Boredom and all his Friends

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You sit on the carpet. The laptop where it should be. Refreshing inboxes and refreshing your blog feeds. Listening to the same songs again and again. It’s raining outside and you would like to go for a drive. Like you would have done a few years ago. In a different place, at a different time and age. You can call a friend and speak. Then you realize he pinged you only yesterday. He said exactly three words. Hey, nothing, what else. Make that four. You could call her. But her phone has been ringing for the past one month. You wonder if she is alive. The rain slaps against your window, asking you to get out and get wet. It asks you to jump on the puddle and try your best tackling moves. You change the song.

All winter we got carried away, Over on the rooftops, let’s get married

All summer we just hurried, So come over, just be patient and don’t worry

This tailored life is here to stay, you say to yourself. The ready willingness with which you want to belong to the bourgeoisie is spirit crushing. It’s like that song by Malvina Reynolds. The one that talks about how we all are put in boxes. We are all package deals. We go to university, shitty or ivy league. We go on to become doctors, lawyers and business executives. I wonder why she doesn’t mention engineers. She doesn’t forget to mention dry Martini, children, summer camps, families and family businesses.

You would think what’s wrong, isn’t it perfect? It probably is, but we want more. We always like more. Let there be some excitement and something more intense. Life is interesting only when you have something worthwhile to look forward to. Like the Joker says in The Dark Knight – introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order. Let there be chaos because chaos is only fair.

People moving all the time, inside a perfectly straight line

Don’t you wanna curve away? It’s such a perfect day

So what can be done? A jar full of options open up in front of you. You don’t have to be as sinister as the Joker. Some harmless fun. You think of starting a revolution. But you don’t even have a purpose. You do have that chance to become a man of substance but there is a long way to go. Your ideals are misplaced. You think about all those people who wrote about Abhinav Bindra and the Independence Day but you only wrote about Stephanie Rice. Hell, it’s your blog, jo chahe karo, you write whatever you want. That’s why you did. Now that’s more like it.

And you want to leave spiteful comments in the blogs that think too highly of themselves. You don’t understand those pretentious NRI bloggers. They may be well read, more matured than you are, but why do they have that cynical point of view? Why does every mundane occurence of events make them frown? Why the hell did they grow up so fast, anyway? Or did they? You feel like strangling those guys clamoring for GPAs and concealing facts like kids. You meet and greet geeks everyday, reminding you of those years wasted. You look at that annoying guy and you know those exact words that would shut his mouth. You don’t say them as often as you should. You remain the nice guy most of the time. You don’t make a five year plan for a Harvard MBA like him. But you do build your Nissan Altima Coupe in the website to check the final amount. They both aren’t the same, are they?

So you say to yourself, let’s do something radical from now. Let’s move out of the straight line and go for the curve. The rain is still slapping against your window. You know what to do. You change the song.

No, I don’t want to battle from beginning to end, I don’t want to cycle, recycle revenge

I don’t want to follow death and all his friends

And in the end, We lie awake, and we dream of making our escape

(All lyrics by Coldplay)

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Filed under Myself

Tags: boredom, coldplay, death, monotony, viva la vida