A paper and pencil

I'm keeping another diary now 'coz I realized I can never be perfectly honest on a blog.

I feel so much better. I'll say that. It's a way of letting yourself know who you are. It's a way of speaking out and expressing your individuality unfettered and unbound. The real me, who I thought was lost, for months, came back to life instantly. I am so relieved.

Awesome, isn't it? Just a paper and pencil is all you need to preserve your uniqueness.

Also, some things have happened, which I absolutely cannot discuss here. For those who have been following, the lump on my neck is much smaller now and seems to be going. So, don't worry. :)

Don't I even sound different? :)

Almost forgot. Preparing for the trip to Bangalore tomorrow, from which I'll be back on Wednesday.

Lump on neck

I'm not well. Physically. But I'm hoping it will pass.

I feel mortal. And I don't like it.

Has this place finally got me? I was dead-scared of something like this happening. As postulated in the third chapter of my book, nothing good can come out of a hot place. I just wish all the extra measures I took to keep myself immune countered all the filth I had to deal with that was damaging to both my body and psyche. Anything can still happen that can wipe out everything I've painstakingly acquired during my stay here.

Imagine my horror when I discovered a pea-sized lump on my neck below my left ear.

I searched the net on what it could be: mononucleosis, inflamed lymph node or cancer. Only the last one was fatal and could be cured if caught in time. The others would go away on their own. But my belief still stands. I won't walk into a hospital here where I'm sure they will do me more harm than good, besides charging me for it. So, after intense searching on the net and reading up a lot of opinions, I've diagnosed it as an enlarged lymph node brought on by the mild tonsillitis that I have right now.

But if it weren't, what would I do? Go to Bangalore just for a check-up? Honestly, I don't have a definite answer to that. Thankfully the symptoms don't add up to the possibility of cancer.

But I'm still scared. And I will be till that thing vanishes.

Midnight Express

I am watching the movie Midnight Express. It's nearing the end. It's about an American who ends up in a Turkish prison. The things he says and goes through are so much like what I say and go through. Just before watching the movie I said that in this place people are animals, not people, and I will tell it to their faces before I leave. And what a coincidence, two hours after I said it, the protagonist in the movie calls all turks pigs in the court where his original sentence for 4 years or so was being lengthened to 30 years for no just reason. Right now he is in a mental prison with "criminally insane" people like himself. Back to watching...

Reading my previous posts its clear I am on the brink of insanity, and I suspect people see me as totaly insane. Maybe I am, can a mad person say the difference? I'm going to put some hope into my life.

Billy Hayes killed the prison warden during one of his torture sessions, quite by accident. Then he wore the warden's uniform and got out of prison, crossed the border into Greece and later went back to America. And its a true story. considering the parallels with my own life, it proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Also, a lot more common.

My 10 years in the country has been pure hell. It is just like a prison term. At least I know that for sure now.

Also how he found the customs in Turkey and their way of life absolutely disgusting. How no one in Turkey could be trusted, which was common knowledge. Exactly how I find Chennai.

List of wrongs in Chennai

In Chennai I've been wronged. Here's the list.

1. My job took 1 month to get confirmed.
2.The hotel receptionist tried to make me sign a false bill with fake expenses.
3. The broker said I could install my a/c in the apartment - he showed me the space where I could fit it and plug it in. After moving in and drilling began, the owner started screaming. The a/c sits under the bed now.
4. Three laundry shops charge me for dry-cleaning but only wash my clothes. There's no laundry shop left where people won't cheat.
5. Auto rickshaws never switch on the meter. They haggle on the decided price once we reach the destination.
6. At work, some 20 recognitions and awards have been handed to a team of 23 (grown in size from 10 over the past year), but not one has come my way.
7. Every month, the salary components change. Not one of the payslips look like the one in the offer letter.
8. People are loud and noisy and don't speak English in office. They play loud Tamil music while I am working. The company I work for is RR Donnelley.

Being who you are - III

When I open my mouth and if all that comes out is filth and lies, what is the point of living? If I live as what others want me to be rather than myself or what I want to be. If before uttering every word, I check it for political correctness. If every word I say is meant to impress those around me. If I don't have the courage to be who I am. If what is seen is not the real me.

Why be a fake? For survival? Or more?

Let them. Let them stop taking you seriously. Let them ignore you. Let them hate.

Let them.

How does it feel when the whole world hates you? Great? Powerful? Or terrible?

They have a right to feel anything. But you still have the right to be yourself. Is it worth it if you give up your individuality so that you can feel good that others like you? Or is it worth it to be hated by the whole world but if you feel good about yourself?

Which is more important, you feeling good about yourself or others feeling good about you?

Whatever you do, you are the one who has to live with it for the rest of your life, not others. Therefore it is more sensible to be hated by the world if necessary and yet be yourself.

The void drives me on

Air in and out
Filling me, my lungs
Leaving me, a rush
Unquenchable, I am but

Am I alive - or dead
Who cares, I mean, really?
No one. No one does.
But friends - all die, they say, all die

But none have friends
None is fortunate enough
Genuine liking
Too difficult to come by

Fill the void with Love or God
Equally duplicitous
Equally disappointing
But some, nay, many, mind not

The void drives me on
Drives me on
Till I see nor hear no more
As it very now seems so

A dream, nay, many, shattered
Many before it and many after
But it could be true just yet
Dream, gold-encrusted

Is it not injustice that
I for so long was made to wait
Insult to my humanity
Corroding to my trust?

Human goodness
Thy ghost nowhere to be seen
Love and beauty -
Punish thy impersonators!

No one is greater

The tough 4 months of night shift is coming to a close. I won't be reaching home at 7:00 am in the morning anymore. Besides that, I'll feel like a normal human being and my blogging will sound more intelligible. I'll be more satisfied with who I am coz I will be able to be my best. But the cool beauty of night and the awesome feeling that you are sleeping when others are rambling, and viceversa, will be lost.

At present I was thinking about how power corrupts and about how very few people know how to use it. Even if a person is in not-so-high a place, he/she imagines so and acts accordingly. I also regained my feeling of being the greatest person that ever walked the face of the earth. My pride has been restored. People almost succeded in making me think I was the worst possible person. Yes, Chennai people try to do that. They try to make you feel inferior, when the real problem is that they feel inferior to anything and everything because of their absolute lack of a sense of self-worth.

This place, Chennai, is full of cheats and thieves. Everyone is a cheat or a thief. No one can be trusted. I tried my best to think otherwise, but it's one year since I came and hence time for a verdict. Nothing worked for me, people seemed hard to understand or trust, when I thought they were all good people. I was cheated repeatedly. At shops, on the street, at work. But when I started suspecting them, thinking that underneath they are just trying to cheat you and get the better of you in some way or other, their actions made perfect sense to me, I could predict what they were going to to do or say, and most importantly, they couldn't cheat me anymore. I finally have become uncheatable. I win. In the end. It was the most disgusting stay of my life anywhere, but I still won. Nobody, no place, no culture, no country is greater than me. No one!