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.

:)