Different Worlds

You and I, we come from different worlds
One of dark blacks and blinding whites,
With flashes of unexpected reds and blues
The other doused in bright color,
And shades of grey lurking
Just out of sight

You and I, we've seen the world
You, through your sheared glass
And me, through my tainted kaleidoscope

You and I, we've felt the darkness
And seen the light
You, through a crack in the black door
And me, through my cracked grey window

You and I, we've tried to see
You, through my grey kaleidoscope and blinding color
And me, through your choppy waves and the reds and blues
Catching glimpses,
Reaching for the lightening

You and I, we've stood together
Linked many,
But seldom one
You and I, we've pulled the guns
And planted flowers
You and I, we've come close
As close as repelling ends of a magnet
Can be

You and I, we've gone the distance
Without really traversing the roads
In between
You and I, we've been far apart
With the only separation being
Some inches, often traveled

You and I, we've been strengthened and battered
You, on top of your choppy waves
And me, in the brightest gleam of my eye

You and I, we've been drowned and brought to life
You, with passion of a heart
And heat of a desert

Me, with a weakness for the unknown
And the silver lining of a possibility

You and I, we've been snatched apart
And brought together
You and I, we've been inseparable
And unbearable

You and I, we've been the beginning
Rowed the middle
Lived the end
And found ourselves
In graveyards and gardens
Of possibilities and probabilities

Because you and I,
We come from different worlds
One of dark blacks and blinding whites,
Tinted with a fluctuating grey
And the other doused in bright color,
With the blacks and the whites
Lurking just out of sight.

Uninspired

There are those times in life when you feel like the days have just become a part of repetitive cycle and there is not much inspiration around, or you are just too uninspired to look for it.

I have been feeling like that for a while now. How did I get here?

Not that there is not enough for me to do; there is. Tonnes to do and time is running fast. Yet, all I feel right now is lethargy. There are emotions that come and go in a way that has become too familiar - and not in a good way, laughter that sounds forced and conversations made just to avoid awkwardness. There is a bitterness that has crept in and a distance within myself, and from myself. It makes little sense but sometimes I do not recognize me. 

Change is inevitable. Change may be good or bad but I have not seen the good kind of change happening for a long time. The times that I have let myself believe it happened, it has not lasted. It makes me wonder if I can do things that I am endeavoring to do - if I can be one of those focused, brilliant people, people who are so DRIVEN no matter what to get where they want; or at least find themselves in a place they are meant to be.

There are two sides to everything and we are merely people walking on a tightrope, trying to find a balance while tipping a little to the right and sometimes to the left along the way. Of late, it seems that every time I think I am tipping towards one of the sides or finding a balance, it never stays long enough for me to wrap my head around it. It is absolutely exhausting. Sometimes I think I should just close my eyes, take the free fall and see where I land, but I cannot find the courage to. There is always something or the other holding me back to the same draining routine.

I have known and heard that "this too shall pass", but that does not seem to be making the 'passing' any easier. It would just be a relief to be able to two steps in the same direction without the world beneath my feet spinning. It does not spin long enough for me to get used to it and fall into a trance, and it does not stay still for long enough for me to get used to its solidity. My feet seem to be on a precarious, teetering precipice and nothing stays long enough for me to get a grip.

I wish I could just close my eyes and fly, fly long and high enough for me to make revel some exhilaration that would come with the cadence of the rise and fall of the flight. 

I wish I could sink into the feeling, indulge in it and forget myself and my reality just for some time; for long enough to feel some inspiration to start over with myself.

What it means to be Home

Home is unlocking the doors to dusty, unused spaces, adorned with walls and furniture; but the scrubbing does not feel so bad.

Home is the colors of red, white and grey, the television I seldom watch and two rooms.

Home is sleeping in a bed where the pillow is neither too flat nor too full but just right to cup my head.

Home is feeling of the bed soft enough for me to sink and strong enough to hold me.

Home is the sight of old books, long unread and drawers full of collected, hoarded and colorful treasures.

Home is the windowsill where I can hear music, feel the wind, watch the rain and conjure surreal scenarios in my head.

Home is the fancy, inadequate lighting to complain about, the smell of onion and garlic wafting through open doors and the low hum of a chimney occasionally inhabited by pigeons.

Home is going for evening walks in the perfect weather and lying on the grass, staring at the sky.

Home is flying on my dear Aviator, knowing where to go- that I will not be lost.

Home is when the "Ma calling" or "Home calling" flashes on my phone.

Home is going shopping with Ma that ends up in role reversal.

Home is waking up to the voice that tries relentlessly to correct my sleep cycle in a way only she can.

Home is watching television with my head on her lap and sighing in exasperation at all the melodrama onscreen.

Home is a lazy Sunday with Papa cribbing about no new movies airing on HBO.

Home is saying "Let's go for ice-cream!" and watching the eldest man become a pouting child because he thinks he got lesser ice cream.

Home is playing board games and UNO that are six months overdue, complete with the peeking and exclamations of “That’s cheating!”

Home is learning to talk in basic gaming jargon to bridge some three years short of a decade in between; and the having a heart to heart with all those years intact.

Home is all things familiar, near and yet too far away. Home is that freedom which its confines can bring. Home is a familiar touch, familiar ways, favorite colors and music playing uninhibited with doors wide open. Home is to take off and knowing where to go. Home is not being afraid, not being alone. Home is the warmest comfort there is. Home is tidying up the mess and feeling good about it because it is mine.

Home is the tightness of hugs that grow in between the periods I get them.



Home is where I always want to stay

Please, just for one more day,

And though I have done this many times,

It always hurts to leave it behind.

10 Minutes to 20

So I've spent the last few days cribbing about how I don't want to turn 20, and how TILL twenty it is like oh-you-know-there's-still-time, and how once you hit twenty it's the countdown begins to when you are a grown up.

I don't feel so different as of now. But yeah, it has been a bittersweet ride till here. Life has taught me a lot in its ways, big and small. A few minutes ago I had a surprise cake in my hair and now I am here getting all philosophical about it. So many memories, lessons and so many firsts.

So here's just saying cheers to life, cheers to leaning and cheers to living. Though I still don't feel as excited thinking that I have already lived and seen two decades (that makes me feel so OLD), but it is still a new day, with new people to meet, new places to go, new emotions to feel and a lot to learn. So 'the twenties' it is!

Also, I realize that I may be twenty, but I still think 1990 was just ten years ago. 

Almost-Midnight Musings

Tonight, I am in a mood, probably sleep deprivation and heavy headed-ness induced. Also, my A/C refuses to cool in this maddening heat (according to my phone, thirty eight degrees Celsius), so I am not going to rule out the neither hot neither cold environment around me as a catalyst to this mood of mine. 

It is just hard to even write when there are too many thoughts in your head but one refuses to take the train of thought completely.

Tonight, I am in the mood for dim yellow lights, solitude and some forgotten, soft, blues music blaring from the speakers. It is just one of those nights when I feel what I think Devdas must have felt with a bottle of alcohol, drunk out of his senses, his heart laid bare- but with probably less passion. And drunkenness. And more senses.

Okay. That comparison just lost its credibility.

There are those nights when you just want to brood to your oldest music, or probably think nothing at all. Tempted to unlock the treasure boxes you have buried deep in your memories and it comes naturally, and they are of view to you in a very unattached, disenchanted and fond manner; much like someone feeling empathy for the protagonist in an expressionist film with a lot of symbolism.

There is an urge to write down the songs that I am listening to, all of them; because right now, it feels like I can feel all the sentiments captured in those flowing, poetic lyrics inside me. They are fleeting, and none of them is too engrossing except maybe a sharp pang about something that comes to notice, like a childhood token that you find years later in some cluttered, dusty corner of your old cupboard- only, it is in the memory; or the longing for a moment where you wished that time would freeze. But this freeze-frame in my mind is all but one of the many, difference being just that it appears in a sharper focus than the rest.

My eyes burn as I write this, more because I am typing in dim light with the screen as illumination to my already tired eyes. Oh well. There is music that begins to play but I press forward to the next one soon after it starts. I wonder why. 

It is funny because I was just saying, and thinking I want to sleep but here I am. My mother would probably disapprove, but she cannot tell me so right now. So might as well go ahead and give it a conclusion, or some sense. Sometimes, I feel like randomness becomes the essence of my thoughts. The ideas of eternity have become tainted by a practicality and reality that the heart has seen and eyes now show. Childishness struggles with bitterness that threatens to creep into the crevices that have been trenched where there were once holes. 

There is one joke that I remember from my childhood, that I found ridiculously funny and would retell to anyone in any context of something funny. I see how the jokes have changed now, what black humor is and why it is funny, and I wish I could go back to the time when I did not know how black and humor could be used in one phrase. The world is turning a little more threatening every day- threatening to swallow you whole in your quest for your place in it. 

But then there are the bubbles that I like to blow, and the colors I like to see. The sky is always beautiful and the air is unstoppable. Diwali lights look so hopeful and there are still happy endings for lovers in films. The stars probably look pretty and countless to someone, somewhere in the countryside. My brother gives me the tightest hug me when he sees me. He is going to grow taller than me, I know it. 

Love makes the world go round, but love itself is not enough. Have the dynamics of the world not gotten it all wrong that way? Maybe someone WILL dig a hole through Earth and come out on the other side and tell us why. Then we will probably have the answers to everything that should be enough, but is not; everything that is deserved but is not given; and all the compassion that is right there but not showed. 

I remember a story from the Panchatantra where a silly hare scares the entire jungle saying that "the sky is falling!", when the piece of "sky" that actually awoke him from his slumber and sent him scurrying was actually an apple from a tree. That made sense, right? Well, since the skepticism of the world makes little sense right now, maybe the sky WILL fall. And then, we will know that there is more. 

On that note, I am raising my imaginary glass to much needed (at the same time, overactive) imagination and, to possibilities!

PS. My playlist ended as I finished writing the above line. Some things are falling into place after all!

The Joys of Re-Self Discovery

Recently I read an article titled "Bring Back The Magic" in a supplement of The Hindu, dated May 5th, 2013. It was beautiful and it spelled out some thing I had been wanting to do and actually. The article just streamlined for me a way to go about it.

It asks you to write a letter to yourself. To spell out the things that still matter to you, the things that still drive you and the things that still make you want to dream and work and try harder. Things about the world that make you angry and sad and things that you would want to change. Things like wanting to turn the world upside down because it tends to be a little too straight sometimes sometimes; and straighten it out a little bit because it twists the simplest of things.

Why would one write a letter to themselves? Because, with time, we tend to become skeptical versions of ourselves, giving up on things that we believe in because we have commitments and work and the survival is just a tiring lifetime of exercise. So to write things like these, is to give your future self some hope, to write these things now is saying to your future self who has seen too much reality, has become too bitter and is thinking, "what the hell happened to me?", that there's still hope. This is what you were, and this is what you are. You just have to choose to become.

And so, I want to write myself a letter. I want to write to myself about all the things that are important to me now, in case I ever forget. I want to preserve the my compassion, my love for color and my un-ladylike loud laughter in pen and paper, in my words, in my handwriting to remind myself how much I love a good pen and how I want to write and how I have a decent handwriting- in case I ever forget. I want to engrave (well, on paper if not in stone) how I love breaking my back doing little things on people's birthdays and making them smile; and how I don't need gifts and rewards but a simple appreciation or a hug suffices- in case I ever become more materialistic about those things. I want to write about how blowing bubbles still makes me happy, how much I miss home and how much I love dogs and how I respect life. How war makes me sad and politics is distasteful to me if I ever become to pompous about my opinions. I want to pen down how I want to grow old to be an open minded person who grows more approachable with age and not, high headed and cranky.

Most importantly, I want to write about how thankful I am for all the happiness and even the pain that life has given me and how much I have learnt from it. How much I love to love and how powerful the bonds of family are. I want to write about how, right now, I still have beliefs and ideals, to remind my future self if she ever falls victim to the harshness of this world and of life, and loses them the reasons she has to work for.

BUT, I have exams right now and I see it is going to be a long letter to myself so it will have to wait for about ten days or so.

But, on a concluding note, people talk about life insurance..but they completely miss the real point. So my dear future self, if you ever feel like you have lost (the purpose/ideals of your) life or that you're losing it, here is a little piece of life insurance, for you.

:)

Stay

Some time back, I was listening to a Taylor Swift song and said something along the lines of, "She can make good music but she just comes across as a grumpy, lovesick puppy. All her songs are about the same thing." Then recently, I realized something about myself- more often than not, most of the things that I write are influenced by one thing that matters to me above all else too- love. I don't mean the kind of love you share with your life partner, but all sorts of love. The love that you have for your mother, your brother, your dog, your friend, your lover; love in all its colours and shades, that comes with as much baggage as it does with beauty, love that we all crave for, the attachment that we revel in and hate, love with its intense, bright, rosy haze and with its dark, piercing, passionate pain.

With that, I came to realize one thing that is as stupid as it is amazing. We, as people and as humans, have ONE ability (among others, of course) that sets us apart; that is, the ability to over rule and overpower instinct. 'Always trust your instinct', it is said. But then sometimes, even though we know exactly how a situation is going to turn out, we choose to stay. Instinct tells you to leave, to survive, to look out for yourself. When we make a conscious decision to ignore that instinct and still see something through- THAT moment defines us. 

Having studied a powerful perspective of how we as humans are self-centred creatures and how that is the basis of the "system" that we live in, the relationships we build, the things we do- it is somehow heartening to think of the fact that we have a free agency of our own. Something above the "I, me, myself", something deep inside that speaks to our humanity, that tells us to stop and stay and for once look past ourselves. 

What unfolds after these moments are the experiences that transform our outlooks, that change our perspectives and that reinstate or shake our beliefs. "Live like everyday is your last", they say. A friend of mine told me, "That's why bucket lists become important when you are about to die." Once the peace with Inevitability is made, things become much easier and much harder. Easier, because it is not very far that you have to look for the things you have been wanting to change, the things that you have been wanting to do. Harder, because even though you give something all that you can, and with the knowledge of inevitability and the determination of still giving it all you can comes..hope.

You would think that you have done away with it. You know exactly how something will turn out and you have made peace with it. So you would expect that hope figures nowhere in the scenario, right? But nope. There are two things that will make you despair like nothing else will- hope and helplessness. You would think that the two are conflicting emotions- but since we as humans are as irrational in our actions and desires as we try to make ourselves believe we are rational in our heads- we are very much capable of feeling both at the same time. Hope creeps in, like smoke through a crack. Even a little bit is enough to taint the air.

What we see, then, is through a glass sheet that is clear as can be, through which we see exactly how it is going to end. But hope makes it seem like a kaleidoscope, where the images are vivid and open to interpretation. With these conflicts, emotions and contradictions, we as humans, choose to stay. We choose to stay for compassion, for what we believe in, for humanity. For we can be bigger than ourselves. For we the irrational hope that creeps in. For we are capable of being shaped by more than just what we want. For we are capable of accepting and going through with endings that are not happy.

We choose to stay for love.

    "It's in the eyes of the children

    As they leave for the very first time

   And it's in the heart of the soldier

   As he takes the bullet on the front line

   It's in the face of the mother

   As she takes the force of the blow

   And it's in the hands of the father

   As he works his fingers to the bone

   ...

   This is why we do it

   This is worth the pain

   This is why we fall down

   And get back up again

   This is where the heart lies

   This is from above

   Love is this, this is love"

- This=Love, The Script