paradoxicalpenman

I am an eternal optimist living in a real yet a dystopian world by all measures and desperately in search of that slimmer of silver lining that could provide all the humanity at least a sense of the word it stands for, but my dream is to somehow set up today's humanity for a tryst with objectivity.

[paradoxicalpenman]

I wanted you before I knew your face,

Like a memory that hadn’t happened yet.

It wasn’t hunger,

It was recognition,

The ache of something eternal finally arriving.

I no longer chase what echoes back.

Some loves complete you by leaving.

When the soul is full, it doesn’t cling,

It bows, and walks away without needing to turn.

[paradoxicalpenman]

I wasn’t waiting, just paused in motion,

Hands full of clocks I swore I had thrown away.

You didn’t stay,

But you linger like punctuation……

Silent, but somehow still ending my day.

I loved you in lowercase to stay unnoticed,

But my silence spelled novels you never read.

You weren’t cruel, just careful with your honesty,

Enough to keep me warm, not fed.

[paradoxicalpenman]

When silence became noise, I spoke to escape it.

Now every word I utter just deepens the quiet.

You came to heal what you never touched,

And left fingerprints on everything you avoided.

I looked for shelter in your name,

But found rain in every syllable.

So tell me….

If the cure becomes the curse,

Where do we go for mercy?

(inspired from ‘Chingari koi bhadke’ by Kishore Kumar Sir)

[paradoxicalpenman]

You fear being unloved.

Wait until someone truly sees you, and you are still unloved.

But fret not…

Let me terrify you some more…

Do you know where does that fear stem from?

Within YOU….

Huh!!You were expecting something profound right! but the answer was such a cliche…

So here is some real spice…

Do you know the only reason people will not love you when they truly see you….

Coz you have never tried to earn it, you feel you are entitled to it?

[paradoxicalpenman]

The paradox of my being-

I feel like I am a seeker who shatters illusions yet can’t escape the enchantment of beauty, carrying both the sword of reason and the wound of wonder.

Truth is not my possession but my pilgrimage, unfinished, dangerous, and necessary.

I build philosophies even as I burn the scaffolds of borrowed thought.

Beholden to memory like it is my altar and also the burden that bends my will, submitting to my capture while it sanctifies me.

My wrestle with power is unique. I am not bothered by the force as much as the masks it wears when it pretends to be mirrors.

Time haunts me, yet I carve its passing into unwritten fables.

Disillusionment is my armor, though purity and devotion still bleed beneath it.

Silence is my truest companion, yet my words echo like revolutions unspoken.

I do not belong to ideology, nation, or algorithm, but only to the gravity of conscience.

I am both author and subject of my myth, writing myself into existence while questioning whether I exist at all.

So to summarise: A narcisstic empath, an eternal optimist flirting with nihilism and a true hypocrite suffering from superiority and inferiority complex at the same time.

[paradoxicalpenman]

If the self is cracked in solitude, then even silence feels like exile.

Wholeness is not something another can gift you, it is the ground you stand on when the lights go out. That is why, in ourselves, we must all keep alive the Kareena in Jab We Met, the one who said, main apni favourite hoon.

Call it narcissism if you lack the nuance, but it is in fact self-awareness dressed as tenderness. Because when you enter love from a place of fullness, you do not demand completion, you offer companionship. And when that companionship ends, you grieve the person, not yourself.

But if your sense of reality is stitched together by their presence alone, then when they leave, they do not just walk away with their suitcase, they walk away with your reflection. That is not heartbreak, it is identity collapse. And I shudder to think how one claws their way back from that abyss.

[paradoxicalpenman]

You. The one scrolling, nodding, pretending to seek truth.

You already know this poem will not free you, yet you keep reading,

Coz you feast on pain just to digest with familiarity.

Your virtue is a rented costume, already stained with sweat,

And you reek of the cheap perfume called relevance.

Do not look away…

I want you to watch yourself rot.

Every word here is a nail hammered into the coffin of your excuses.

There will be no applause, no witnesses, no redemption.

Only you, gagging on the knowledge,

That even your shame is farcical.

That even your authenticity is performative.

Do not bite your lips now…

Silence would not give you serenity,

You market peace like a drug you never swallowed.

Fool… Whenever will you give up the dream of flight…

Reality grounds you everyday…

You cannot refute GRAVITY…..

[paradoxicalpenman]

She held the petals as if they were memory itself,

Breathing in the proof that someone paused for her,

In a world of noise, he had chosen something silent,

something useless, and therefore sincere.

He looked at the same bloom and saw it dying,

its color a countdown, its scent an ending.

He loved through motion, she through meaning,

And somewhere between them, the garden waited, ununderstood.

(Women appreciate beauty that fades, men chase things that endure. Above are some thoughts on the feminine affinity for the ephemeral and the masculine drive for permanence.)

[paradoxicalpenman]

GLOBAL EPIDEMIC ALERT!!!!!(Everyone on the Internet is vulnerable.)

Symptoms to look out for:

Everyone wants to be authentic, just not in private.

Truth has become a performance art with good lighting.

People no longer chase happiness, they curate moods.

Every emotion is content waiting for its caption.

Silence now feels suspicious.

If you are not posting, the world assumes you are broke, broken or plotting.

Love is an algorithmic handshake.

Compatibility calculated, chemistry outsourced, mystery revealed.

Gratitude is a hashtag, not a habit.

We announce our humility so the gods of engagement may bless us.

Attention is the new intimacy.

A stranger’s double-tap feels warmer than eating a fresh roti with your spouse even if you reach home at 11 pm.

People meditate not to find peace, but to function.

Calmness is packed, shipped and delivered as productivity’s lubricant.

Every opinion now comes with a disclaimer and a tribe.

Truth no longer divides people: ideology, belief and assumed identities do.

We scroll past beauty faster than we used to blink.

Appreciation and optimism has a shorter shelf life than provocation and outrage.

Everyone is busy documenting their becoming, no one is interested in simply being.

Life for almost everyone feels like a trailer for a film no one will ever make.

[paradoxicalpenman]

The Problem with Pluribus- Vince Gilligan Broke Bad, now Breaks Humanity

After being spellbound by the show, I caught myself wondering — does Pluribus work only coz it cleverly flips the legacy formula of alien invasions and viral apocalypses by replacing spectacle with moral dilemma? But the moment that word moral echoed in my head, something resisted. Wait… shouldn’t it be ethical dilemma when we speak of humanity? Coz morality belongs to the individual, but ethics belong to the collective. And there, precisely there, lies the fracture at the heart of Pluribus…. a show that mistakes humanity for a sum of individuals, and conscience for a collage of personal feelings. It is a story about saving the world, told by a civilization that has forgotten what ‘world’ means.

The problem is not the plot. It is the premise. He thinks that the human condition can be captured through a thousand close-ups and we can still tell the story of mankind. It mistakes intensity for insight, emotion for essence, and trauma for truth. Every frame aches for significance, but none for scale. It reduces the apocalypse to a therapy session and calls it art. What once was mythic, the voice of the community to weave grand narratives, has been atomized into individual neuroses wrapped in ambient lighting. Humanity has been domesticated into a series of personal crises, and the camera no longer gazes upon civilizations, only egos with better soundtracks.

Cinema for most of us, was like a temple with big vimanas. It held the moral sky aloft and made us feel small in the most sacred way. Now it has become a hall of mirrors where every reflection demands applause. Pluribus to me, is the gospel of this new religion…..the worship of the self. Its apocalypse is not planetary, it is philosophical. The death of collective imagination. The erosion of shared awe. It ends up shrinking the human experience into an endless echo chamber of feelings, which is beautifully shot but remains spiritually hollow. In the end, It is not bad storytelling…it is worse: the confession of a civilization that forgot how to dream beyond itself.

[paradoxicalpenman]

‘Jaki rahi bhawna jaisi, Hari murat dekhi teen taisi’- 21st century interpretation of this couplet by Tulsidas:

The world is not as it is, it is as we are.

As is your inner state, so is your vision of the world.

An insecure person will see the world as a bully.

An afraid person will see it as unsafe.

A greedy person will see it as opportunity.

While a kind person will see it as kinship.

We are not perceiving reality….

We are merely projecting ourselves onto it.

[paradoxicalpenman]

Two types of employees, in general:

Every opportunity is an obstacle.

Every obstacle is an opportunity.

Choose your preference:

‘Can-do’ & ‘Cant-do’ or

‘Clock-in’ & ‘Clock-out’

The choice will decide whether the company crawls or cooks…

[paradoxicalpenman]

Misery loves company and joy despises it….

If you think how people hurt you and moved on like everything is fine, please get in line…

If you love too much and don’t get loved enough, the queue is long, there are many who have had it rough..

If your kind soul suffers too much in this cruel world, most who breathe feel the same, as well as all who are now dust..

If you are worried you will not be able to live up to your potential, find solace in the fact that most claims are tall…

And, If you don’t get credit for all your efforts, is validation that fulfilling, shouldn’t contentment be first?

[paradoxicalpenman]

My words perspire,

Screaming the echoes of my heart.

Enticing or revolting...

the cards have been dealt.

The house always wins.

I accept.

But will the algorithm even let me play?

Let’s see how fate unravels

What do you reckon...

a hot streak…

or a cold start?

[paradoxicalpenman]

From being to become,

A perilous road..

Run…

From being to become,

Enjoy the journey,

You won’t like the destination..

From being to become,

A con for searching contentment,

Where it was always in your lap, the SATISFACTION…

[paradoxicalpenman]

My heart has a shadow,

Where my desires play peek-a-boo,

All my bones are casted in the hearth of romance,

Dormant, till she says, Hey!!!

I feel the same as you do!!

She turns a fox guileless,

a leopard lazy and

a lion meek,

She is the Shiva to my Parvati,

My longing for her has no peak….

Love is no longer what I feel for her now,

She has become the epiphany I desperately chase,

We have moved on from being compatible,

To simply being each other’s mirror image…

Is it the fault in our stars,

Coz, for her, I would break away from my constellation,

Still, one destined to end up as a white dwarf,

Other to perish in a supernova,

No silver lining for our reunion,

Even after our total annihilation…

Does this bother us, not even for a moment,

Forsaking the boat to forever,

We are content in the canoe of our now,

Even if destiny paved parallel pathways for us,

Our willpower will forge a tangent…..

[paradoxicalpenman]

Hot Take: Once you are 30 you realise that essentially most of us are working on the same level of information/knowledge we possess about our profession. Hierarchy is sustained lesser and lesser by intelligence and more and more by repeated exposure and endurance.

So please do not dismiss your interns or subordinates based on inexperience. And do not kneel before your superiors out of awe or aspiration coz you are not being strategic. You are merely rehearsing your own shallowness.

Might work for a few years but you’ll only be dissatisfied with your conduct in the long run when you are unable to cultivate any meaningful relation in the workspace. You will have not earned the respect of any of your colleague. People will remember you as an agreeable cog not a competent professional or loyal employee.