An Old Enemy Returns.

The fear is back. Can't escape it. Keep looking back and it's lurking in the shadows. Just out of sight but not even pretending to hide. It knows I'm running towards a dead end. It's content to wait. Sooner or later, it knows I'll realise how futile it is to pray it'll go away.
It manifests in many forms. A kind professor's words of encouragement. A long-time-no-see friend bringing himself upto date with my life. A memory dislodged. A place revisited.
I wish there was a definite face I could put to the fear- it would make the whole thing seem less like a psychological thriller than just a bully thingy. This is just an empty nothingness - no idea what I'm doing in life, where I'm heading and what I've done till now.Yet it has teamed up with an old nemesis- bad luck. And boy, what a tag-team they make.
I open a textbook I once knew byheart and the words just don't make sense. I go to my old college and find I can't use the library since, technically, I'm neither student nor staff. I enquire about the job I was a prime candidate for and am informed that "it'll be awhile coming." Awhile coming?! I've finished celebrating my one month anniversary of the interview. I head to the funky Keralite restaurant that has been functioning below my flat for a year. Weird? It's not open. Turns out I've had my last meal at Chillys last night. They've shut down forever. Oh well, there's bread at home. Bread and jam, it is. Till I notice the dark hues the bread is taking across the centre. Just my luck. To pick out the one bread packet that goes bad in it's second day!! Of course, the water purifier too is not functioning while the owner saves a precious penny. So it's "questionable" water and jam for dinner.. yummm. The painting I've been working on for a month too is taking on a very childish look now, due mainly to my constant meddling on it instead of letting it dry. When will I learn to just let things be.
Well, if this continues, a Pg seat will remain a pipe dream for a loong loong time to come. As it is, I hear reports from Hari and Arjun, my college roommates, of the nerds out there in Trissur who're clearing their sirs doubts. Of how they "got Pg Medicine, didn't take it because they prefer Pg Paediatrics." Boy, if I came across them in a lonely dark street...man, there'd be bloodshed. Anyway, to avoid any more time wastage, gonna recruit in the KMC library tomorrow and just sit and stare at these weird books again. Atleast the fear of seeing others read and nod their heads ought to scare me into something..i hope not epileptic fits. Of course, that's if all goes according to plan. And as I've seen over 2006.. nothing goes according to plan.

Amazing. If anyone were to come and tell me 5 years ago that a call centre worker would earn twice as much with bonuses and incentives as I would with an MBBS degree I'd laugh out loud. Well, he who laughs last...... Shaffi informed me a couple of days ago of how at his brother's office, Diya Mirza and Himesh Rashmiya were chief guests in Bangalore for some opening there. Sigh!! When will a Bill Gates of medicine come along and pick up our profession from the doldrums we're in and give us higher end 5 digit salaries with movie stars opening up new OT theatres in hospitals ? I mean, friends in Bangalore are actually being paid a salary of Rs 6500 a month for being a Jr Resident in some hospitals. I'm quite sure that's what Auto driver Chinappa earns in Bangalore a week with his vegetable-oil driven vehicle too. And then, to put icing to our cake of woes, a nice man calling himself Arjun Singh decides that the best way to fight casteism is to pour it in our honeypot of Pg entrance exams, ranging from 27 - 49 % of all seats depending on the state. Yeah!! And all the strikes and Rang De Basanti dialogues can't prevent the bill going through. So casteism lives and talent dies. Still, that'll only affect my life now about, hmmm, 7 months from now, so till then it's just the other 2 enemies I have to deal with...the lesser evil.
P.S. Not related to anything else, but as I type this, I'm surrounded by kids playing COUNTERSTRIKE on the computers here in Reliance Webworld. And I can't believe the bad words!!! I mean, I heard the F-word when I was in 8th standard and must have taken a year to actually consider working it into my vocabulary. These kids are probably 5th standard or 6th at best. But boy o boy!! What literary poetry. Not surprisingly, it turns out they're Malayalee kids. We find a place everywhere on the map, don't we?