March mayhem.

It is now past mid-March.

Now, before we digress into the perennial riddle of the passage of time in life — the “how did we get here already?!” — I need to direct your attention to some other truly important issues.

I think many people would agree with me that one of the best ways to put age into perspective is to have a newborn enter your life. When you have a zero-year-old tiny human in your arms, it is difficult to escape this profound sense of age in life seeping into your mind.

Apart from her regular cries of genuine need (only newborns have the right to be authentically innocently demanding) that now dictate the airwaves in my house, things at home remain quite peaceful. In fact, everything seems even more peaceful than before, because, apparently, being in the presence of a newborn, who has pretty much no perceivable ability to judge us, makes people go into their most well-behaved mode, what with speaking in mild, gentle tones and trying their best to say silly things to stimulate the baby to react with some form of facial expressions that the adults can then interpret on non-baby terms. Such simple-minded folks we are!

But, honestly, compared to all the horror tales I have heard about babies who scream their heads off deep into the middle of the night, my niece is being one of the most wonderful tiny humans I have ever seen.

I know everyone adores babies for their unworldly cuteness that has yet to be tainted by the nasty dirt that permeates the current state of humanity in this terrible world that we live in today. It is important to indulge in marvelling at their pleasantly clean slate of life, because it puts our overwhelmingly disordered phases of life into perspective. Yes, we have been through terrible things, and life in general seems to feel unbearably shitty every other hour of the day, but, hey, look at how far you have come. You used to be this tiny bundle of defenceless being with blotchy skin and no teeth.

Other than the gruelling vice-like grip over my life courtesy of my final-year research project, I am hobbling through this mayhem that is March considerably fine.

I hope you, my friends, are doing considerably fine as well. Relativity is not just one of the grand theories that the genius that is Einstein came up with. It is one of the core concepts that will help you not lose sight of your perspectives as you hop and hobble through life.

Let us continue Marching on.

One more round before the last call.

I suppose there comes a time in life where the metaphorical last call would force us to face up to waking up our idea.

Tomorrow will be the first day of my last semester of school.

The ups and downs of school life are truly about to begin to come to an end.

Every last semester before this now seems like a giant joke that should have never even been considered with any modicum of gravity.

My god.

Dave Van Ronk, “Last Call”

And so we’ve had another night
Of poetry and poses,
And each man knows he’ll be alone
When the sacred ginmill closes.

And so we’ll drink the final glass
Each to his joy and sorrow
And hope the numbing drink will last
Till opening tomorrow.

And when we stumble back again
Like paralytic dancers
Each knows the question he must ask
And each man knows the answer.

And so we’ll drink the final drink
That cuts the brain in sections
Where answers do not signify
And there aren’t any questions.

I broke my heart the other day.
It will mend again tomorrow.
If I’d been drunk when I was born
I’d be ignorant of sorrow.

And so we’ll drink the final toast
That never can be spoken:
Here’s to the heart that is wise enough
To know when it’s better off broken.

Let us be opened up for possible defeat and let ourselves learn how to get back up again and to eventually gain enough wisdom to continue fighting better and living wiser.

Drawn-out December.

After my last exam on the fifth day of December, I had a few days of comatose catch-up sleep and then began to work non-stop for the next few weeks.

I find it rewarding to keep myself occupied with working and going places and doing things. I don’t know why it worked out this way this December, but that’s how it has ended up. I must say it feels odd but nice, different and good. This is probably going to be the last semester break filled up with part-time job gigs.

Okay, this is going to be the last semester break I’m going to have.

Because after one more semester, there is no more break happening.

Because it will just be freaking graduation, and that’s all, folks.

My main priority currently is to not freak out and stay calm.

Unfortunately I can’t think of what comes next after “staying calm”, unlike those popular poster things with the smart-ass sayings of the “Keep Calm and Something Something”.

Anyhow, my point about this December is that it feels kind of drawn-out and yet also as if it whizzed past by. I suppose this is what it feels like to work every day non-stop hours on end with no end-point in sight, coupled with the feeling of one’s future immediately imminent.

I’m not making much sense right now.

Just wish everyone had a great December.

I think I did.

Let me think about it more.