Breaking the illusion of romantic train journeys

Off late I have come to accept the fact that I find long train journeys boring and that I prefer to sleep rather than cozy up to a book. Well, a few years ago, even two years ago, I wouldn't have accepted the fact of boring train journeys but now I realise that I better burst my self-made bubble. I suppose even age has something to contribute in this aspect. There was a time I swore by train journeys. And, sometimes, even now, the appearing of a blue coloured train at a distance with its smoke and sound makes me nostalgic for leaving to some place and just the imagination of curling up with a book sends spasms of excitement through my senses. Alas! the thrill lasts only for a few minutes when the distant approach of a train creates a frenzied longing - after the train arrives at the station and stops - I feel a bit unsettled to leave the comfort zone of my home and take on a  journey.

But mind you, I still enjoy travelling to new places or perhaps I think I do. Sometimes I wonder whether I allow certain lies to fog my mind and knowingly I submit myself to these grand illusions. These lies are always so comforting. They allow us to cheat ourselves and in the process we are made fools by our own thoughts and emotions.

Coming back to train journeys, I wonder whether it is the length of time or perhaps the closed confines of an AC chair that bores me. Maybe long journeys are better with hoardes of relatives and cousins who chatter away to glory. No, I have also travelled with many people but still find myself longing for the journey to come to an end. And books! I do like them but I prefer sleeping to reading while in a train. The moment I open a book, my eyes feel heavy and my senses dulled. I think that my body is weary and I shall sleep a bit and then get back to reading but that seldom happens. I sleep like there's no tomorrow and the book/s remain untouched through the rest of the journey and I make a mental note to not carry any books the next time. But as you suspected, I forget the promise, carry books in the next journey and continue to sleep blissfully.

I have come to realise that we carry an image of our younger self's habits, likings and desires into our consecutive phase of life. I, atleast, think that my tastes in food, books and music will continue to remain the same as I advance in years but sadly that is not the case; probably that is the reason one tends to grow out of friends who were so very precious during our childhood. Sometimes even memories are so - one outgrows them and after a point, there seems to be no much use for those thoughts except that they defined us once upon a time. Awareness of ourselves through passing years is a vital aspect of our life and many a times, we like to lie to ourselves and live under the illusion of seemingly being the same person through the various stages of our lives.

So, what are your thoughts on living under an illusion?

Facts of life

Step 1: DENIAL (Who me? No No. I could not do that)

Step 2: PRETENSION OF CURIOSITY (Do you think it was really me? Maybe it was x who was also there)

Step 3: SHEEPISH ACCEPTANCE (You know, it's been there for quite some time now)

Now for a few seconds, I would have held your undivided attention at the same time made you think of a thousand different situations which could have initiated the same three steps.

Well, these three steps comes from a person who SNORES and avoids confrontation. Almost everyone snores and most often not many accept that they do so. A simple act of making bizarre sounds while sleeping does not appeal to anyone (even if it is in an unconscious state of sleep). Recently I found out that even small children make sounds similar to snoring. All of us love being prim and proper even whilst sleeping but of course, we cannot be on the vigil.

To add to this three steps, it would also be interesting to analyse the different stages of this friendly act  through the years of my existence. In the eighties, while I was growing up, my grandmother would remark at a person who was snoring: "Looks like he had a very tiring day. See! how he is snoring. Don't wake him up."

After a decade, doctors researched this topic and came out with the results that if the wind pipe had some congestion, then it affected breathing and caused snoring. There was nothing to worry about that. Great news.

Bang, came the new millennium with it's sophisticated equipment and high-end researches. 'Sleep-apnea' is what it is referred to in medical terms with corrective surgery, if it gets too loud or hard to cope with. Our community web page, Wikipedia even offers tips to partners with spouses who snore -- Earmuffs with extra padding (!!!!!)

But after all this, I wonder why it is hard for a person to accept that they snore. Most of my family members whom I accost with snoring, follow the three steps mentioned above religiously. As I type this, I think aloud for myself as well. Why do I refuse to accept that I sometimes do snore. Is it a pathological desire to give a picture of the eternal 'sleeping-beauty' who looked lovely even as she slept or is it a picture of ourselves that does not make any unpleasant noises while sleeping, an unconscious state where one is laid bare of all the pretensions and staying-on-guard. It can be anything. How easy it is to lie and utter a 'NO' instead of calmly saying: "Yes I do snore." After all it's free will. Why make an issue of snoring and it's denials.On second thoughts, one does not know what happens while sleeping, maybe the other person is lying to pull our legs. Sounds convincing. Hmmm.

Image courtesy: Internet

Lies, more lies, love, betrayal, interruption and more . . .

Scene 1: 

A: Hey, where are you? Its getting late. How long should I wait?


X: Just reaching. Be right there. (I hope she doesn't know that I am still home!!)

Scene 2:

Mother: Its quarter past nine. Why aren't you still home?


Daughter: I am just at the junction near our house.  Click. (Disconnects the call)

These are common examples of everyday happenings. These small lies do not appear as lies at all. Its just cheating on simple things to keep the person at the other end assured. There begins a deluge of lies which give way to a string of other vices.

Ever since technology has given the mobile phone, the title of the post has become a norm of life for most of us. Atleast for once I wish we were somewhere in the period before the mobile phones existed. In the days of yore, if one promised to  be in a place at an appointed time, they would arrive as promised or else the person at the other end would have to wait patiently. But now . . . one retorts to lying in order to keep the person at the other end satisfied. Pretence.

Betrayals have become next to impossible as the personal mobile reveals it all. Gone are the days when only the inner clothes were the most personal and closer to any individual. Now its the mobile phone. People keep it next to them while sleeping, eating, bathing, ironing - to name a few. Since this is considered private and personal, touching someone's mobile phone is an act of infringing the space (now this is the most abused word of this century and it deserves a separate blog post!!!) of that individual. Again it was simpler as well as difficult to have affairs and betray in the past unlike now where things are easy as well as detectable. Texting, missed calls and long hours of conversation in an unlikely place (read loo, terrace, etc) have become tools of suspicion.

The parent-child relationship is already littered with innocent lies and the mobile phone has done its two bits (no, a dozen bits) in adding value to those manipulations. Another tactic is to disconnect a boring caller, switch off the phone and later text the person saying: My battery was low and so the phone got disconnected. Hmmm. Deception. Creative manipulation.

Etiquette is forgotten, time has taken second place and values are diminishing. I can list many attributes to the innocent looking harmless mobile phone but then how can I forget that even I use it and on many ocassions have used the tool as a weapon of lying and cheating.