The end is the beginning of the end.

I don't like watching movie trailers. Or reading book reviews.

Because I start seeing things in my head. I see an off-white mongrel with a black eye-patch and a muddied tan, sunbathing atop an antique wooden recliner in the red-cemented front yard on a hot, dusty afternoon; the languid and chronic creaking of the punkha 20 feet above ground level, blowing warm wafts of air in 5.65-minute intervals; the hard-boiled heat piercing through sloping asbestos sheets that paint the white, dog-paw stained walls with a golden glow; the monotonous hiss of the broom sweeping away the sand, the leaves and all the ill will out of gigantic gates that temporarily enclose the free, innocent minds of the little imps who just arrived on ship from England and who dot the summer skyline of every home in Mount Lavinia. All this, the moment I read "Ceylon, 1942" at the backside of a book.

I begin to hear voices that tell me that Jason Raj Malhotra Bourne does not die in the movie. So when I see him exposing his macho, hairy chest with the tattoo of his mother’s name on it, and supposedly dying after the attack of a dozen baddies and their clones wielding AK-47s and shaking with evil laughter to aid the trajectory of the aimless bullets, I know that in the end, he will come out of a hole at the other end of the world, change his identity with a thick, bushy, curled-up moustache so that even his Siamese twin won’t recognise him and will round up the said baddies and their clones who were happily celebrating his death by chewing on groundnuts and with deft dishoom-dishooms, will drag them to their graves after mouthing vengeance-for-past-atrocities-induced blood-curdling soliloquies.

And so, I shut my eyes tight and stick my fingers in my ear and mumble prayer-like mutterings to drown out the majestic baritone that has made many a voice over artist rich by simply uttering inconsequential inanities like "Before the end of the world, there will rise a hero who will save mankind from doom" (and womankind from Paris Hilton's unreal reality shows), the whip-whoosh of graphic supers appearing faster than the speed of light and disappearing behind your ears, and the fast-paced theme song of the flick that gets faster and faster as it progresses from title sequence to background music for racy car chases that are scripted with the sole intention of being ranked the fastest car chase in Anyletter+ollywood history. Similarly, I shut my eyes and flip a book that’s lying face down.

More than anything, I hate the fact that a 3-hour or a 300-page work of art can be stripped naked and made to stand in front of a highly opinionated audience who will waste no time in making judgements from what they can see or read in 3 seconds. It's an insult to the art form and the artists. To the author and his imagination.

If life can be surmised with a mere Veni, Vidi, Vici, why would we spend hours in a queue before the opening of a big show? Or wait a year in advance for a popular book to release. And if we really do all that, why take the life out of it by knowing well in advance who dies on Page 436?

Contemplating destiny

I’m stuck in limbo. All I can see are questions. I know the answers to some but they don’t exactly solve anything for me. And when I find answers to the others, I know I’ll be hit by more questions. It’s a worrisome state this. When you begin to question your own existence.

After years of selling my soul to a profession that hasn’t given me anything in return, I’m beginning to wonder if I should pull all stops and begin life anew. ‘Yes’ would be an answer I could start with. But it’s not that simple, is it? A ‘Yes’ leads to a blatant “Then what?”, an existential “Where do I go from here and what do I do with my experience, my supposed expertise?”, a discarnate “What then of finding a deeper purpose, a meaning to life?” and a more pragmatic “What do I do for money?”. In the end, it takes me back to square one. A potential nowhere. A place I’d rather leave a.s.a.p. But for those darned answers.

Tongue-tied and Text-twisted

I have a blog site. I should be blogging at least once a day, if not every 22nd minute like most bloggers do. But I’d rather play Text Twist than think of something to blog about. As I write this, I can see precious seconds eroding in front of my eyes. Seconds that I can spend scoring another round at the endless game that I am hopelessly addicted to.

I’m so addicted, I open the page almost as soon as I walk into office every morning. It’s what I am seen doing when anyone walks over to my table at any time of the day. I’m so addicted, I’ve even gone beyond trying to minimise the window when someone walks past. Even if it's the CD. Or the MD. I’m so addicted, I can't keep my hands off it even as I am trying to type this piece. I’m so addicted I hear letters when people speak. I’m so addicted, I can spell add, aid, ace, aced, ate, eat, tea, ted, tie, tied, die, did, dad, died, diet, edit, date, dated, dead, dice, diced, ice, iced, cad, cat, cite, cited, ade and addict from ADDICTED. All in less than 10 secs.

So, why do I do it? 'Cos I don't have anything better to do. Rather I don't think there's anything better than mindlessly spelling out words from the same sets of letters. I have done it so many times that I know the exact combinations I need to type, to fill in all the empty squares. And I can do it with my eyes closed. Yes, I’ve tried that as well.

I genuinely think it’s a psycho-something problem. And like all psycho-anything-osis date back to intense childhood trauma, I am self-diagnosing that deep down somewhere, I still haven’t gotten over my parents whispering in letters when they didn’t want me figuring out what they were saying. And so I resort to Text Twist as a way of getting back at them.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of getting back to do. About the blog, it’s just too bad I can spell only bog and log from it.