The 70s!

Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

-Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)

I dreamt about watching Hendrix play live again. It’s the second time this week.

And now, I can’t help spending my day whining about how it’s unfair that I’m born too late to watch him play and curse the people who did get to watch him at the prices they got this chance for. Ride the rickety buses they did. Sport the funky hairstyles or the lack of them, just like they did. . Live in a place where underwear is voluntary and protest rallies looked like a kissing conventions. I’d rather have a beautiful flower behind my ear rather than a bluetooth headset that makes me look all fancy while I converse loud to myself on my way to college. I’d rather go and watch a band which sucks and goes crazy on stage and pass out with exhaustion rather than live in a world where every kid on the block buys himself a guitar coz its cool and then watch the sad event of it being a complimentary item in the following year’s garage sale. A world where typecasts were identified by the quantity of pot they smoked or the kind of band they played in.

Honestly, being born in the wrong decade can make you really ungrateful towards the world around you. Not that I don’t love this world! I really do. I am happy. But I rather wish that I was writing this post in a journal rather than on a page that isn’t made of paper.

Coz…you know! Seriously.

The Absence of God

Under the gloomy sky and through the turbid air reeking of cigarette smoke, screeching cats roam about the lanes of the city that never sleeps, contaminated with the people who never wake up. And one such night, there is no God. The icy, bizarre, unyielding downward trajectory of deafening silences makes everything look even more sinister than they are. Beggars sleep where people walk, drains overflow with rodents, all hell-bound just like everyone else there. Men aren’t chivalrous anymore. Yet they have names like Patrick, Jeremiah. But there is no God here. There is nothing here.

“Survival, as said by someone, is completely random. The only rhythm that exists is what we might see if we stare too long, or what we really want to see. Pointlessness makes us feel handicapped, and drives that urge to put patterns into randomness. It’s the only way out, the easiest way to feel complete, to say that something is ours (even if it’s in your mind). Our own solution to triumph in life.

We give temporary meaning to things that we don’t understand. But that’s only because we are in the process of attaining the meanings ourselves.

The prevalent faith in vague meta-physical forces re-establishes this. To extract an idea so specific, from the chaos of impossibility, its like transforming dust to diamonds. A wonderful miracle. Touching, empowering, frightening, yet redundant. It isn’t God who makes us fight wars. It isn’t God who kills people. Not God who causes desolation and loath. And it’s not luck that leads to innocent people getting killed mercilessly. Not destiny that makes them dog-food. Not fate that poisons these lanes.

Its just us. Going through life, filling the spaces in our understanding and blaming all that we have no control over. All those reasons for our misery for which we have no answer to.

And the void, strikes my heart, destroying my illusions, killing my imagination, leaving that space empty. Like a clean slate, to utilize at my will. And I decide not to fill it with anything. I choose something different. And my reasons for doing this?? Nothing. And that is exactly my point."

Saying all this, the man asks me “Does that finally answer your question..?”

I don’t give any reply.

He turns away trying to recollect the number of steps he took to reach the end of the lane.

I sigh. It’s going to rain again tonight.

The blind man however, doesn’t know this yet.