do something that I like and it helps me prosper, it would mean that someone somewhere is looking out for me. If it doesn't happen, it just means that He's too busy. I'll just be one more example of natural selection. I do not mean to sound callous or indifferent. I just wanted to express my process of thought. If you think i'm bull shitting and i'm simply lazy, cowardly, or any other colorful word you can think of, that's your call. I'm sure you'd understand that it's a good bet that someone who doesn't give a damn about life or death wouldn't fret a lot about what people think of him. I just wanted to write out some of my thoughts, there is no underlying purpose or message here. Say anything you want, just try and see things through my eyes, that's all. I hope all of you have wonderful lives.

Whispers through the darkness....

I was watching Shutter Island today and it completely screwed my head over. I was later looking through some old folders and found these notes. It's funny how a bunch of words on paper can cause you to relive memories in terrifyingly vivid detail. I was in two minds about whether to post these or not, but then denial of what you were in the past only leads to something bad. Acceptance of your past is a step towards affirmation and validation of your present. These were written a long time ago and may reflect in them all the immaturity i possessed back then. You can ask questions if you want, i may not answer them. You can question the logic or the absurdities, i may not reply. If it feels like adolescent angst, it probably is. Whatever you take from it is yours alone. I don't want people telling me that life is beautiful and any of that New Age philosophy crap. Keep it to yourself. Just read them and tell me what you think of them, if you want to.

Note 1
Those of us on that stand on the edge of the cliff called sanity always have the ocean of insanity staring us in the face. The stench hangs heavy in the air and we wobble dangerously, always pulling ourselves back just in time. Ceaselessly however, the waves of the mighty sea crash down constantly on the seemingly invulnerable structure and the cliff erodes slowly unbeknownst to us. As time passes the ground that always seemed solid beneath you seems suddenly shaky and before long you sink into the sea clinging tightly to all your convictions. You drown to the bottom; your face a picture of screwed up pain and adamancy. Eventually you're consumed and are neither distinct nor visible to those that care to look in. You are no more you. Some of us wake up in the middle of this perilous demise and try to claw their way back to land, only to be pushed firmly back in again. The weight of the ocean crushes you down while you lie there helpless. Memories flow out through your tears. Your mind poisons itself to try and stay alive and is corroded into nothingness. Soon, the shell withers away and no trace remains. Glimpses, musings, and flashes of memory are the only evidence that you ever existed and the fire of sympathy and pity burns them clean as well. A soul is lost where nobody was ever sure if one existed. Nothing changes though. Does the universe flinch if a microcosm within itself disappears? It cannot.

Note 2
Do you know what it means to question your sanity? One of the fundamental foundations of a person's existence and affirmation of the same is the ability to have complete faith in your rationality and goodness of state of mind. Do you know how it feels when that wall is shattered to pieces? We have an operating perception and definition of the world that we live in and the reality that we derive from it. When the acidic doubt seeps through it feels like ice running through your veins. The pain that you experience when you start questioning your own actions is indescribable. The conflict that arises out of a disconnect within yourself is powerful enough to rip you apart. Physical pain is excruciating and causes a visceral physical reaction. Extreme mental pain numbs you and washes away all your feeling. You gasp for a second and then sensation fades around you.
Disbelief takes hold of you and slowly gives way to helpless acceptance. You become the constant in a storm of blur. Hopelessness embraces you and leads you gently away. All sense of purpose and meaning vanishes and the very concept of either exists no more. Oblivion incites a sweetness in you and entices you towards it. Nothing is real. Nothing matters. Nobody cares and it means nothing to you even if they did. Life becomes a bitter smile on a face that has nothing to look forward to. And in your head a silent scream echoes continuously begging for help. Nobody listens of course. You dance in the quicksand. Life lives you, the end comes and then you're no more. Maybe you're free. I hope you are.

Note 3
My pretty delusional world is so pretty. It's breathtaking and I feel wonderful in it. Nobody hurts me. Everybody is nice to me. I am loved. I am respected. I am listened to. Isn't my world so nice? My pretty delusional world listens to me and moulds itself accordingly. My world tells me to stay with it all the time. I am not crazy. Maybe I am. But i'm not. Nothing makes sense anymore. I can't bear isolation and i have to live in it. Freedom is everything to me and i have to live like a slave. I am denied my sense of sanity and pushed to have it affirmed by someone who professes to understand me. What kind of an existence is this? Am I selfish to want to escape? Isn't it cruel to expect someone to bear this torture silently? Why is it that the people who "love" me think that my salvation lies in suffering? Why do i have to conform? Why is normality always the benchmark that i am measured against? And why do i never meet this supposedly attainable expectation? Sadness is forbidden and passive rebellion needs to be murdered. I wish i could opt out of life. Is is too much to ask for happiness or try to take some time to find it? Life doesn't stop for you though. I guess i wasn't made for this world. What is the point of writing all of this? It doesn't help. Nothing ever does. The pills are mild ineffective sedatives, the therapy is a joke, and the support is non-existent. A feeling of betrayal is prevalent throughout and is eating me alive. What can you do when the people you trust don't trust you anymore? I don't know. Tough questions with no answers. A waste of a gift. An unavoidable liability. Something that went wrong. Colorful phrases that sum up my life. What a joke. Whatever.

Death wish.....

The general sense of understanding that I get when I speak to people about life is that it's 'precious', 'beautiful', 'a gift', 'divine', and all that positive crap. Everyone of these people would also be the first to admit that there's a healthy abundance of misery, pain, hopelessness, and abject sorrow in this world. But conveniently the first category of description reigns supreme and is apparently the one that's relevant. Whenever I speak to people about my disorder (I have Bipolar Type II) and the days I really used to struggle with it, they always look me up and down with that wretchedly disgusting expression of self-pity, fake understanding and express how 'lucky' I am to have survived it. Oh really? That's an interesting word right there; lucky.

In this particular context that word indicates an abstraction which is a juxtaposition of one component of randomness, coincidence, and serendipity and another component suggesting that the set of circumstances that led me to that particular horrible point of time of the conversation were somehow salvantional in nature. The simple fact that life somehow superceded death in one's existence seems justification enough to rejoice and proclaim it as the better alternative. What is this delusion about life that our society seems to possess? I'd like to think that at a certain time in History there were a set of individuals that looked at life and death as natural occurrences and took both in objective stride. When did we change? When did we become a set of simpering wimpy individuals that look at death as mysterious, sad, and even sometimes evil phenomenon? Why is there so much stigma surrounding any decision that shows even the slightest inclination towards the intentional bringing about of death in one's existence? Why do we percieve and try to act out an obligation from whoever-the-hell to struggle against overwhelming odds simply to survive and live?

I'm not saying that that we should all jump ship at the first sign of trouble but as a thinking and (hopefully) rational individual I simply am astounded by why an educated and thoughtful decision to die is almost never considered to be legitimate and perspicacious. Why is a decision to live considered compos mentis and propitous by default whereas a decision to die is almost always associated with pusillanimity and temporary temerity? The first aspect of the latter is something that has always highly vexed me. Why the hell do people associate wanting to die, with cowardice? Does it make any sort of sense whatsoever? I do not believe so. They say that the people who take steps to end their lives do so unable to cope with their lives and this is somehow suggestive of cowardice. I cannot think of anything more foolish. I'd like to flip this on it's head and say that people who try to claw and scratch their way out of even the most desperate situations using any and all means possible are the cowards because they're afraid of death and the unknown.

Read that sentence again. Do you see how odd it sounds? Do you realize how at odds it is with everything we've known and have been taught in our lives? To persevere against supposed impossibility and to triumph is the bedrock of human nature, right? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I know that what i said isn't true. So when we're so sure that the decision to try and survive is so rational and self-affirming, shouldn't we dignify the decision to die just the same? The laws and regulations in most countries regarding self-inflicted death seem archaic when we really start to open our minds and pursue this line of thought. Not only is it frowned upon in India but it is also illegal to attempt to commit suicide. You can actually be arrested and charged if you're caught and you survive. Have you heard of anything more ridiculous? Is that empowering? How is that affirming your liberty as a rational and thinking individual? Isn't that moral, ethical, and ideological policing at work? They say that the law exists to protect the interests of the society keeping in mind it's constant progression. How beneficial is it to society to try and prevent individuals who want to die from doing so and trying to rehabilitate them?

I think the underlying problem can be found in the way that we've tainted death. We've collectively made Death seem like this impending hell that is intrinsically somehow evil if pursued before one's natural time. Look at the number of positively senile, incapacitated and utterly decrepit individuals that we put on respirators and other life support machines in a futile attempt to prolong their life by a few days or weeks. Why is it so hard to come to terms with death for us? I don't understand. Maybe i'm simply an oddity stuck in an alternate reality but I have never had a problem accepting death. It is absolutely natural for me and maybe that is the reason why it seems logical to me to want to choose death in lieu of life.

There's no end to this argument and i can speak for hours about this but i guess what i'm trying to say is that, in a situation where the individual is mentally and physically healthy, an educated and thought out decision to die should be respected and allowed without too much much objection. And also, life is not always the automatically better alternative. Sometimes, for some people, life is that intolerable that a change, any change, even death, seems a better alternative and it is our responsibility as thinking beings to support such a decision and facilitate it, if possible. I don't know, just a thought. Don't hate me for having an opinion and i won't hate you for expressing yours.