The dark side

Every one of us has a dark side; a person inside us who whispers in the night. It hums lullabies so the nightmares can take over. Our dark side fills our head with false hopes. It makes us weep in the darkness. It fills the mind with doubt, fear; sheer, suffocating blackness. Our dark side chokes our dreams and drains away our happiness. It is slow; clawing stealthily forward like the mist. It is a claustrophobic, impenetrable fog. It attacks when we least expect it. It poisons, it maims. With its icy cold dagger it stabs through our strength, pulling us away from the light, the love.

Life is a daily struggle to keep the darkness at bay. It is a fight to keep the dark side hidden in a box, locked away, deep inside the chambers of our mind. Life is all about finding the strength to keep going; to push away the pain; to not shrivel up, hideaway and give up.

Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose.

What are friends for

I wrote this sometime around 2 in the morning. It could be a little more refined but I think I've put down most of what I wanted to.

You know why we need friends...
We need them to lie to us
When we can see the reality.
We need them to tell us it’ll all be ok
When we know it won’t.
We need them to blindfold us
When the truth becomes too much to take.
We need them to bandage and mend the cuts
That refuse to heal.
When the reality hurts too much
We need them to sing us a lullaby
And put us to sleep.
When the cuts bleed
And the tears flow,
We need them to stitch us up.
And when they see our hopes taking flight
And they know only more pain can follow,
We need them to chop off their wings.

Dreams

Dreams. They can be very dangerous. They are even scarier than nightmares. Only because you know nightmares will not haunt you in real life, but with dreams, you hope they come true. And that hope can be devastating. Dreams can play in your head, over and over again, like a tape on rewind, or one of those old record players which is stuck at the same spot on the record. You begin to wish. You begin to hope even more. And that's when the harmless dream can take on certain nightmarish qualities.

Dreams are most dangerous when you lose track of the line that separates them from reality, hope from truth. When that line blurs and the dream seems real, true, that's when you know you're in trouble. That's when you need to wake up and smell the coffee. You need to know that difference between the pictures and life. You need to be able to enjoy the film and then know that reality beckons.

That is what life is about. Knowing the difference. Recognising it. And most important, accepting it. Because the consequences otherwise can be shattering.

The perfect coffee 6

It's called Adiga's and it's in Bangalore. 8 rupees, a small steel glass and a bowl. It's amazingly south indian, if that is a term I can use to describe coffee :) I loved it. It was worth every penny spent on it and the experience of drinking something so lovely, was something by itself. Adiga's needs to come to Pune. And I think its South Indian food is better than Vaishali's, no offence meant to anyone. It'd do better business I think...

French Loaf also has some really good coffee. And the coffee at Gloria Jean's Coffee is also worth a mention. They have some really good ginger cookies which go very well with a steaming mug of coffee.

Till next time, the coffee spree continues.

The perfect coffee 5

I think I might have spoken too soon. 10 rupee Viman Nagar coffee was good and set a benchmark which was shattered yesterday. Golden Lounge at M.G.Road is THE place to go for great coffee. The coffee costs 25 rupees so is easy on the pocket and on the tastebuds. It has the right mix of sweet, strong and milky. A double thumbs up from me. And the funny part of the whole thing is that this place is right down the road from Barista :) If only M.G. weren't so far away :| Perfect coffee, I have found you :D

I recommend never to drink the coffee or the hot chocolate from the stand just outside Adlabs. The coffee is watery and the hot chocolate stinks, literally and metaphorically.

The coffee from the Nescafe Coffee Corner at Dorabji's at M.G. Road again, is good. It's the usual Nescafe coffee. It costed 20 rupees and wasn't anything special.

So the old benchmark no longer exists and the new benchmark is set. This one is going to be hard to match up to.

Onward for more coffee :D

The perfect coffee 4

I think I may have found it. At a small place right here in Viman Nagar, I may have found what I've been looking for. The place has no name. And it's tucked away out of sight, but its coffee is great. It costs only 10 rupees and it's so amazing. It's milky, it's sweet, it's strong. I tried nitpicking and maybe I still am, but there's no denying the fact that it's a great cuppa.

This in no way means that I'm stopping the search. The search still continues. The only difference is that now I have a benchmark for the others to match up to. Maybe I'll find something better somewhere else, right :)

Wishes...

Sometimes I wish I could walk my thoughts away.
I wish I could walk my hurt away.
I wish I could walk away.
Walk on and on and on and continue walking forever.
My music and me together.
I wish I could just walk off the face of this planet.
Walk out of people’s memories, hearts.
I wish I could walk my memories away.
Walk slow, walk alone, walk away.
Walk without pain and sorrow and fear.
Forget.
Stop hoping.
Walk till I can’t feel anything anymore.
Walk till nothing else exists.
Walk till I touch the horizon.
Walk the soles off my shoes,
And continue walking after that.
If only I could,
Just walk away..