Is it just me, or aisa tumhaare saath bhi hota hai?

Had been wanting to do this for a while now, so here I start with a list of things that happen to me all the time, and might seem weird, but then I believe (or rather hope) happen to others too! 🙂

The mind that works on its own..

– You’re eating something and using a newspaper below it to keep the space clean, and as you eat, you end up pausing, engrossed in reading the article in the paper, how much ever dated it might be.

– You’re in the middle of explaining an important argument to some important people, (prof, client et al), and all of a sudden, in a flash, you lose your chain of thought, and end up having to complete with some random gyan, trying to hide your embarrassment. And, mostly, your listeners still nod their head.. leaving you to wonder what they must be thinking about you!!!

– Ok, this one’s a cliche. The polyamorous feeling : I love her, but I love someone else too.. but I’m not a bad guy!!

– You hear the door bell, go out to open it, to not find anyone. You come back and ask people around you, if the bell had rung. It hadn’t.

– You take the phone out of the pocket, thinking it’s ringing, of course, it’s not!

– You walk out of your home on the 13th floor, decide to take the stairs coz the phone you’re talking on, will go conk in the elevator, go down a floor, check your pocket for the phone, and almost climb back a couple of stairs.. to go back home to get it. Then you realize that you’re TALKING on the phone!!

– You write long mails, pouring your heart out – with a piece of your mind to top it up, then give it one final read before you send it, and end up saving it in your drafts, to never send it. And then, later on, you thank your sensibility in not sending that mail. (at least 50 out of the 300 drafts I have must be like this. I post a lot of them to lil these days)

– The days I wake up early, are the days I am really late! I don’t know what I end up doing!

– You enjoy writing things down because they help you organize your thoughts and purge the clutter from your head.

Socially,

– Bumping into them out of the blue, you forget the names of people you’ve known for long(old classmates/colleagues), and are looking for ways to figure it out, without embarrassing yourself and them…

– At dinners or get togethers, for a few passing moments, you try to be a part of the groups that you don’t exactly belong to, but don’t get around to participating somehow, and just get out.

– You wonder why can’t people talk straight, and wonder if they’re just making casual conversation or dropping signals that you need to pick up and keep in mind!

– You feel jealous of that funny guy who gets all the attention, while your sense of humor takes a while to get rolling, and has limited laughter-quotient.

– You can happily talk away to glory when introduced to a new person, so much so that you can say you love meeting strangers – but find it rather difficult to walk up to someone to introduce yourself and start a conversation.

– Extension of the previous thing – You can talk away for hours to a new person you started talking to, onboard a flight, but you find it tough to have conversations with people who’ve been your classmates for years!

The shy/ withdrawn / self absorbed loner?

– In a variety of situations – you get a strong feeling that you don’t belong here. It has happens at home, at college, at my b school, in student body meetings, in parties, at pubs, in conferences.. just about every social situation you can be in. But you’re not so much of a loner either!! You just find it difficult to blend in.

– You’re sometimes overly withdrawn, because you don’t want to come across as desperate.

– Your shyness is sometimes (or maybe often) seen as snobbishness, and while you don’t know how to explain the difference, you pretend to ‘not care’ and let it pass!

– You wonder sometimes if people actually mean those kind words they tell you, or they’re just being polite!

– You get embarrassed at the overenthusiastic praising and complimenting by certain relatives / extended family.

– You don’t call up friends / ping them when you see them online, coz you feel you don’t have much to talk about, and they might be busy with their own lives – and you fall further short of conversation material after every such missed talk!

– Your busy status on messengers, is perpetual, and you don’t change it ever. It amuses you when that ppl use this as an excuse you to not talk to you for a long time.

– You don’t exactly love the ‘post on your wall’ or ‘scrapbook’ b’day wishes, which only came coz the person saw your b’day on orkut / fb. And you don’t like wishing ppl that way either. Except, a few cases.

– Gathering courage, you initiate a conversation with someone, or drop a compliment, and are endlessly embarrassed into being silent when they respond rather coldly!

– You like disappearing into the woods sometimes, for extended periods. You like it if ppl ask after you, with concern, but are really pretty ok if nobody does. You’re ok being in your own world!

– You’re sometimes skeptical of the overt depictions of camaraderie between people, wondering if it’s real, or is it just one lonely person reaching out to another, wonder if you wanna be one of those!

– Someone new starts paying a lot of attention to you all of a sudden and you feel weird, but secretly like it, and then one fine morning, they suddenly decide to withdraw, without any explicit reason and you start to feel weird!!

– You HATE it, when people leave without saying a bye. Exit from your life, effectively. Perhaps having taken offence to something, or choosing to withdraw themselves, or for some reason – leaving you restless with an unanswered why!

– In the flash of a moment, you think about someone, wondering what they’re upto.. and are surprised how come you didn’t ask after them all these days!

Of virtues and Idealism

– You wonder sometimes why people make such a virtue out of sacrifice and giving up.

– You like it sometimes when some people take liberties with you. Makes you feel they hold you close.

– Find half the heroes as false – wonder why and how they got there!

– Sometimes looking at the face of poverty, deprivation and desolation – you feel the meaningless of all your pursuits, if they’re not going to change life for the deprived.

Of Judging,

– Find some people pointlessly argumentative and judgemental, and feel like giving the discussion up and letting them be in their own world, rather than brew up an intelligent discussion.

– You wonder if you’ve become too objective or numb, to feel almost heartless at times.

– Having gone too far with being non judgmental, you sometimes find it difficult to see anything wrong with anybody! Everyone’s doing what’s in their best interest, and have their own reasons for it. And you can’t hate anyone for anything they say or do! Quick concluders turn you off though!

– And, despite the continued obsession with being non judgmental… you suddenly begin to judge closely, uncomfortably closely…

Random crazy instincts!

– You feel really tempted to jump off the train, into the sea, when it’s crossing a bridge.

– You sometimes consider dying, just because you’re REALLY curious to know what happens next!

– Wake up at 5 AM, because you have a huge chain of thought in your head, which you must capture. You capture it and go to sleep again!

– Sometimes, your chivalrous instincts are blocked by your feminist ones! You’d offer your seat to an aunty or an elderly person, but not to a girl your age, or offer to lift her luggage for her.. she’s your ‘equal’ remember?

– You feel scared of opening your monthly credit card statements, or other bills, and put it off till the last possible date.

Now, here are things I thankfully don’t feel… but people around me do. Do you?

– I trip over something or the other everyday!

– If you tell me about a disease and its symptoms, I get scared believing that I have it!!

– At every possible opportunity where you can see your reflection – a car rear view mirror, a restaurant spoon, or anything similar – you feel an irresistible urge to check how you’re looking! in passing cars with reflective glass, a clean patch i na dirty bit of broken glass, the cell phone when its not lit up.

I’m sure I’ll soon have a LOT more to add to this post. This feeling crosses my mind more often than I eat chocolate these days!

Meanwhile, if you related with any of the above, or feel something I’ve not included.. do write in!

So much for the light musings.. and baring some thoughts!