Write

Write.

I write in whatever capacity I can. I was once asked if I write directly on the blog and I said, “No, I write it in a diary first.” “Why”? Because I write……

Write how I was taught to do in school. Pull a page, pick a pen. Clicking tabs on a device never helped me cry my heart out as a pen on a paper did. Every curve, every cross, every dot gives a rush - an excitement of communication like no other means.


I stare at those words, they tell me why, what and how to write the next word, the next line. I take my time to think and write. It might just save few horrendous and absolutely avoidable fights you know! There is no backspace. I scratch, re-write and scratch again. Believe me when i say this - the scratches make it flawless. More genuine. More real. 


Something written on a piece of paper is far more colourful than any electronic message. When I physically put pen to my words, I paint my feelings. They burst out with a splash and spatter across the page. They shine with happiness, they blush with love and bleed with pain. Sometimes when all that fails, there are actual coloured pens/pencils which are put to good use!


But here’s why I truly write. It will make what I wish to say, stay for eternity. I remember how I found these old letters written full of admonishment and advices from wiser ones in the family, unposted ones written to lovers, hidden ones - from friends - bursting with gossip & secrets. I found them in the attic - brown and faded. Torn & somewhat tattered. But still there. Still made me wise, made me laugh, made my eyes widen at some forgotten secret and broke my heart a little, yet again. Ouch ! After all these years and for always - those words are still around and shall always be. They have after all been etched for eternity. They need not be deleted because I’ve run out of storage capacity!


These pages will always hold my words dear. So I give it to them. Entrust them with my all. 

They never disappoint. 

Ratri

Haule haule raaton ko, chupke se aaja re
Nindiya re, nindiya re, akhiyon mein samaa ja re

Nindiya re....

It's 2:45am. I have managed 2 hours of sleep till 1:00am. And since then I’ve been tossing in my bed cajoling myself to go into a deep slumber. I have walked around my room, stood in the balcony, counted the stars. Maybe music will lull me to sleep? Like lori. So I put on ‘Nindiya re’. But to no avail. With all my failed attempts, I give up putting in any more thoughts to entice the beauty of sleep. I play coke studio, night dream with open eyes, water the plants and begin to embrace this insomnia.

I’ve always aspired to be a morning person. The days I manage to be one, I fall in love with the hues of the rising sun and re-affirm my belief of sunrises > sunsets. The stillness of life, fresh cool breeze and chirpy birds – all give me a stamp of approval. Now, as I sit here tonight, I realise that the night too, has a beauty of its own. Night too, has its stillness, the soft breeze and a very very distant chirp of a bird. It may not have its morning joggers but it has its own night travelers. The intersecting lights of these travelers weave their own magic.

Night – or as I refer to her – Ratri, is two definite things amongst many others.

·        confidant

·        reboot

I can take a glass of wine, sit cross legged with ‘Ratri’ and laugh away into her realm. Laugh at my stupidities, at the insane jokes which only she and I understand. I can confide in her about he who moved next door, about the cute boy in office or about the love of my life. And guess what! She blushes more than I do and her eyes twinkle more than mine. Look at the stars sometime, you’ll believe me. I tell her of my dreams and plans. Some of which I probably will share only with her; those that will never see the light of the day. She’s seen me at my worse too. Crying and howling at the curveballs life throws. ‘Ratri’ doesn’t judge or advice. She listens. Just listens with that all knowing smile on her face. Draws in closer to embrace me. Takes me to the stars and makes me believe in magic. On special occasions, she also treats me to the moon to wipe off the stains of those tear drops.

Ah! Now don’t fool yourself into believing that she is all saintly. She is equal parts mischievous – scaring the life out of me with those strange noises and creepy shadows. But that’s how we play with each other. Running around, chasing the noises, playing hide and seek with shadows long and short – just like in childhood. And yes, like I did then, I do collapse on my bed dog-tired and slip into a rem with the blink of an eye.

However ‘Ratri’ and I may decide to spend our rendezvous, there is always an everlasting promise of rebooting. Of starting over. Of giving me strength and standing beside me, leading me to another day. She is one constant in my life, who on most occasions puts me to sleep in the company of glittery fairies and fancy dreams. Sometimes weird dreams! Till she misses me most. On those occasions – it is 3:30am and I am still awake.

Maybe I’ll always be a night person with bouts of being a morning person. Maybe I’ll walk into the morning today, holding ‘her’ hand. It’s time these two reach a truce and stop bickering over me ;)

Drapetomania (n) : An overwhelming urge to run away

I had a promise to keep to myself - that I'd write an article every month. And I kept at it initially. It could have a little to do with the excitement at start of something and urge to keep up to a promise. However, it fizzled out after the first few articles. Not because writing lost its charm or because I didn't want to write. I just didn’t know what to write. I thought of things, started writing and ended it as abruptly as I had begun. This continued until today.

I was working late. Amongst the last 4-5 people on the floor, most of whom I could not even see around me. Kicking myself mentally for being the lowly creature still stuck in office, I happened to glance outside my roman window (yes I have that lucky seat right next to the huuuuge window! Jealous much?) It was one of those nights when you cannot see a single twinkling star. It was a pitch dark night. But this night was flaunting a perfectly round, pearl white moon. I stared at it transfixed. The silent floor magnifies each sound. But while I stared at this heavenly sight, the chugging of the printer, ping of messages, call for attention from the continuous downpour of emails – all were put on mute in the background. All I could see was the pitch dark & pearl white moon with its shades of grey.

Right there, in the midst of all the activity and the urgency, my mind just ran away. It did not matter where I was physically, my mind was definitely somewhere else. Some place quiet. Some place calm. As I much as I wanted to stay put, I had to pull myself back to the uninviting desk and dull gaze of the laptop. But I did one thing before I gazed away. I walked up to the window, looked at ‘that’ sight again, stared at it with all my concentration and then I closed my eyes. I drew a mental picture – a huge window, pitch black sky, not a single star but a HUGE white moon – completely round showing off its patches of grey like an accomplished art work. I opened my eyes and walked away to face the drudgery of work.

That picture is my escape. When this world and its ways become over bearing, I seek solace from those few seconds. When I re-work that picture in my mind, for that time everything ceases to exist. I become my happy content self. Nothing irks me, irritates or upsets me. Those few seconds are just pure bliss.

Find yourself such a picture. It could be anything – a warm hug, a walk in the rain with a rainbow umbrella over your head, a rocking chair on the verandah of a house sitting in the shadow of huge tree with chirping birds, a sunrise over the mountains, a sunset on the beach, a roll on the grass with your dog, the laugh of a loved one. Something. Anything. Don’t click a picture of it. Paint a picture of it. In your mind. It is for your consumption only. It is YOUR escape when you get that overwhelming urge to run away.

Be Someone's

Be someone's Sunday morning; not just Saturday night
Be someone's first message in the morning
Be someone's 4am conversations
Be someone's last goodnight
Be someone's sleepless eyes
Be someone's always answered calls
Be someone's never deleted messages
Be someone's calm
Be someone's silence
Be someone's punching bag
Be someone's shoulder to cry on
Be someone's voice of reason
Be someone's reality check
Be someone's wind beneath their wings
Be someone's first call in any situation
Be someone's default ride home after every drunk night
Be someone's default '+1'
Be someone's safety blanket
Be someone's shooting star
Be someone's smile on a bad day
Be someone's aadat
Be someone's always available
Be someone's happy ending

PS: Be someone's mastercard ;)

SOLITUDE.

Numerous articles have been written on how solitude is necessary. Peace & quiet to connect with oneself. And with today's crazy life, I quite agree with it. Deep breaths, yoga, a long stroll and what not to help us find our self. So I thought to myself, since I haven't tried anything new recently, why not this! I did every one of those things listed above and more but still could not rise above the city noise. Early morning - didn't help. Late night - didn't help either. I could not point a finger to what it was that disturbed me but it was something freakishly close. A 'ding' and bulb lit up. It was the phone. THE PHONE which roams around with me everywhere under the pretext of keeping me connected. And the rare occasions when i forget it somewhere, it plays this enchanting music and lures me back. Like the bagpiper calling out to the rats: / So! I did what any smart person would do - i switched it off. As shocking as that is, I did do it. Well honestly, I had to - I was boarding a flight *sheepish grin*. A bumpy ride & lots of lightening later, we overshot the airport. While the captain calmed the janta down, I looked outside my window and saw this - city lights being left behind, engulfed by the clear black night sky. And amidst it shining bright as a pearl, a white full moon. Like a solitaire in a coal mine. And i stared at it enchanted. I forgot I needed to land to tend urgent calls. I forgot there were tasks to be ticked, items to be added in the To-Do. I just stared. My mind was wiped like a clean blank slate. It seemed like forever; like the moon smiled back at me and told me in as many words "inner peace" ;) - step 1 towards solitude.

It was pouring with strong wind. It was cool. It was the kind of weather where you just stand out and let the wind play with your hair; let the water tickle your face; let them plaster a smile on your face. Where you breathe, in deep long breaths, their very existence. Doors wide open, dim lights & some old bollywood songs. I kicked off my slippers, stepped out to say hello to the rains and play with wind. Came back to my room and sat down with the wretched technology again. But the force of nature, its allure was stronger. I set aside the phone, lay down on my bed, turned up the music and played with my hair like a retarded child while the cool breeze tickled my feet. Again, my mind was wiped like a clean slate. My music, its words, the tickling wind and pitter patter of raindrops. "Inner peace" - step 2 towards solitude.

So what is finding solitude? What is an ideal environment to connect with oneself? What is the whole concept of connecting with oneself anyway? It's nothing. Don't be fooled by such jargon of preachers. What I realise today is that you do not need any special conducive environment. You do not need any special from of concentration. You do not need to run from the incessantly ringing phone or the city lights - its noise. If there is one thing you do not need to work for, it is finding peace & quiet. All you need is to be selfish. Selfish enough to spend time with yourself.

5 mins to say hi to who you are.

5 mins to remember what makes you happy.

5 mins to realise what you've become.

5 mins to realise what you wish to be.

Or just 5 mins of a clean blank slate & retarded activity.

5 mins to cleanse yourself. To rejuvenate.

5 mins everyday is a sure shot prescription of managing a nagging wife, a lazy husband, a drama queen girlfriend or a pure drama boyfriend (yes they exist), an irritating boss, worrying parents, bullying siblings or crisis laden friends. 

Spend 5 mins with yourself. Just you. Be Selfish. *inner peace*

Waqt ki qaid mein hai zindagi magar

Chand ghadiya yahi hain jo azaad hain.............

Answers by 'Looking for Alaska'

I have been unfaithful to my love. Yes, my love; the forever kinds. He was around me all the time but I neglected him, ignored his presence, and brushed aside his advances. He was forlorn but yet remained relentless. Minutes transcended to hours and hours to days, when he sat next to me reminding and making me relive the calm, fascinating and absorbing companionship of his. With undying effort, he charmed me back with his old world scent, the reservoir of sorcerous lines and plethora of knowledge. And as I rediscovered the lost love, I found solace from every question, every dilemma which troubled my mind during our time apart.

This description seems slightly made up? Something that dreams or fairy tales are made of? Seems to be an experience only a perfect partner (a mythical term) can give? Yes it is. And it is so, only because my forever is: BOOKS. Ah! Gave you a googly there, didn’t I? ;)

After I finally did get back, I thought of picking up a ‘light’ read. Following up my experience of John Green’s Fault in Our Stars, I picked up his earlier writing – Looking for Alaska. Fault in out Stars was a roller coaster of heart wrenching emotions. A book not heavy on the mind; emotionally draining for the heart. I was expecting Looking for Alaska, to be on the same lines but it was far from it. Looking for Alaska was reality. It was depressing, it was fun, and it was riddled with deep questions about life disguised as adolescent problems.

What this book did, was answer a very basic question for me. A question which remains dormant in all our minds but when it becomes active, it is like a vicious volcanic eruption, eating away at every possible thing. It wraps its tentacles and feeds on all our sources of hope. Looking for Alaska answered this for me:

Q: How will you—you personally—ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?

(To understand this answer in it’s true glory, read the brief on the book here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska, if you haven’t read the book already)

A: (As written by Miles)

Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the already-dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life. And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there's no sugarcoating it: She deserved better friends.

When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost her.

Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here's how I know:

I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her—green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs—would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed.

And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself—those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison's last words were: "It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.

What is your labyrinth and how will you – you personally - get out it?

Struggles of Growing Up

I recently discovered that a tragedy, which I believed was inflicted only upon me, troubles others too. I am overjoyed. Not to be a sadist but I am overjoyed !! *big goofy grin*

So what is this tragedy you ask? It's this - 'If you aren't losing friends, you aren't growing up.'

We move through our lives at a particular pace. There are pre-defined stages, junctures of life, which we reach as we grow. Sort of like, milestones. Some reach it sooner and some tad bit slowly. In comparison to my circle, I belong to the 'tad bit slowly' category. While my friends are taking up bigger responsibilities, I am swinging between the basics such as, to change a job or not to change? To quit & travel or not? To take a plunge into the unknown or not? Am I who I am or not?

My friends have moved forward towards what we call, domestic life. They've either found or have been introduced to their soul mates.Over teary eyed and nostalgic pre-wedding parties, there were stories (read: embarrassing stories) told, over and over again of how we've seen each other through crap (for lack of better word) of life. How we've grown up together and hopefully wiser, all the while stumbling over a few rocks and using others to kick some ass :) There were promises made of keeping the bond alive. Promises of being the same people. But somewhere in the whirlwind days of the wedding and starting a new life, those promises started to gather dust. Unknowingly, the responsibilities, the new ties began to gnaw at old relationships. In retrospect, it seems that the wedding was, in guise, a farewell - a last celebration of the friendship that was. The ideologies change and the topics of gossip take a drastic makeover. And before you know it, despite efforts from both sides, the silent gaps in conversations start ascending. New family, new friends start to mutely take over.

Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming anyone here. No judgments. Each new phase brings a new change. And one can only adapt to survive it.

I am humbly reminiscing here. Being a person of the past, my heart aches watching close ones drifting away. But then seeing them content in their new beginning, the heart feels happy too.

Funny creature this heart is.