Madmen of Kingsbridge

Most often when I would go out of the building or come back inside, I would see Ronnie hanging around, either sitting with a beer can on the three steps that divided the lobby in two parts in two levels or standing or striding outside on the small section of the hedge bound walkway that led to the outside street. Well he was always hanging around be it day or night because he was mentally unsound, "The guy is crazy" as I was told by the superintendent cum janitor, the only guy to whom I ever inquired about him. Ronnie would always be doing something, drinking beer, smoking a cigarette, or walking behind people in long marching strides and talking to them without expecting them or allowing them to reply. Sometimes he would not realize that he was scaring off people, especially woman who would get afraid of his appearance that was clad in loose and slightly dirty denim trousers and matching jacket, coupled with wide wild eyes and violent and exaggerated albeit harmless movements. He had a long pale face, sunken cheeks and a prominent Irish nose. The craggy wrinkled face looked sad because of the corners of his eyelid that were folded on his eyes like a dog-eared book. He had long hair with tufts of grey sideburns pulled back neatly in a pony tail, which made his face look longer than it was....and when he stood gazing in infinity with his beady baleful eyes.....that time if only the face would be visible, someone might take him for aged samurai warrior.

Otherwise Ronnie would look just like anyone. You could see him sitting standing or walking just like anyone, it was only a touch of urgency and instability that accompanied these actions and made him look abnormal. He was not at all like a young boy I used to see in the number one train, always beyond 135th street. The guy with whitish complexion but curly short hair and pouty lips most often frightened commuters so much that the unpretentious of them, mostly woman, would move away from him leaving their precious seats. This boy had a routine. He would board the train almost running and enter briskly as if looking for someone, just like the actor, cop, or the sleuth who enters a crowded place in Hollywood movies. He will then move to this door to that door with a broad grin pasted on his face and very very wild eyes, laughing and will find the empty doorway, they become empty anyway if he chooses a space. He will then throw his specs and a hoodie on the floor paying attention to no one and then he would take a striding pose and lurch wildly forward and backward in rapid succession. He will keep doing that for some time and then if he sees another empty space or a seat he will pick up the hoodie and specs and keep them there and resume his swinging. He would look at people without seeing them or registering their presence and after one or two stops he will get down leaving commuters sighing with relief. People would start looking again at each other and freely move their gaze that had been mortified till then having a mad one amongst them accusing them of not doing anything or much worse, accusing the entire society for having done nothing for the likes of him.  

Nausea 2

It's been quite a while, that when I get up in the morning I see vivid dreams of things I have to do that day, they occur in such detail and in so properly spaced episodes; breaking and resuming again coinciding with my frequent wake ups to check the time on the wall clock or to drink water from the amber yellow glass streaked with hand painted vertical lines kept on the white enamel painted wooden windowsill and sometimes to go to bathroom to spit the mucus that accumulates in the upper regions of my throat due to perennial cold, that I don’t feel like getting up, I keep on sleeping, changing positions on the old mattress, trying to neglect the slightly nudging pain that prolonged sleep has plastered on my body; thinking that the day has started and so the work I intended to do.

I don't know exactly when this started happening but if I have to pin it down on events rather than times, then I can say it started happening when I started getting worried about my life and time in NYC, I mean it's significant to me since after may be 17 years it's the first time that I have started getting worried. I have never been depressed since that log time in my life either. My way of dealing with depression is sleeping it over since it's the same condition we try to acquire when we meditate to reduce the beta waves in our brain. And I can say that it has been helpful but the only problem is that all the time I sleep, I consider it wasted, which I would not do so if I spend even double the amount of time meditating, but I guess methods that are approved to achieve a result no matter what, they give you a sense of achievement while if you achieve same result by any other method, not approved, you feel bad about it.

These supposed dream sequences which makes me feel that I have already started my days have replaced my earlier and much uglier episodes of nightmare, where I constantly saw myself falling from height and hence never slept for more than an hour or two at a stretch....I always used to wake up once within that time. So I can’t say if the situation has improved with me.

Going beyond myself, the city doesn't help me much either. Though it is almost onset of the summer, the days that start with bright sun light are still infrequent and the dreary, cold, overcast sky that I see through my dusty double paned glass window adds a heavy, foggy, condensing burden on my senses. The bare and simile red brick apartments that have become familiar to me, fail to cheer me, even the one way rattling sound of number 1 subway fails to convey motion of the day, dynamism of the city or the fact that other people are up and about, people who must get up and do certain duties that are mood independent. I wish I had been one of them, who can’t avoid getting up and opening shops, running trains, buses and taxis, or serving in the restaurants.

But alas! I have more liberty with my day that even an existentialist will be afraid to handle!

tbc....

Pub Culture Vs Whatever

Western culture as perceived by eastern people or the right wing nationalist party in most country is a culture of decadence, something that pollutes other culture.

What they don’t understand is that western/American culture is a culture of convenience. And the westerner invariably come out with things to use in every aspect of life that are much better or convenient to accept than any attempt made by right winger (if they are doing it) and hence are bound to be liked by general masses worldwide. So why don’t they for a change come out with more attractive things than just rejecting guiltily all things western?

Also, why these right wingers are selective in their rejection? Right from the first thing used by them in morning; the toothbrush to every other thing used by them throughout the day is mostly invented by these westerns to make modern and progressive life easier and yet they take some ‘symbolic’ things as polluting and try to vent their guilt at.

Why don’t they grow up? Contrary to evolutionary creed explained by Darwin they refuge stubbornly to do so. I mean even if you are believer and creationist you can still guess that humanity due to its mental capability is destined or doomed to keep on progressing so why not aid it constructively than try to abate it foolishly?

Again taking Darwin’s theory (can’t escape this grand old man) let people choose (even I choose selectively of all the tempting things that exist in a ‘place’ like New York) to do what they want to do and let the survival of fittest theory prevail. Even the dandy dapper English hat went out of fashion since it was not convenient so does Hippy movement, drugs and free sex of sixties. More things will phase out even the idea of ‘convenience’. Don’t worry, if chastity belt, al-Qaida, blowing up people in name of religion and religion itself is convenient it will prevail and jeans, noodle strap, valentine's day, right of abortion and idea of happiness will fade if its not convenient, but let it happen by itself don’t force it.
I can go on but don’t have time. May be some other time I will complete it.

Enemy

" The more powerful you become, the more powerful enemies you create."

The Butterfly that could not go beyond the glass!!