Chronic CA Syndrome

The Pseudo-Scientific Journal of Radical Medicine.

I bring to your notice the not so well known malady so far named "Chronic CA Syndrome".

A truly terrifying disease, the symptoms fascinatingly manifest in two seemingly separate ways.

Case 1:
The patient suffers from acute depression, hopelessness and sense of inferiority. Some patients have been observed constantly muttering the phrase "kahan phans gaya hou mein", usually preceded and followed by swearing.
When questioned, patients cited loss of high-school friends to prestigious universities, "shitty" studying environments in "third-grade glorified tuition centers", "crap" teachers who "mess up concepts", and constant failure as the top reasons for chronic moroseness.
Patients display overly "downer" behavior and become "boring" conversationalists as their tendency to complain sharply rises.
Treatment is to "get over yourself", "accept and be grateful for your life" and to severely avoid "competition with your friends, coworkers and everyone really".

Case 2:
The patient becomes what experts can only describe as "an insufferable asshole".
The patient's ego suffers severe and in some cases irreversible expansion. This results in increased spewage of "verbal bile and bullshit". The patient's mind becomes addled and the patient firmly believes that only they know every detail about all careers, qualifications, the economy.
Further deterioration causes the patient to launch into un-asked for lectures on how "everyone is messing up their careers and lives" and should only follow what they are deliriously saying.
Unfortunately at this stage, the patient emits toxic fumes (category: gianticus assholicus) which causes people, animals and even some species of plants around the patient to flee and abhor the patient.
Unfortunately there is no cure. Such patients must be quarantined immediately. Preferably until they learn to "stfu". Or forever, nobody would really care.

My Answer to Everything

In the far-flung future, in a galaxy not too far away
I will be sitting in the space-garden of my space-house
enjoying a space-coffee
from Starbucks, obviously
when the reporter-droid who is chrono-logging my thrilling life-story
will ask me about my relationship with my one and only

I will gaze at my beloved and
huff the deepest of huffs
bust out my space-ukelele
and play a ballad which would mean something like this

I fell in love on her first word.

We met at a support group for neurotic writers
while a revolution we couldn't care less about brewed outside

i came in wielding fan-fictions from multiple universes
content to sit cross-legged, beaming at my own geekiness

she came in with a lightsabre

she sliced away my preconceived notions of
poetry only being for emo hipsters in poorly-lit rooms belting out cliched moroseness
she showed me raw, un-apologetic honesty
she force-choked my heart that day

the next time i saw her, i had my blue suede shoes on
dancing a merry jig, all hooked on a feeling
and through our infinitely interwined fingers
she called me her Star Lord,
she was already my Pryde

And i'll strum about all the saturday nights
we spent galavanting across all of time and space
no adventure too big, no life too small 
she is my brilliant TARDIS and i am her Doctor
especially when the clock strikes ten and noon

i would follow it up with a power-chord
of all the times fictional characters had us going
"Noooo" and "Whaaaat" in equal measure
and how she is the Holmes to my Watson
even though she is the real doctor
the Frodo to my Sam
and how the One Ring is a metaphor for like life or something
and how sparkly pretty elves are

and when my epic space-ballad of the ages is coming to an end after at least a 40 minute solo
i'll breathe deep
and look at the one who was with me through it all
and will be with me for countless more
i'll say that all of that means just one thing:
she is my 42.

Welcome to PWC - A Survival Guide

Congratulations! You've finally made it to the hallowed office-halls of this proud assurance-based institution.

You're now proud Fergusonians; but your journey has just begun.

Although this experience will truly define the rest of your lives (no pressure), there are a couple points that young initiates should keep in mind, for your own safety.

1. Respect the social hierarchy.

I hate to break it to you, but the social segregation you tried so hard to leave behind in high-school has followed you here. In fact it will be there for the rest of your life. Sorry.

High-school was simple: there were three to four steps on the social ladder, and you knew exactly where you were. Roles were well-defined, either you were a jock or a nerd, cool or lame, you get the idea.

At the firm though, here things get real and messy. We are all very familiar with the ladder: partners on top, then managers, then seniors, then juniors, and then there is you. Bottom of the food-chain. Lowest on the pecking order. A very tiny bird compared to really big birds. Who eat the smaller birds.

And everything trickles downwards. If the partner is mad at the manager, I assure you, you'll be feeling the shock-waves too my friend. Everyone above you is just going to shift the blame to a lower tier. But who are you going to shift it to? Your long dead and buried hopes and dreams? Joking!

"So what," you say. "I won't be AA1 forever, I'll be a senior in no time!"

True. But those years will have changed you, my friend. Your spirit, broken. Your heart, naught but ash. Your lackluster eyes see the world for what it is, and you dish out the same hurt and suffering you went through on the next eager-faced intern to cross your path. Because they have to learn. They have to know what it's like. The cycle must continue.

Wow, that got a bit dark there. Anyhow, moving on!

2. Work is everything.

You came here to work, and work you will. Days and nights, and weekends, at home, at your phuppo's house, while your cousins play and chill, you work until your eyes bleed spreadsheets. Oh, and don't be afraid to get some dirt under your fingernails: plenty of manual labor to go around as well. That stock isn't going to count itself is it now? And what about converting that literal (and i do mean literal) mountain of files? By the time you are half-way done, your paper-cuts will have paper-cuts.

Surely, things must get easier when you get promoted right? I mean, what are all the juniors for? No. Sorry.

See, as a senior, you'll be reporting to the manager directly. Meaning when the order comes down from up-high, you are getting the full-force impact. You are going to be working nights and holidays slaving away to make that deadline. You are going to be beseeching the client to please, for the love of all that is holy, give you that one document which the job-in-charge asked for which you know is completely irrelevant. You are going to have to deal with the manager's mood swings you are just beginning to understand, and your juniors' idiocies which you've lost the will to. Isn't it fun to be you?

The funny thing is, you'll do it. You'll do all the work and if you are lucky you will get a sliver of credit for it. But more likely than not, you'll get posted to that client from hell, again, just because you did such a great job.

On the bright side, there is a lot of learning and you can really develop your skills and achieve your life-long dream of being really good at MS Excel. That was your dream right? I mean, why else would you even be here?

3. You will learn to prioritize.

With you so caught-up in the demanding (demeaning?) CA lifestyle, you are going to have to make some sacrifices. Namely friends and family.

Your high-school friends will graduate and start their careers and get married and have kids and buy that Porsche you've dreamt of since you were six, all before you are half-way through your articles.

Your family gives up on ever seeing you at home or spending any time with them or talking about anything other than how ridiculously the client's financials are hyperlinked. 

You have no friends at the firm, only colleagues and work-place acquaintances; who will throw you under the metaphorical (probably even literal) bus if it meant gaining favor with the powers that be.

Life will pass you by and you'll be stuck here, with Audit your one and only friend.

But hey, it's so going to be worth it when you are CFO of that Fortune 500. It is worth it, right?

-

Obviously, none of this was even remotely true. At all. Just some comedy/satire for a few paltry laughs and to brighten up your day a smidge.

Or was it ...

Tongue-borne honesty

Poetry is honesty, you always say
i honestly can't give up your ghost
i'll dress it with pretty words
make sense with nailed punctuation
but you will slip, chilling my fingers as you do
anyways

Poetry is a conversation
I'm turning knobs on a stereo that isn't there
mouthing songs that i cant hear
save for fleeting chords
and missed beats

Poetry is passion!
and your flame has scorched and thawed
brought life and devastation in your wake
and i am nothing but grateful for your purifying flames
to burn me asunder
to have cleansed me

Poetry is heartbreak.
its the scatter of your shattered visage
until each shard peeks at you, a stranger
unknown fragments claiming to be yours
piercing a new home in the gashed hangings of your cardiac viscera.

Poetry is your voice
a smouldering sunbeam sprinkled with succor
a cacophony of cresting crescendo
a tumult of thrashing tides 
a whisper worn in winter warmth

Your heart is poetry
it drips from your sprightly gait
springing moss from your every footfall
when you choose to walk that is,
you always did love the sweet crunch of petrichor between your toes

Trumpets

Staccato breathing
Ears reverb bursting
The fanfare begins!
       Funeral march
Streamers of gold!
       Waves of dusk
Avenues of petals!
       Lashes of rain
Mirth garbed in regality
       Dismal visages in black
Man of cloth, under bramble-arch
       Ancient father, enveloped in gray sky
"We are gathered here today"
"To join-
       "To lay to rest..."

To Settle

The go-getting age we live in is focused on one capitalist construct: getting more. Be it more material possessions, achievements, accomplishments whatever, the idea that is pervasive is that “more is better.”

There is a fundamental problem with this. See, all our lives we are told that we have to accomplish certain goals in our lives to be considered successful. The social norm generally defines these goals as ranging from getting a degree, getting a job, getting a house, getting a spouse etc. And once you have accumulated enough of these, congratulations! You are now successful and happy!

Surprise twist! You are not happy.

Because the struggle never ends.

Once you have accumulated enough of these, let’s call them “milestones”, you see that woah, everyone else is also gathering milestones. And these milestones are “better.”

My excessive use of inverted commas is meant to highlight the subjective nature of these words; a whole separate debate can be head as to what constitutes “better” and of course people in different areas and with different socio-economic backgrounds will obviously have different milestones.

Back to it! Capitalism thrives on competition. It’s the underlying factor: that the best resources will be used in the best way to generate the best outputs. So apart from vying to be the “best” in terms of production and business rationale, this behaviour bleeds into all spheres of life.

Another factor, also the by-product of a capitalist system of economy, is the culture of consumption. The entire socio-economic landscape is specifically paved to sell you things. Bigger, better things.

Combining these factors creates a rather dangerous consumer mind-set. That there is no such thing as enough. There is always more, hence I must want more, because everyone else “has more”, and my social standing is determined how much more I have.

Bringing this back to the topic (finally), the concept of “settling” is considered despicable. To settle is to stop wanting more. Meaning that you are going against the normal social mind-set. So you are automatically considered a rebel, a trouble-maker.

Here is what I present: if you don’t settle, you won’t be happy. Rather you won’t achieve happiness.

Now happiness is considered a destination by most, and the counter ideology is that happiness is a way of life; happiness is found in your everyday routine, because “how one spends his days, is how one spends his life.”

If you are consumed by the never ending quest for “more” so that you can look good in the eyes of society, your happiness is already being determined from external sources. So there goes your sense of inner strength and peace. This is against the happiness is a way of life idea.

If you are never satisfied with what you have, how are you ever reaching that promised land of happiness? And this counters the happiness is a destination idea.

So with either ideology, consumerism kills happiness.

 What I propose is that “settling” is not something to be maligned, rather embraced.

I get the difficulty of the task, because me saying that word right now is making me grimace.

It has too much bad juju attached to it.

So, let’s use an un-biased term: attaining.

I believe once you have accumulated a certain amount of milestones, the quantity and quality not determined by external perceptions but from a true introspective view, then you have attained and happiness is within grasp.

See its simple, once you have attained, you are no longer struggling, you don’t have the nagging doubt that you don’t have enough milestones, because you have the confidence that the milestones you do have are enough for you and your needs.

Obviously developing that independent view is hard work and frankly impossible for some. Not saying that’s a slight on them, but the way that society operates is so conditioned to a specific lifestyle that it just doesn’t tolerate new ways of thinking.

I think that material possessions, and let’s be honest, most settling is in relation to acquiring material goods (better car, bigger house, hotter spouse you name it), material possessions lose their value the more they are acquired; a curve of diminishing returns in other words.

You must have experienced this for yourself: you work hard in the pursuit of a certain goal, and once acquired, it loses its value rather suddenly. This is because the expectation that you build up during the pursuit to keep yourself motivated to keep going, seldom lives up to the real thing.

Some people relish that chase, and don’t find peace and solace once that goal is attained.

If you stop chasing, and are satisfied with what you have, your milestones will have that much more value to you. You would value the car you have, the house you live in; because first, you won’t be comparing your belongings with other people’s, which removes the stigma you might develop for your own stuff; and because your mind would be freer from materialism, and focus more on other pursuits also crucial to you being a well-rounded person.

Hence, to conclude (rather lamely, I know), settling is not a sin. It should be the way of life. Settling means that you have found, or at the very least trying, to find peace and make a home with what you have, beyond mindless competition. Most importantly, that feeling comes from within you, making it all the more potent and eternal.

“And I settled for her. And she settled for me.”

-          Passenger

Mumbles - my first slampoem

Sometimes, words get stuck in my mouth.
Like a sock caught in a washine's spin cycle.
Yes, I call washing machines washines because... duh?
And I'm filled with words
I make up, dig up, read, smell and see 

that my tongue doesn't want to be
But you see, I only have one meagre opening
And so many words struggling to rush out
And the custom officer my palate plays indulges in bureaucratic lethargy: never opening the gates to the masses
Only letting a select few; the worthy, the suitable, the appropriate, out at a time
But sometimes
The refugees waiting their turn to escape this mouth's wet confines, muster their numbers and swarm the gates
The fat officer can barely, luxuriously lift himself before he is inundated with words and letters rushing out through honesty's irrigation
But see
This mouth 

is still small
My words will get trapped
so when they come out
Sometimes half
Sometimes all at once, know that they are
All aching to make that journey
From one hole to the next.