Mode C is as much for Calvin as it is for Chaos, as much for Cool as it is for Cold, as much for Class as it is for Crass.

Mode C is a way of life, the Calvin way of life which I am so fascinated by as to keep trying to make it my own way of life. But what exactly is Calvin's way of life, you ask...and I say that there are no clear answers to this one.

I strongly believe, however, that almost all the seriously critical fundamental concepts of life, they are just the bogies under Calvin's bed that he is afraid of. Everyhting else...Miss Wormwood, Susie, Mom and Dad, and of course above all, Hobbes...aren't they all merely the means that he uses to attack these bogies?

It is nothing, therefore, but the perspective of each of these players on the stage of Calvin's dramatic life that helps him fight these bogies and move on in his own unique way...listening to all but doing only what finally makes sense to his own individuality. This is what comes closest, I guess, to the Calvin way of leading one's life...

Friday, February 25, 2011

Languor

It is a strange phase of life to be in. Ever since I moved to Mumbai, I have been fortunate in getting to stay with family since Priya was also posted in the city. She has had a big influence in my life right from when we were kids and she used to somehow convince me to do all the right and wrong things exactly the way she wanted them to be done. I had branched out since then and throughout my stay in various hostels and cities and friend circles, developed my own quirks. As we started staying together (for the first time since we were kids) about 3 years ago, Priya must have found it difficult to reconcile to the changed persona of her brother...not that she didn't try...in fact, she would be at her wit's end trying to make me do things a particular way or stop me from doing them in another. At some occasions she succeeded, at others she failed...thankfully, the ones she succeeded in also included convincing me to purchase my flat which has been the most logical investment decision I have ever happened to make.

Now that Priya is married and I am staying alone (she stays just a couple of flats away but living separately all the same and it is quite different), things are slowly taking a turn. Most of the evenings she does drop in or I go to her place for dinner, but mostly it is "main aur meri tanhaai" that inhabit the flat that Priya had so painstakingly and lovingly helped build. Knowing her, I was sure that she would get over it and start to build her own home the way she wants and she has done exactly that. In the process however, I have remained constant...without change, stuck in some sort of a limbo.

I would so love to have my parents come and stay with me and not many months pass before I bring back this topic with them. However, it is not to be as of the moment and I understand their point of view. Getting uprooted from where you have spent so many years of your life and moving to a completely new place with more strangers than acquaintances is not really easy...getting into the perils of settling in a new work place has been stopping so many of us from resigning from our existing jobs...things are no different there. So I am alone in this big bad city and it sucks. As it is, I am not of the partying around town age (not that I ever was) and as such, the merits of living in a bachelor pad all alone in a city like Mumbai are lost on me. Friends are great, work is fine, movies, plays and musical concerts are aplenty but it is not the same...not at all.

The one solution that everyone (really everyone, right from uncle, aunts, and their fifth cousins) has been doling out in good measure is the "get married" one. I know it is about time and a lot of friends would be more than happy to tell me just how much about time it is...given that since last June, I am already in the fourth decade of my existence on earth :-). I also know that it may solve to a large extent, the situation that I find myself in. Not that getting married would have me hitting all the party spots in town but at least there will be company and who knows what we might make of it. Plus it's not as if you decide to go the marriage path one day and get married the next. There is a whole lot of process here too and I have no idea as to how long it may take. This process, too is so complicated and you never know how much of yourself to expose and how soon. Ideas of honesty and frankness appear good on paper but practical stuff may be completely different. You never know if and when you know enough about someone and you never know if and when you should let out enough of you for someone to know who you really are.

And thus I keep thinking...is marriage the only solution or one that is sustainable? I am not too sure considering there are things that need to really click even post marriage in order to build the same degree of closeness that one has with family. All of it will take time and will happen in due course, marriage, settling in...the works...but the question is whether till then or beyond then, it is going to be all morose and isolated or can I make it better? I am sure that there are ways of making it better, it is just that the effort required does not seem to be worth it. The languid inertia that I find myself in seems to be taking a lot of doing to be lifted up.

Right, so now that we have all of this sorted (or unsorted...depends on the way you look at it), let's move on to more interesting stuff. The World Cup is underway and despite a pretty lackluster first week, it is getting into the more interesting phase where the bigger teams clash with each other. Tickets have been impossible to get, TV coverage is not too bad and considering that the IPL follows, I think that the bug I have been talking about thus far is covered as of now. So cheers to India...de ghuma ke :-)