Yesterday

If there was one day in my life where I learned the most, it was the day before today. There ain't no lofty philosophy behind the first sentence of this post. Today is the 21st of February. Yesterday was the 20th. A day that had nothing profound about it, and yet feels important for reasons that shall find their mention below.

Nothing great about the morning. Usual class, same benches, same tantalizing smells, random jokes, and the class got over. But life exists outside class. A huge chunk of it! Time for Shorty's day out! Wow! I just now realized how big the world is. How unfathomably it extends in every direction. So out I stepped, ran a few errands, and magically landed in front of the college library.

She stood right in front. My little doll. She turned around, smiled naughtily. Random incomprehensible words, a small flutter of heartbeats, more incomprehensible conversation to kill the anxiety, a cup of coffee(bad idea), the worst handshake of my life and a "Leave her alone, man!". And I was out! And a big part of the remaining day stared me right in the face. 

Sometimes it is hard to gauge one's own ferocity. It is only when another fellow comes and tells you to just pinch a little less hard the next time, that you realize that maybe, just maybe, you could have held back a little. But then going all out is any day better than losing out because you held back that tad bit too much. Make way please!

Persuasion is a bitch! It is also an art. But it still is a bitch! Specially when you need to convince someone to give you money, or to go out on a date with you, or to convince yourself that it will all be fine, or even to convince yourself that something must be done as things are not alright.

Actually, it is a lot about understanding people. And also, frankly more so about trying till your legs hurt. You sleep well at night. Oh yes! It is also about doggedness and shamelessness. One can never persuade if afraid of saying what he/she really wants to day.

Here's where the lesson for the day started. 

This simultaneously overconfident, self doubting, uncertain, stupid, genius, obsessive, fickle mind was, remains and shall for ever remain a gift and curse. Talk about multitasking. You feel like god for a second, and the next moment, you feel like the scum floating on a pond. Thumbs up to that. And strangely enough, this केमिकल लोचा (Chemical imbalance) is what makes the whole ride fun!

When the endorphin graph is plummeting, a companion with a lifted spirit is a blessing. And yesterday, I was blessed with two. And we hit the road, almost convinced that nothing could stop us. Maybe I was the only one hallucinating. Either way, nothing topped us. So no difference if one was hallucinating, or all were. 

A few of my beliefs got more reinforced. 

You don't need someone with a lot more experience than you have to learn from them. For all you know, someone younger than you could leave you profoundly
inspired. 

Bluntness is the way to go. With nothing to hide. No mollycoddled words, nothing written in fine print (***Conditions apply). I don't know what to do if the lady is a bit taken aback by your frank stand, but maybe she'll at least know and even appreciate your honesty, if she happens to be lucky.

Quirks of life are there for a reason. To make life quirky. That was a no brainer, I suppose. 

Time for another epiphany! The greatest of leaders must have had their moments of uncertainty, which, very few people, if at all any, must have known about. But at the final moments, somehow, magically, things fell in place. They usually do. Either that, or my temporary serenity deludes me into thinking so. The ones who know about your dwindling state of mind moments before the final hour, who most certainly hate you for your indecision  till the final moment, are the only people you can truly trust. They'll never tell you what an arsehole you are. Because they know for the fact that it's not going to help the situation get any better. And so, they place that last ounce of their trust in you, with their fingers crossed behind their backs, hoping that you'll pull it off at the last moment. If you feel the smallest morsel of strength to stay at what you do, take a moment and thank your fortunes for giving you such folks who have your back.

PEACE!

Numbing silence

This is the testimony of the explosion inside.

It feels like floating in space. And no, you cannot swim in space like you thought you could. In fact, you can barely control the way your body is moving about, limbs flailing. 

Shall I squeeze every drop of happiness from every unrequited wish and spread it out into the universe? Or do I build a fortress around myself and allow it to implode on itself?

I don't know about the next second, but

WHAT DO I THIS MOMENT TO QUELL THIS UNEASNESS?

All I hear is the sound of breathing. The sound growing louder. There's a rise in temperature. And eventually, it feels like sitting inside an inferno.

The closer I feel to getting what I think I want, the more it burns.

Each time I get closer is the first time I get closer. Each time. Every time.

What it is I want, I know not. Do I snatch, or shall I let go?

The sound of silence increases in volume, until it sounds like a screech pervading all of eternity.

It doesn't stop even when I stop it. I can't seem to find a switch.

There's a string, lost in its own desired, entangled in its own knots. And the tightness seems unbearable. The string says "Disentangle me!".

If I were a knock on the door, you are a stranded palace, hollowed out from all the raids history has witnessed. Question is, will you still open?

Yes, this is a dream, the mad restless silence, all of it. But it is real. Just as real as you can see it. Live this dream for real!

Return to the inferno. Hear the breathing growing louder with each heave, all over again.. Come closer to the fire, like a moth is drawn to a flame, for reasons unknown to it. And finally burn. Watch yourself burn from far away. Watch as everything gets reduced to ashes. You wouldn't know what got burned, nor when. You only see how beautiful the embers look. The orange glow, with spots of bright yellow. The whole thing eventually turns into deeper, darker shades of orange, with the gray ashes encroaching upon the orange with every passing moment, until the embers cease to glow. All that's left is a thin streak of smoke coming from the tip that was the last remnant of the blazing inferno.

Make sense of "this" if you can.

It’s all “part of the plan.”

Fight me in my embrace. Evade looking into the deep dark abyss looking back at you. Or fail trying not to do so. Say "NO" a thousand times. Say it till you lose count. And in the end, say it out of helplessness. Say it because deep inside, you know that's precisely what you don't want to say. But say it anyway. It is a knee-jerk reaction. The words sound hollower than the vast emptiness everywhere. But then again, say it for the heck of it. 

Go sitting for hours without being able to say a thing. You wonder the reason for your plight? You want to be read for what others want to read, not what you want to write. And so you decide to write from behind the veils. You don't want another to see what you have in mind. You perhaps are petrified to see what you truly want from within. Or you already know what you truly want from within, and are petrified all the same. Good for you. Stay buried under the masks you wore to put up that face, that façade of niceties, which has now begun to weigh down on you. 

Don't bang against my chest in frustration. You brought it upon yourself, this misery. For behind the layers of masks, goodness knows how many there are, two people know what lies.

Let's joke around a little. 

“Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. -The Joker”

  All this bollocks about goodness, all this censorship, all the #, @, %, & that we use to mute the inner voices are working wonders to freedom of expression! We just don't use them to cover up curse words. We use them to eventually hide our thoughts in their entirety. Convenient, right? "What will the World think?" is a classic question to begin with. For that, we need to get to know what makes the world. Let's start with ourself. 

Everything was made up by people that were no smarter than you.- Jobs(Don't ask "Who?")

 That looks like the case. So I wonder if it really matters what anyone thinks. Why not delve deep down into that reserve, grab hold of those words which seem ugly, beautiful, rousing, quelling, spineless, violent, serene and crazy all at the same time? For sake of consolation, no one's hearing it anyway. Let's introduce some anarchy, ladies!

The Deer Hunter

Think of a hammer. Make it stand on its handle. Watch it topple. Watch it topple so that the hammer's head could come down. Even better! Hold the base of the hammer's handle with just the tips of your fingers and watch it swing to bring its heavy head down. In simple physics, this happens for a reason. Potential energy. Everything wants to be at a lower potential energy.

Being religious isn't my strong suit. That aside, the words "Conversation", "Parents" and "Interesting" seldom come in the same sentence. Not that they don't, but rarely does anyone say "I had an interesting conversation with my parents". Our parents do have a lot of history behind them, by the sheer virtue of the amount of time these folks have spent more than us here. So a lot will go unknown to us about them. 

Yesterday was Shivarathri, anniversary of the day Lord Shiva and  goddess Parvathi got married. And we got a holiday for that! Can  you believe it? Someone gets married, and a whole bunch of people get a day off? Goodness! Gods should get married more often! Anyway, mom and I were talking about my granddad, who is a Shiva devout. It was my turn for an interesting conversation with my mom. I cannot recollect what my mom told me, but it was something to do with "Bhole naath", which translates to "The innocent protector", one of Shiva's names, that caught my attention. Gods? Innocence? Now you have my attention.

The little that I know about Lord Shiva, he's been associated with purity, grounded energy, virility, strength, self control, destruction and a lot more. A male Nemesis, if you may. The truest manifestation of his own thoughts, unadulterated, without a single minced word on his tongue. Basically no bullshitting. Sorry Nandini... If you know what I mean. No offense meant.

Delve a little below the surface, into his hand, four of them. One holds an axe(Parashu), one holds a trident(Trishul), the third holds a drum(The Damru) and the fourth one holds a deer. It was the fourth one that fascinates me the most. 

Imagine a deer. It jumps, bobs, hops and runs around restlessly. It is one of the most literal manifestations of energy. Unbounded but ungrounded energy. Easily excitable. Easily sapped. It is beautiful to watch, affectionate, lovable looking creature. That's what we are. Little balls of frantic energy let out into the wild. Or rather, after realization struck, that's surely what most of us are. 

In Hindi, it is called चंचलता ("Chanchalta"). The mind hops from one thing to another, easily gets distracted, easily gets frustrated, easily gets disappointed and delighted all the same. Lots of undirected energy. A horse without reins. 

Let's get back to imagining a deer. Watch it move. Observe the amount by which it moves horizontally. Now see the amount of vertical displacement the deer makes in order to travel horizontally. Now compare that to the movements of say, a cheetah. All its energies are devoted to moving forward. Very less vertical movement. Everything is streamlined. Everything is as possibly close to the ground as things can possibly be. Its heavy tail beautifully acts as a counterbalance to keep its energies from splaying horizontally.  

Reap grim!

It happened about two years ago. A bunch of my friends and our college seniors were off to give our passing out seniors a farewell treat. I don't know how many we were when we set out on that day. But we came back with a head count of one less than what we were at the start of the day.

Fragile little thing it is, this life of ours. It slips away without anyone noticing. One moment, your heart's beating. Next moment, one might see a flat line. And it is just not in death that we see the bleakness in all that we hold so dear. Look at how old you are. Then look at how much time you've spent on this beautiful planet. Where, how, and how swiftly did time just... pass by, like a gust of wind, or a lightning bolt to a few?

I don't like to call a lot many things "Mine" barring a few. The college I've spent a good fifth of my life in which, is surely on that small "Mine"-list of mine.

Until I came to this place, death wasn't a phenomenon I was akin to. It happened in the passing, but nothing about death fascinated me, or left me awestruck. 

Enter college, and my tryst with a disappearance of life force began. That said, I haven't yet watched my own life edging away from me. I have felt like I would die. But all those times have been at times when my mental faculties couldn't be relied upon. Moving on!

Suicides, murders, genocides, executions and all the events documenting the sudden absence of lives have been well documented. We've had them in our school books, our movies, in news, and in most cases in our next of kin. Often, it is word of mouth that reaches us. We don't witness it. We're just there for the final proceedings, to mourn, sympathize, offer condolences, etc. 

What's strange is that hearing of death on the news, and hearing about death that happened about a mile away from the place you sit, that too from people you know and see everyday are two completely different feelings. On the news, it just happens. No apologies for sounding cold, but when we hear about death on the news, we're mostly sitting on a couch, hoping some clown on the screen will shout and make ruckus around himself. And hence, we watch NEWS! Death is another topic the channel will cover. Death is part of North, East, West and South. Ain't it?

Outside, in reality, depending on your proximity, and level of acquaintance to the deceased, it almost feels like a part of you has gone away. For all you know, you might not even know the chap personally. But it hits you where you least expected to. 

Witnessing a death is obviously a whole different ball-game. It gets hard to breathe. Specially when you see the father cry. Specially when the mother's still sitting a thousand miles away, thinking her son's still alive. Specially when the older brother is abroad, and cannot make it to the funeral of the one he owes a big chink of his own childhood to. Specially when the picture in the frame with the garland has a smiling face on it. A face that was among us yesterday, day before, or maybe even hours or minutes ago. 

In Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut, the author, mentions the perception of death in the minds of higher dimensional creatures. For these creatures have an x, y, z and a TIME axis. They can do time travel. And so, for them a person never dies. He's just alive in the past. 

Someone make a bloody time-machine!

UnSpent

This endless stock of energy! Wow, it feels empowering. Like you can go on, on, ON and ON! I bet that's why the elders are so pissed at us. Because they despise us for what they've lost. I sit here, trapped in this room of mine, this little matchbox, inside the confines of my skin, thinking about things that I'd promised myself to not think about about a day ago. The mind racing through memories, thoughts, and a lot of nothingness with a restlessness that I have almost gotten used to for some time now. True that this restlessness comes in bouts, bouts of helpless madness. Madness sounds fashionable, I suppose.

I woke up with a start as usual. Rather, I woke up startled, as usual. My dream never felt more real.

"पागल हूँ  मैं तेरे बारे में। पता है तुझे?"(I'm crazy about you. Do you know that?)

That's the last, and frankly the only line I recollect saying in my dream. I only remember the pair of eyes that I was looking into, that looked back into mine, transfixed. Like they couldn't move even if they tried to. The face looks blurry. But that's okay. Let's leave the resolution selection to youtube's control panel. 

The days are going by in contemplation, movies, sweat, books and plans. Now, there's purpose, or purposes, less than a month away, These new-found purposes, never before encountered, can and will break me. But hopefully, shall make me stronger, or give me a broken back. 

A thing about trying not to think....

Why is it that you think about not thinking about a thing, and end up thinking about it a lot more than you think you'll think? Think about it. Follies of the human mind, I tell you!

A thing about all this pent up energy is a lack of direction. Push-ups and squats have stopped working. They quell the restlessness for 10 minutes, till the heart-rate's back to normal. And then, goodbye, peace! Then the over-thinking starts all over again. And damn Sundays!

These folks, who claim rights to your attention, can't they just GO! GO!!

If the world were a person, I'd catch him/her by his/her lapels, and give a good shaking! The world is one person. Some sort of a unified consciousness. And a big chunk of it is scared to death. Some parts of it dies like it is not going to live again. A bigger part of it dies half death, like it is only going to half-live. Bloody zombies. All the rules of the world, all the nameless and faceless 'rule-makers' bind the half-livers in inescapable shackles of conformity. And no one sees how or when they get trapped. The only thing they remember is the day their eyes open, and when they realize their impotence. Will I be one of them? It is a question that each one of asks to oneself. The question is like shouting out loud into the abyss. You never know how deep it gets. So you stop hoping for the echo, maybe an answer. 

Fairness that I've seen turning to pink, curls that look like the ocean, a thousand times beautiful than when they are bound by the world, the curves of a guitar, and the sound of Spanish music, unadulterated, soothing, in the middle of the night, all you luscious beautiful things, stay away from my dreams. For thanks to you, I sleep a lot more than I'd like to. And because of you, the days look a tad bit less exciting than they usually are. So you top, GO! Go away to safety. Where my sight can't reach. For sleep was, is and shall be a foe. The one that's robbing my days from me. Days that 'd rather spend with you things that I dream of. 

Life ain't a spectator sport. 

Go WANT!

No one tells this sort of stuff to us. Never did, never will. The world is out there for the taking. It's just a matter of spreading arms as wide as we can, and taking it all in. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. 

Our job is to ask.

Don't ask for the permission to ask.

Ask what you truly WANT. 

Ask like you truly want every ounce of what you desire.

Ask like every single ounce of you wants what you desire.

Ask like you never wanted anything more badly.

Ask without shame, Ask with nothing held back.

Ask like the world is compelled to conspire in your favour.

Ask! Ask! Ask! 

For if you don't, no one shall know.

And the chance that your deep desire had to manifest itself, shall vanish. 

A thing with keeping arms wide open, is that you can then be hurt. And we don't like to be hurt. The pain, the agony, the scars that stay behind. Reminders of everything unrequited. 

But it all heals. Or maybe I haven't lost anything that left a scar deep enough to hot have healed yet. And that's the case for most of us. We haven't lost enough. We fear the little losses. And then lose a big one without even knowing what we lost. 

Ask, and be ready to fight for what you ask.

Ask, and be ready to be punched. 

Ask, and be ready to bleed.

Ask, wound that little one inside.

Don't NEED. We all have what we need. Else, we'd be dead. 

Don't Wish. Wishes are weak. Like castrated horses. 

WANT! Now there's the stallion! Fuelled with testosterone! With the heart to put everything at stake, all of which counts for so little anyway.

Don't just back down if your WANT is denied. You just didn't have coherence in your WANT. So ask again!

Ask till you can breathe. Ask even when you cannot. 

Ask all that you want. And then, don't wait. TAKE IT! For it's yours. For it was yours. Long before you were granted your WANT.