Salad # 10 : Condescension

Yes, I decided to call it "Salad" instead....."From My Salad Days" i way, way too long. I'll probably update all the pages, too.

Here, then, is another one of those outbursts against a certain category of people whom I seemed to find almost everywhere.


Condescension (1985)

Know this: that there are those in this world who would make you feel as though they are conferring a sultanate upon you, every time they speak;

Know this: that they are frauds, and that their supercilious attitude is but a moth-eaten pathetic cloak for their own abject insecurity;

Know this: that they live within the confines of a nebulous nimbus that is exclusively their own, and know nought of the world below;

Know this: that they mean to demean you; and that they will succeed, if you are not forearmed.

Con-descension.

He who does not scorn to descend, will invariably descend to con.

Salad # 9 : Love Song to a Stranger

I'm still looking for someone to put music to these words :-)

Whispers in the Wind / Love Song to a Stranger (1986)

Call, so that I may steal your voice
Write, so that I may feel it
Call, so that I may reveal my love
Write, so that I may conceal it

Come, so that I may hear my heart
Go, so that I may fear it
Come, so that I may revere the pain
Go, so that I may clear it

Awake, so that I may sight your wrong,
Sleep, so that I may right it
Awake, so that I may highlight my weakness
Sleep, so that I may fight it.

Salad # 8 : Another Medley

Quite apart from the fact that I've always wanted to showcase my older writings, I find it's actually fun to let 'em loose on an unsuspecting readership which comprises people in their teens and twenties who have been brought up on a diet which was largely bereft of introspective reading material. The thing, you see, is that a great deal of technological advancement may have happened in the past thirty years - but the vagaries and the machinations of the human mind, and the unpredictability of the human thought process has, in the main, remained the same. So I would like to think that what I wrote in the 80's can still be considered relevant. There's time and room enough for the 21st-century writings to come in......

Here, then, are three strands of thought from an 80's collection called "The Metaphysics of Behaviour" -

Treadmill (1985)

Letting yourself be taken for granted is like volunteering to become the soles of someone’s favourite shoes – you’re constantly stepped on until you get worn out.

 

Metamorphosis (1986)

“Oh, you’ve changed !” he said to me, on our meeting after two years. I didn’t think I had, which set me thinking: what is this thing called change ? What does it do ?

Change is dynamic.
Change is absolute, not relative – it never pauses long enough to permit comparisons.
Change is continuous – at any point of time, it is more accurate to say “You are changing”, rather than to say “You have changed”.
Change is undetectable as it happens.
Change is gradual: a whitewashed wall growing yellow as you continue to gaze upon it.
Change is as spontaneous as it is involuntary; as involuntary as it is inexorable.

Change, in fact, is stranger than fiction.

The Other Cheek (1986)

One of the major indices that determines the depth and quality of a friendship is not, as is popularly believed, what one gives, and is given; it is what one forgives - and for what one is forgiven.