Life is like a slinky on an escalator

I think I finally broke it down to a point where it makes most sense to me. Love is really made up of three components - affection, trust and respect. When any one of these slips out of your hands, the whole thing falls apart. The funny part is it can happen at any point of time. It never goes back to being the same again, unless of course, people change, which rarely happens.

Message in a bottle

11/22/12, 8:43 AM

I want that love where the rapport you share leads to fewer moments of mental self-flagellation.

Let me explain, I believe I am decently good at articulating feelings or random thoughts. Imagine I am trying to conjure up the image of a beach and I am gathering all the small things that remind of a beach - the bright sun early in the morning - rising as it shimmers on the vast ocean, the full moon light that glitters on the roaring waves and still inspires a sense of quiet peace and uncontrollable passion simultaneously, and the shade of the coconut trees while you curl up with a book - in a whatchamight call it - netted thingamajig that you tie between trees (yeah, my mind just generated vast amounts of flatulence as I tried to recolled the simple word 'hammock'). You see how I totally ruined the image of a beach? This is when I resort to mental self-flagellation.

So, as I was saying, I want love which allows me to speak in pronouns sometimes and still make total sense ("can you please get that thing thats there") without as much as pointing fingers or providing gestures - the way my parents speak after twenty five years of cohabitation.

I want that love where the religious familiarity with each others bodies leads to remembering the most unwanted details. You end up with this mysterious power to feel them, like a phantom limb. Yes, creepy. A mole on the shoulder, the patter of hair on his chest, the cadence of varying toe sizes on his feet, the curve of his calf muscles, the crookedness of his fingers, absence of a widow's peak, attached and squared earlobes. 

I want that love which brings endless fascinating fresh ideas and arguments into your life, every day. You function as two very distinct individuals, and you dont grow together, you shouldnt. You should in fact guard your interests like its your most precious offering. Can the magic of new love last a life time? Can two people cohabitating be fountainheads of opposing, or at the very least, distinct and yet completely rational ideas? 

The love that started with an immersion into existentialism. Aah the charm a morose, rational individual over-dosed on Nietzsche and likes of Dostoevsky can have on you. For someone who is in the constant struggle to find the 'meaning of life and living', existentialism is very convenient and mildly frustrating at the start. It's simple teaching being, there is no point to life. Everything is meaningless. Anyone who dabbles in this reverts to the 'pursuit of happiness', because that is about the only journey that seems worth embarking. Then Buddha strongly beckons. I can see it as a very natural transition for a person who wasnt pushed over the edge.

My only fear with this kind of love, is in Camus' words "She mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me, but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason". This 'she' is deeply in love with the 'he'.

Luckily, I have (had) all of these loves in life. (Besides all the tlc from family by virtue of being related.)

...and that is what I am thankful for. 

Holiday season is here! The world really ought not to end.

The art of seeing through it all

My one month in the crux of India's poorest district definitely taught me to see through random 'optimistic' news, with a lot more confidence. This is very surely a skill I wouldn't have acquired in any other way.

For instance, this Economist article that claims that conditional cash transfers have been successfully implemented in Bangladesh. I cant help but snigger a big 'yeah right!'. I don't see any kind difference in behaviourial reactions to social programmes across the Indian sub-continent. Bangladesh, I am sure, is no different from India, as far as corruption is concerned. Even India has a few conditional cash transfer schemes, one of which is giving pregnant women a sum for delivering babies in government clinics (to tackle high maternal and infant mortality rates).

Here's how cash transfers fail in India:  after traveling a long distance and finally reaching a government clinic, a wailing pregnant lady in labor is denied medical attention by the doctor/medical staff, unless the family pays a sum (which is usually almost half of the cash transfer cheque). Any sane person will not refuse to pay in that fragile hour. I have talked to several women about this and it is a standard practice across clinics.

So why do people still use these facilities?
The classic, all-pervading answer - something is better than nothing. In this case even half the sum that they were entitled to.

How do you solve such problems? Cash transfer is a good policy, but not having a working, complaint-lodging system, against a miscreant public servant, is signing up for failure.

America, has food stamps for those who don't earn enough.
- How do they manage corruption? They fail too.
- They have issues of over-usage and inflated costs. Over 15% of the population is on food stamps now. Numbers of recipients went from 30 mil in 2008 to 47 mil in 2012.  A failing economy and the President are blamed for that.
- The developed world  and it's cash transfer problems. Obesity and corporate America. Here! Bit of a misleading title, I thought. Highly rabble-rousing.

I have learned to constantly ask, 'what are ways in which a system can fail?'. People are amazingly ingenious in creating ways to destroy well-intentioned policies or smart products/services.

Holy crap!

You know that moment when you read something, about a feeling, that you couldnt possibly put into words as awesomely and any better than what you just read.

Yeah, this website is full of those. So aptly called 'obscure sorrows'. Inconsequential worries in your life, that you would pay attention to only if you had nothing better to do in life. Suggested for night-time reading. Very aptly. 

My favourites so far (also quite popular):

http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/20832951870/heartworm

http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/22019547629/kairosclerosis

I very definitely kept reading after this- 

http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/31988454291/hello-i-would-really-love-to-know-what-the-source-is