:'(

This is the first time in years that i am sitting at home on Diwali while everyone else is meeting up for the usual extended family reunion! and i can assure you, i absolutely ABHOR it! Even 12th Boards didn't reduce me to this. : It better be worth all this!

...

how funny is it, when you writing something for a particular situation or a particular someone, thinking what you saying or writing perfectly captures something unique. Something which won't be applicable to anything or anyone else. But then, surprizingly, it is. It fits so perfectly that you get confused in your own mind as to what/who the actual intended subject was. :)

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MISS M AND HER C

Miss M: i have been trying. its not like i haven't. but it just won't do!

C: true that. but then again, how is dilly dallying over it going to help you? just get it done with. who knows, you might just clear them!

Miss M: see, my clearing not clearing is really not the point here. its just that the reasons for doing it are not convincing enough. somewhere down the line the plot has been lost.

C: what is it that you wish for? whatever you wanted... that Audi, that pad, being able to go around the world... all of it is but a while away.

Miss M: its so much easier when things happen to someone else. you are a mere observer and in a position to tell them what they need to do from a very objective, unbiased point of view. but how do you do it with yourself when your brain tells you to simply get down to it and the gut tells you to chuck it and simply give it up?

C: forget about the gut and the brains for a while. tell me will you be able to look back at this sort of failure, this giving up on your part, 10 years down the line? won't it seem like a futile waste of a) time b)labour c) resources ? won't you feel guilty even now, when you have wasted so much of time, money and everything?

Miss M: People notice that i become a recluse during the exams, around exams. they attribute it to my 'drive', my 'commitment', my 'hard work'. how disappointed (or maybe secretly glad?!) will they be when they see how wrong and mistaken they were? how attrociously i have been deceiving them all this while? they think i sit and study at home while they are enjoying themselves, that she is definitely going to excel in whatever she takes up. and THAT, is the scariest part of them all. that idea that i might just not live upto it, that i won't be able to make it is what is so scary. and what is acting like a deterrant. i have almost given up hope of making it. i am hopeless. whatever bits and pieces i am now taking up are merely like a few drops in an ocean. i no longer have that conviction in what i've taken up, which i used to be so proud of. and the lack of which in others i used to look down upon. it seemed so natural then, the only way of being, knowing your way so clearly. all the time. how was i to know then how it feels to be suddenly stranded midway? to lose the plot completely. like you realize you are headed towards antartica when it was the arctic circle you had always aimed to reach.

C: that definitely is a bummer. but ever tried looking at this from this point of view? that maybe it WAS for the better in a way. now that you are so close to antartica, why fear the glaciers and the thin ice? why NOT experience this land too and try and discover its joys before writing it off completely? it might simply add to the experience of the arctic, nay?
don't damn something just because it turns out to be different from what you had ideally imagined it to be. for even if it lacks all the things you were looking for, it might not be that bad. maybe might even contain a few surprizes, and pleasant ones at that?
it is so much easier to leave things mid way. that's what most do, don't they? and most of them end up regretting it too, because when they see others finish their task, they realize that it wasn't as tough as it had seemed initially. one last heavy push, and they could have been through!
when you work for it so hard, give up so many things you like, then why not make that count? why let them all go waste and feel all the worse for it?

Miss M: i know, and this has crossed my mind so many times. it does motivate me to work, no matter how little. but then i see how much others are putting in, and then i panick. i panic because i know i will never be able to be as good as they are, or reach close to where they are right now. they have the conviction that is required, the self belief that is required and the energy, the willpower to carry them forward. whereas presently (and only presently!) i lack not just one of these, but all. that's when simply giving up and going into the oblivion for a while sounds so tempting.

C: look, thinking so much about it, giving it so much energy to it is anyway not helping you, is it? then why even bother wasting time on it?! i know for a fact that when you get down to it, you actually like what you are doing. but then you suddenly realize how huge the task is, and how little you have achieved, or what little you are now even TRYING to do, will not even help you scratch the surface.
but then again, given all that has been written and said about the topic, even if you don't make it, you won't have the additional burden of the 'loser' tag, would you? you would have given it the best shot you could have, under the circumstances. making the cut would simply be an added bonus.
atleast you won't feel like a fool for having given up midway. and this too, when you ABHOR the idea of giving up on things in between.
so chin up, and go for the damned thing!!!

...

Gets difficult to talk and not emote.
How to cover up that which is the one constant of life?
Those words, their impact; those actions, the reactions.
How to forget them, when felt as strongly as one's own.
It's impossible, cannot be denied; but still so hard to overlook it all.
Oh how hard it is to find one who comes even close.
Many come and go; some come close-- but never close enough.
Why is a comparison, a measuring up a sort of compulsion?
WHY is it so difficult to replace you?
Why can't it be simply forgotten-- why can't YOU be?

OF PERFECTION AND ITS IMPERFECTIONS...

I HATE perfection. I hate PEOPLE who embody perfection. Their mere presence is enough to distract you, to make you feel inept. Everything about them is so correct, so concise, so precise that no matter how correct, sure of yourself or correct you are, they make you feel as if you are somehow incorrect or mistaken. That aura or awe that hangs around them is unnerving! As if they are not human. And the way everyone seems to look upto them, look at them as authority on anything and everything (from train timings to the latest update of the American stock markets to the latest Cavelli collection) AND the fact that more often than not they're correct, makes me wanna SCREAM.

(This was just a random piece of insight into my current psyche. And yes, the abstract senseless ending was purely because i had nothing else left to say on the topic.)