FLEETING THOUGHTS THAT HAVE LONG BEEN UNPENNED

  If what I feel right now on the left side of my chest could portray my ruminations, words wouldn't have been necessary. Everytime I feel existential, think about life, the past we lived and the future it'll bring, I can't help but feel this way.  What a crazy thing to witness, right?! This life! Out of all the astronomical accidents, you were born and now have to make sense of this world. You eat, dream, fall in love, fall out of love, question yourself, have the first orgasm, indulge in your passion, be untruthful to yourself sometimes, get angry, feel sorry. Make friends, lose out friends, miss the ones you love, go to therapy, celebrate your biggest wins, keep your feelings to yourself, wish you could express them. I could go on and on, life is such a huge whirlwind of experiences.  A theater on this spinning rock of dirt, in this vast, dark, cold, grim cosmic void. What do I make of all these? What word do I use to describe these larger than life feeling...

I fail to understand why do people run away from the idea of death. We constantly seem to run away from it, when in fact we witness death everyday. Isn't death an integral part of life to acknowledge? When your loved one leaves you, does a part of you not die? Don't you die a little when a beautiful trip ends? Don't you taste death when you could've said something more but you kept it buried in your heart? Isn't death the thought of 'what could've been'? Isn't the 'bitter' in 'bittersweet' death? So why do we choose to ignore something so innate in us? Why?

The Cure is one of those bands that touch your heart instantly. It is a strange band, in the sense that they give you this intense storm of emotions all at one go. Their poetic songs breathe a lot of melancholy, I feel sad, pain, joy, nostalgia, reminiscence. But the sadness and the pain attached to their songs isn't something dark or depressing, its rather bittersweet or beautiful. Its hard to put it into words because us as humans we tend to cling onto black and white definitions of everything. How can something be painful and beautiful at the same?! But trust me it can be. If it wasn't, words in the English lexicon like nostalgia, melancholy wouldn't take birth. Sadness, grief can be beautiful. You learn from them as well. And The Cure helps you in feeling them. I believe this band has to be one of the best alternative music bands who've graced this earth by their work. Songs like 'The Last Day of Summer', 'Pictures of you', 'Friday I'm in lov...

Today I feel lost again, I feel incompetent, unconfident, and just terrible. This immense wave of melancholia, worthlessness, happiness, grief and sorrow engulfs me as I write this. I wish life was easier, but maybe that would too have been morose somehow. I feel cornered with emotions, I am so tired, I can't even get up. Let alone muster the courage of getting up. I miss my childhood, those were such beautiful days without having the burden to carry your wishes and ride life's tumultuous waves. Grief only meant not being able to play cricket, happiness meant able to play. It was simpler times with truth and honesty at heart. But now, everything seems dystopian, from the meaning of life, to the its purpose, my own beliefs, character and maybe everything. I don't even know what I want, what else would not make me feel this way. I'm tired of swallowing my emotions, my grief in return for not hurting people. And when I do express my emotions I feel even worse, ...

It's been quite some time I've been feeling this way. Childhood was for granted, life's ambitions were a far fetched dream back then. I'd live one day at a time with only school, cricket, tennis and fun with friends. But once I put myself out there, vulnerable, in this big, ruthless world, I've felt always felt stagnant in what I want in my life. To put it into a better relatable perspective, you could think of Porcupine Tree's masterpiece, ' Arriving Somewhere But Not Here '. That's how I've been feeling and it's been a long while. I sense like I'm arriving at all these different places or times in my life but they're not 'here', so to speak. I feel like all I'm doing is just traveling, seeing places, events, things move by like one does from the windowpane of a moving train. Maybe the 'here' is an ideal and utopian spot I've made in my mind. But I've just always felt that I'm just reaching...

I'm not too good at watching and keeping up with series. It's not like I have an aversion towards it but, I don't know, it's just the way it is. But, I've just started watching the new miniseries, Chernobyl, well, because of my affinity for world historical events and just the horror associated with this one in particular. And holy shit! I have to tell you, I'm just two episodes down and it's intense as hell. I mean, obviously I can't even ever  come remotely close to apprehending what it was like on the night of April 26, 1986 and the years that followed. But it is bone chilling and ghastly, the sheer horror attached to the experiences of the victims that fell prey to mankind's probably biggest disaster ever is maniacal and unfathomable. Just trying to picture what was it like sends cold chills down my spine. Also, it does annoy me the dissonance that has always been there between politics and science. As the series show, the erstwhile S...

  This is a drain in front of my friend, Luri Das' house. The black thick sludge sort of stuff you see is crude oil exuding out from the ground, naturally. They even say they have a corner in their bedroom where the oil just seeps out on the floor battling the concrete on its way up from the soil. Just goes onto show, Digboi, which is a part of larger Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve, was the perfect place for the Italian engineers to start drilling for oil. In 1867, the engineers were commissioned by the Assam Railways and Trading Company, to build a railway line from Dibrugarh to Margherita. Accidentally in the efforts of setting up railway lines, a part of Dalhousie's efforts of bringing railway to every corner of the country, oil was struck 10 miles from Margherita, which boasts of the repertoire of earning the moniker of 'Coal Queen of Assam'. And thus Asia's first and world's second oil refinery was set up here in my hometown in 1901. Digboi has lead the ma...