TERM

This blog, ends here.

Thank you for reading.

TP

The Half-Way there man.

"When he grows up, he'll be a great achiever!"

"So smart when so young!, He is sure to be great naa?"

"Tumhara beta toh bahut tez hai!"

Fucking illusions.

Dealing with expectations is tough isn't it? Dealing with your own, thanks to things Uncles and Aunties told about you when you were 6, is hard enough. Dealing with others is a different ball game all together, the mocking in their eyes is tough enough to take without dealing with your parents disappointment.

I'm no superman. damn it, i'm not even daredevil. The Children of destiny, its what we thought we were... kids who were Prodigies, one's who name will not be forgotten by history, and lie not its footnotes but mentioned as great. The achievers. Twenty odd years down the road, bruised filthy and already on our way down a familiar path, we realise we wanted to be those who made their own path instead of worrying about which to take. The dreams of our childhood, the ambitions of our heart now lie vacant, like the lies told to children.

Where is the glory we went out to hunt? Where are the triumphs we wanted, why does it feel so much better to just fall in line and be only slightly better than the rest. We remain unfulfilled prophesies, like a palette of colours ready to paint a spectacular fresco, but one who's artist has given up... to work on something better. The neglected heroes, the could have beens.

The middle children of destiny, thats what tyler calls us. We have nothing, we have made nothing. We didn't fight for our independence, we aren't the messiahs of peace, we are the parasites sitting on top of an infested heap, we are the lords of garbage eaters. We had so much promise (was it false?)... and now we lie here, looking for happiness, looking for something to believe in, wanting a better world, but wanting a world where we still form the infestation pyramid, is it really wrong to ask for meaning? what is this foolish hunt for self-satisfaction when the world burns?

We have become the symbols of plenty. Is that good? i wouldn't know.

But wait, what am i saying? We are the youth, we are the silent force that'll change the world, we will bear the brunt of the old ways, and remember to not pass it on when its our time to go.

Can we aid our world in that little way? can't we as we have failed in so many things, fail once more? fail to pass on the prejudices? Maybe in our shame, even in our cowardice, Fail, so that maybe a different day what should matter to us will succeed. We can't be warriors, can we not at the very least, be martyrs?

We will be remembered, for sacrificing our lives, so that those will come will learn to live the right way.

We will always be, The Half-way there men.

Promises they kept, but they weren't their own,

Battles were fought, though seen they were not,

Remember their names, for they sold their soul,

To let you keep yours, the martyrs of this age,

The Half-way there men.

Why Progress hates happiness.

Imagine if Plato's utopia came true. Wouldn't the world have been a better place? Think about it, we would have had no wars, no clashes of Religion, no discrimination.

It would have been Heaven on Earth.

But consider this, if there was a Utopia. There would be no Cell phones, no Television sets, no Airplanes, no Trains, and Definitely no Steam Engine.

You can't be happy AND driven, let me rephrase that, you can be Happy and Content and be driven. The need to excel comes from some sense of lack of achievement or to be BETTER than others, which is a direct result of the Unsatisfaction in one's life. So technically speaking, once one reaches their goal, that is, there is no NEED or a survival instinct to KEEP working harder.

And Considering we are now in a capitalistic world where work being done is solely for the purpose of being able to Afford doing something else, the moment we reach satisfaction we've hit the wall.

If we were satisfied with what we had, we wouldn't have had fire. So now we are at a crossroads where the separation of satisfaction and Happiness is going to a very important tool. And will need addressing. The end of satisfaction is the End for the need to create and improve, there is no reason to fix something that isn't broken. And not being happy and being miserable isn't really the right approach either. What we are looking for is being Happy while simultaneously being unsatisfied with the levels of achievement and Pushing forward to do things, not yet done.

This is probably the reason Tenured professors generally have a lesser work output, now this shouldn't be taken as an argument AGAINST tenure. What i'm saying is that the "promise" on a end is itself the carrot that drives the young and eager to create something that will shake the world. (e.g. John Nash) So in terms of that, tenure is a great Reward.

The sooner we realise that Happiness doesn't start "after" an event, or when this happens or that happens. But instead that the moment is Right here and right now, its a drastic change of perspective. Satisfaction however is a different thing, those we can set personal milestones. And the being unsatisfied is a MUCH better option than being unhappy.

The Sado Maschoistic Self.

"I want to be happy" "I am a happy person!" "I hate introspection!"

And so many more lies that we've told ourselves. Of course not! of course we don't like being happy. Being happy gives us the illusion that we are in fact living a hollow non-meaningful life! without the ability to question or for that matter evaluate who we are and what we doing.

Being "Happy" makes us think that we've semi-shrugged our responsibilities and have become a trivial person, who doesn't think or act deep. WE CANT LAST through the sunshine for more than a month without thinking or something or the other to make us feel bad.

Feeling bad/unhappy/sad , gives us (again) the illusion of focus. It makes us believe that we are at last looking objectively and meaningfully at life.

Such are the lies of the head.

The truth is, we are so Sado-Masochist when it comes to our own feelings. We DONT like feeling happy for the simple truth that it makes us feel careless. That we haven't toughened up to world. The major difference when people say they are "growing up" is the elimination of actual happiness because that "time" is now over. Who ARE you kidding?

We love our despair so much that letting it go is just not possible, we will cling on to the things that make us miserable for trivial reasons which don't feel so trivial. To help us create this entire persona of being "Victimised", are we really that much of Attention seekers? Do we REALLY need all that sympathy?

The Society is twisted in its ways too. I mean everybody digs the "Dark Streak" in people, so some reason we are so attracted to it. What is it with humans and the affinity to damaged (whether real or perceived) people? I mean the actually happy guy, is ignored as boring, the nice guy is termed as boring. Now take a guy who pretty has the same physical appearance but serious vulnerability issues and he'll have to beat away girls with a stick.

Am i the only one who thinks society is BRAIN DAMAGED?!

The guys who would drive dangerously and who drink to death and basically try to put themselves in harm's way are the ones suddenly so MAGNETIC. What people don't realise is that they are doing that out of some serious insecurities in their lives. They ARE DAMAGED.

Sober up, even the Guys are so hooked on to parasitic women with the need to feed on their emotions, slowly sucking the Life out of them and they love it.

We are so DAMN Sado-Maschoistic its not funny, i think there is a self-destruct switch in our brain and we love fiddling with it.

Defense of Decisions, Life, Love and the Ancients

"What is DoTA to you?"

"Why are you so addicted to it?"

"I feel second hand to a game!"

These are the various, and oft repeating questions that i have been asked. Some of them who are gamers themselves. Often, they said, we are playing dota because we have so much free time, and that's all there is to it. DoTA was never just a game. In fact, Gaming itself was never just about the game.

There is so much more, oh so much more.

DoTA is the glue that brought us together, that to an extent kept us together. It is the reason why we spent countless hours in strange rooms whose owner's names we didn't know. What we new were their True names... their gamer names. Names aren't chosen randomly. You have one that is your True name and then it comes to you.

There is a lot in name, it prisms our personality and what was hiding behind the depths is suddenly out. In time, when we ready, we were worthy of our True names, I became MiSFiT, K became hUmtydUMty, A became Bleed, S was sLUdgy, D was well... for most of the time something that started with D, the other D finally settled on {FD}Merlyn, Ki will always be Mental no matter what his current name is, P was SadismRox at the time we didn't realise how prophetic he was being, Sa was Ter, you'd think that this is the only one which doesn't have a story, but the lack of a "name" gives in itself a perspective.

We EARNED those names, through sleepless nights, through heated fights on the Map and off the map.

And this was the Beginning.

I don't want to paste a timeline of when things happened. I'm not a good chronicler and there are many things i dont' know about. But the important thing is, it happened.

What DoTA meant to us, no MEANS to us, is not something that can be put in words. But, through words, those who were there, will have the privilege of feeling the bond we share.
I can Honestly say that the best freinds i ever made, and on whose strength and support i managed through my four years are those who play DoTA. And i wouldn't trade them for anybody else in the world. Yes, Merlyn included.

I can honestly say, that i made my most significant friends in the corridors of B-Block, and in that mecca G-451. In the early days, everyday wasn't short of magical. Literally.

Right from our P breaks, which included mega strategy discussions. And much jumping around corridors in the middle of the night through to the cold calculations we had to make in-game while playing for pride.

Gaming was where we turned when we were disillusioned with the cruel unpredictable world outside, which never played by the rules. We went instead to a world, with rules, with Rules that weren't written but honored and those who didn't were swiftly dealt with.

Rivalries in real life were dealth with much easily on the map. And no matter what, we always came back. Because that was the power of the game.

It wasn't wasting time, it was bonding... because the game brings out not only the anger. It brings a wide variety of all your traits, everyone's job in the game was they were, TRULY in life. I played support. hUmty played carry. and so on... although it did happen that our roles often changed. But our best results came when we stuck to our inner charactersitics.



But, i had to make a choice, a choice to leave behind what had for a greater part of my life defined me. I had to leave one thing i loved, for someone else i loved. And there was no question about what was more important to me.

See, DoTA isn't timepass, it isn't something like going to a hairdresser, you go once a week and its done, it is an intense effort to keep getting better, keep being ahead of the game. And when i wasn't doing that, i had a moral obligation to my Clan to not make it hard for them. This came out in a particularly intense game in Saadhana. Where we ended up third. And involved me dropping an Infernal on an image of tb.

There always have been three aspects to my life, my work and projects, my love, and Dota. There was time for only two of these. And i had to make one of the hardest decisions i ever had to make. But i wasn't a martyr i made the decision because my self interest. DoTA doesn't have feelings, but the girl i loved did. Maybe she'll never understand what DoTA is to us. But that has always been the case with us, with the true followers, we were never understood. We were always misfits in the real world...

P.S: The Brain Damage Line.

The following graph is an indication of how balanced your life is. As long as you are above the line, you'll proabably be the kind of person who will call DoTA a "video game", and if you are below the line you'll never manage to keep it together.

Delay Explained.

A Particularly fine month involving rather colorful, eventful and memorable happenings has kept me away from writing. I have to say, i expected a bit of boredom, but i seem to be occupied all the time these days with enough work to fill the time.

Anyway, life has given me a much deserved break from the fun and frolic, by getting me sick.

I know shall be able to get back to writing. As now i have the perfect excuse to do nothing productive for the period while i'm sick.


Ha ha! Be positive they say in AOL... i guess this is what they meant ;)

Shame And Arrogance

I've been meaning to write this for a while. However a deep sense of shame, disillusionment and mostly anger restrained me.

People of my Nation, i Salute you. Because you are most wretched electorate the world will ever see. People would Obviously question MY authority and knowledge on deriding the intelligence and thought process of an entire nation, however i intend to break that illusion as well.

I have no hope for this nation, or for its future. For, we have never learned from our mistakes, and don't intend to... and forget the lessons we did learn. I have NO hope for this nation of fools who has in its wisdom put the same family in power for over 40 years of our 60 odd years of independance.

We have traded in our self respect, and one dynasty (the tudor) for another ( Khan-Gandhi-Nehru)

In all our wisdom, the electorate votes its caste to power. 

And what is it that the Winning Party needs? approval of 28% of voters, t0 have a near majority in the house.

This ladies and gentlemen, is the Indian State.

Sides without ideology are the only ones who will win, the liberals will not vote. In Fact the trend is, the more educated you are, lesser the chance that you will go out and vote... so obviously the parties dont give a shit about you. Don't crib its your doing in the first place.

Everything, that can go wrong has gone wrong. We are on that  predecided path to nothingness and stagnation. 

Have fun, i'm getting the hell out of here as soon as i can.