Six years...

Yes, almost. June 3rd, 2000. A 19-year-old boy had walked into a local small-time newspaper office looking for a job that might fetch him some bucks for his daily smokes, and of course, hoping, he might finally find what he's looking to be.

Done. 3,500 Indian Rupees a month.

I was a journalist.

Today, I look back, and it seems ages since that day, since those years when breaking news was the greatest pleasure ever, almost comparable with masturbation. No denying, it still is. Only, the urge to 'go for it' is on the downside.

It's almost unimagineable, even for me, to try and recall, how I felt then, what I was like, so much fire, so much energy, the urge to be something, I was like a sniffer dog I guess. But it's unimagineable - as if it weren't real. I might have been burning too hot, too fast. I burnt out, I guess.

I think I've come a long way.

I may still be, but then, boy-o-boy... "was I a young man in a hurry." I wanted to be everywhere, all the time. It's impossible, but I wanted it that way. I went for it.

Yeah, I might have come a long way - eight jobs, two awards, two countries, hundreds of controversies and even more scandals - from the Phoolan Devi murder, to the Bofors hearings, to the Delhi Golf Club Great Blackmail, to the Pushkin Chandra Gay Murder, to the DPS Sex Scandal...

...And to Qatar, where life goes on slow and smooth. No controversies, no scandals, no murders, no rapes, no sensations, and no major strategies to increase newspaper circulation.

A quiet life.

I have a habit of googling people I know - just to know, without asking them, where they are, what they do... and just in case they've become major hotshots, or if they've changed jobs.

Everyone - my ex-women, friends, ex-friends, former school-mates, enemies.

Nothing's changed... with anyone I could find on the net. Some have still not reached google. Some are there because I wrote about them. Some of them have been working in the same place for years together, probably doing exactly what they had been earlier. Some are there because of articles quoting them on the "effects of tequila," some have their names on press releases as the RSVP person.

The guy who used to cover the neighbourhood - water problems, parking woes, Residents Welfare Associations, is still covering the same thing, maybe on a raise of five thousand probably.

Some have moved from print to television. Some have moved from Delhi to Mumbai.

I sometimes wonder, obviously not everyone wants to live a life that I do. But the life I live is the life I know. Being settled, calm, a secure job, a family, yeah sure, it's stuff that I want, but I've come to believe it's something you just dream about. It can't really happen in real life. I dream, I smile, I move on.

And because I don't, I can't do it, I don't understand how those people can work in the same place, covering the same thing like Defence, or Crime, or BJP, Congress, Administration... How? How do you make a career in a single god damn newspaper beat? Does it not make you put a gun to your head?

I can't go on doing the same thing over and over and still be excited about it. And in my book of life (whether or not anyone believes in it), no one can.

Times Now, CNN-IBN, Aaj Tak, Channel 7, Sahara News, Star News, Zee News...

There are channels and channels, one after the other in India. Each of them claiming that a particular story, the same one, was broken by them "first".

Who cares about who broke the story first?! Except of course the news channels that are pushing and pulling each other to get one up, maybe get a few extra viewers that day, an ad or two more during breaks.

How do you become part of it?

I've been very lucky in my life. I've really always got what I wanted, just when I want it. Perfect timing.

But I'm foolish. I throw away what I have, to make life a little tougher for myself. I do it quite unconsciously.

Here I am sitting a sea away from India, in a quiet (a little too quiet) land, feeling sorry for the idiots running around the parliament, or the cop-station with a mike in their hand and a cameraman on their ass, pushing other camermen, shouting, screaming... just a for a byte, for a story that would get just about two minutes air time.

But what can be done? They actually like their life.

I don't know how this happened. It's strange, I always landed away from the crowd. Yet, I found peace in my loneliness when I was among them.

How many of them get the opportunity to step aside from the rat race? How many of them would see that opportunity? How many of them would want to?

I did, get the opportunity. I did, see that opportunity. I did, want to see it.

I don't know. I'm just lucky.

Or plain stupid. Either way, I might crib and cry about how I wish I were just a regular, normal guy, who's unlike me, always with different thoughts, different answers, different beliefs, or how I wish I were part of the crowd, how I wish I could fit in, be just like them.

But at the end of the day, or on a few days like these, I'm really happy about the way I turned out to be. I know me, for once I do.

What am I doing?

I'm breathing.