The whole risk of going insane lies not in the loss of sanity, but in the loss of insanity somewhere along the way. It's scary to think of holding the memory of a passion, where it took you and what it made of you and not feel it. Who will you be then?

FRACTAL ART

And then there came forth a world where there were no boundaries that limited science from mathematics or arts from the sciences… all of them simply blended into one language and expressed themselves in a splash of colour, spiralled, and danced to celebrate the beauty of human thought. How could anyone ever not fall in love with the show?

By the way, this post is just written to share a few beautiful pictures I came across on the internet.. they are not mine, neither do I know who created them to share it with you. Apologies.

What if there was a war? A third one now?

What would I do?

Weird, isn’t it? How oil and dollar conversion rates in some far off country can change your dream, your love and all that you’ve wanted to do for so long. I hope there’s no war…

There’s so much chaos as it is. Corrupt politics, illogical customs, money, management, pressure, junk food, cement, so much of it.. that the very air makes me miserable. Sunsets, like censored adult scenes, golden light visible at the edges of those clouds, while the sun is swooped by a gray peeling building.

If I have to stay at home for another year and the year after without hope, I swear I’ll just pack a bag  and run away somewhere alone. I asked a lot from life, I had asked for both comfort and recklessness, freedom and dominance but don’t we all have to experience every edge of those emotions to understand what we truly need?

Approximately about half a dozen years ago, my brother told me that the only thing constant in life is change. And I had waited for it with a welcome heart, it never came. All those writers tell me that change is a matter of perspective, but to gain such a perspective, one still needs to explore and understand it. I agree that home is a warm place to be… but how can it ever be enough? Don’t we need to feel the speed, the excitement, and the pulse scrambling as you pack your bags knowing tomorrow you shall wake up in a world entirely different. A world that you have waited to touch, with both your mind and body, for half of your life-time. And it’s so busy in itself, it fails to notice your needs as always. You go running to it with feverish excitement, having failed to eat or sleep in the past few days and you end up being brushed off aside. There is no journey in store, the man takes you nowhere.  And  you could not let yourself anywhere away.. in the end you feel sorry for yourself and go off sulking in a corner. He just couldn’t come along, because he was too busy fighting in his dreams, lazy and unwilling to even notice your reality while you just waited for him as the hours flew by in a box hating him for all that he does, the number of times he stood you up, and yet you can’t let go, there is no one else to go to, and no place else to exist without him. You have fallen for him, irrationally, unreasonably and you continue to love the beauty of his voice when he opens his laughter to you loud. Even the memory of the echo of it in your heart can fuel your love for a life time.

You’d think he’d come after you, pleading, apologising for the stupidity and the violence, but he won’t, he’ll go on and you see him, planning to destroy himself, you know that no protests would make a difference, none of it. You cannot come in between the greed of a man and the illusions he chooses to trust in, no matter how hard you try. People stopped counting to him, they are measured by the worth of their investment. And you’re tired, bone-tired… and you just want everything he gave you to go back, just a little to the days you played in the streets, in the warm comfort of certainty believing that all adventure began with your footstep into adolescence… while the rest remained a dazzling audience. Why wasn’t it so?

I’m frustrated, why must he fight with himself, over oil, pipes and power. If only every one within a tangible geographical region like India just stopped using their cars and bikes, for one day, just one… the dollar shall fall.  He’ll start making sense. If done over a week, his arrogance might just be reduced to a joke. But who stops? Who leads? Who understands the pain of all those millions of star fish dropped over at bank… dead or dying? What sense of judgement could they appeal to?

Maybe it isn’t just change that is consistent, but apathy too… whatever the reason where could me and my sea of books explore hidden? Where would the waves dance and the golden sunsets spread to the extent of our perception. To drink from that deep blue starry sky to your heart's fill, where tomorrow once again has the capacity to bring salt spray to your lips, wind tugs at your pages like a jealous young girl, whispers and clamours in your ear till resisting no more your mind warms to peace, the lips sigh and the eyes close, and then she takes you. Fast through the clouds, laughing out loud and yet, you fly just skimming the sea, the waves assuring you of what is true and the wind filling you up with what is not. If a man dies, where will his dreams go? Into oblivion, never noticing the worth of their colours, why would anyone wake such a man, why do people wake up? Why do they not, sit back by the sea, sip a simple lemonade, read or listen to things that make them feel good. When the man had not yet achieved the equilibrium of his destiny why can’t he just continue to find out? Why must we fight?

Short Stories of Munshi Premchand

No romanticism. These are stories of regular life in India. In spite of, or because of which, they strike deep.

They are true, they are stories I have heard of around me and never noticed their exquisiteness, lost in the conundrum of life.

I wish that I had stayed, I wish that I noticed. But then again, if people like me could notice and talk about it, then what would be the beauty of Premchand.

Do read them, they are short and simple. They are small books, easy to carry, easy to read, easy to forget and light on your head. Till someday you’re cooking in the kitchen and you see the steam rise and spiral, in slow twirls, and you think of that strong unloved woman who lost her husband and grieve for her in the middle of a day. Or as you’re preparing for an exam, your eyes seem heavy and the mind feels so drugged, you just go on repeating that line in your head, as each time it makes lesser sense than the last that you thought was the poorest, you faze out and think of books, or exams, of schools, of the two boys who went to school, of one little boy who had been punished and the other who was rewarded and you tell yourself that life is unfair. And then laugh at your folly at trying to find justice in the world and in the end, gain a headache and get back. Once again, you attempt to make sense of that god-knows-why it had been created sentence.

The people from his book, they settle down slowly, and intermittently come back. But nevertheless he softly touches something deep inside you. Mostly, the something deep happens to be a sense of justice, hope, or simply your attachment to the stories of this land. They are the earth of India, the furtive gossip and the plaintive songs.

His stories range from those of childhood to feudalism, women, relationships, work, ethics, religion, love, loss, pain, hope and strength.

I am very sad to say that I’ve lived for 22 years, not knowing the magic of his thought. At least you don't go off living like me...

 

Read...
 

Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.”
— Neil Gaiman.

I like the stress on the read part, being repeated so many times.. and the aimless reading that I do.. comes close.. that's what I do to block out thoughts.. of a strong book.. so I read another, and then I go on reading one maddening book after another and the next one, grave serious books.. So strong.. I can feel something tear inside me.. the breathing seems to hitch and stop, hitch and stop.. till I roll down on the floor crying.. because the book killed some hope that I probably could have gone by without hoping.. a book I could've passed by without picking when I know it had something as painful... and they leave a void inside my head.. as soon as I finish them.. like you're not sure if you're living real.. but then again, you're sure too at the same time.. because it's a routine you're used to accepting. You must open your eyes, however glazed they are from all the dreaming.. and go on. Happy to have at least had a life time where you could touch their minds. All those amazing dead people.. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Hugo, Goethe, Buck..

 
Then I read the comics Garfield, Tintin, Chacha Choudary, Archies, Asterix and Obelix.. hahha.. the Powerpuff girls and so on.... listen to Enid Blyton's stories at bed time of Enchanted Woods and sweet school girls.. and calm down.. get into a soft love story or an animated movie with those Sakura petals falling slowly, ripples in the water and little girls, their kind parents and so on.. I gain peace.. like the sound of rain drops against my window when I'm cosily tucked up to my chin in a soft rug in my warm bed..


 I have no clue as to why I cannot stay at that equilibrium point.. but there slowly starts an itch, for something, a little more deep, wise or dramatic. And I tell myself, just one book, and I start with something a little serious, but not overly so. I feel refreshed, move it a notch higher, and higher and till I get to a very serious book.. followed by another.. again and again till it starts pounding in my head dhud dhud..

 
Recently I've asked myself as to why I read such books, any books for that matter.. I tell others , knowledge, wisdom whatever.. but I know that's not true.. I read to replace the emptiness that one book creates with another.. better the book gets, worse the emptiness it leaves at the last page.. and I don't know as to why the emptiness had to be there in the first place.. it all goes in circles, and if the cycle stops.. I don't know what I'd do with myself.. probably then I'd swim more.. or I'd  paint more.. but I'm not sure if they're as mindless or purposeless or so private. A picture, the minute you know that other eyes are going to see it, changes.. the innermost chord that it touches in you, gets veiled. Some stuff, you love so much, you won't have the strength to lay out all of it to judgement. Probably the artist needs to be mad to risk so much, or be utterly sure in his heart of hearts that he'll go unseen or unperceived. Books don't ask you for that.. there is no compulsion.. no risk of judgement.. no one judges you on what you feel for a book.. it is too easy to conceal. And the same thing with swimming, you don't have to be the fastest or the best or limit your emotions to the swimming pool timings. Books are definitely better, but that's not why I read them.. I don't think that's why anybody falls in love with anything.

 

In the name of 'Order'

"Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies it's cries."
- Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz.

Recently, I spotted a Spider web at my brother's corner, where he keeps his computer. Immediately I made a run for the broom stick. My brother stopped me and asked what harm did the web ever do to me? I responded saying that it was not neat, clean blah blah blah. He reminded me that it was a creature's home. The little blotch that it created in our anyway untidy room didn't make that much of a difference to us, while it meant life to the spider. He was telling about how it kept the mosquitoes at bay and so on. He had a point. I was too hot-headed to agree. As I kept listening to this, I kept justifying myself saying things like how it was my parent's home, and that mamma would definetely support cleaning that little corner, how my brother had an innately untidy nature, I told myself that he was too lazy to care and justified his laziness under the pretext of flexibility, kindness, acceptibility and so on while he hampered my desire for order in the name of rigidity and passiveness. Well, he did call me those names and a lot more, and they hurt. He usually come to a conclusion as to what I think, and why I think so and lays them out like facts. The names happent to be by-products of those observations. That hurts. On one hand I'm too proud to give him an explanation saying it wasn't so and on the other, too angry to nod and let it pass. And then we had a fight along the above lines, I ended up crying. He ended up close to screaming. I ran out saying I had whatever right I had and went to the broom. I couldn't take it. It was too horrible a thing to hold because when I talked about the web, I forgot about the spider that built it. I was just trained to think of it as something untidy, and I did. It wasn't that I harmed the spider. The rest of the argument, the twisting of it towards personal facts and so on.. had been to win the case, indeliberately of course. But I did that just the same.
So irrespective of all the why's and what's, I think, why did I feel so compelled to clean it in the first place? Why is the 'desire for order' a right thing? Is it not a pretext a person uses to fill his otherwise blank time into pushing people to do things they are not interested in doing? Most often I see that the people who push, who dictate/ discipline people aren't even pursuing their aims through the suppressed but just do so to show their superiority (?).
My aunts very often reproach my 70 year old grandmother for not keeping her house clean. Her house, them being visitors. And she accepts it and tries explaining it to them that she has been trying but there is no time only. They use the word 'Orderliness' or 'cleanliness' to dominate the lady, and the lady doesn't even try to hurt them back or utter a truth for the fear of offending them. She loves them too dearly. Inspite of them liking their mother, they fail to give her the minimum age reservation, carried away by their ideas of how things should be.
Isn't it the same reason that the RSS gives us to justify beating couples on Valentine's days or the girls who go to pubs? Isn't it the same reason that can be given by the English teacher who hit me on my knuckles with the edge of a scale till the hands bled and clotted, in my third class? I was about 8 years old with small pale trembling fingers as she 'disciplined' me one sharp rap after the other.
All kinds of publicly accepted violence in one way or the other, is justified in the name of 'order'. While in some cases we realize it, in some cases we don't.. realize the 'violence' of the act. At max., we simply use the 'order' justification to override the guilt, if we have any.
That things were meant to be that way and you are just doing your part in putting them so. 'For greater good' as a young Dumbledore would say.
But it remains that 'order', 'discipline', 'greater good', numerous 'rights' and 'wrongs' donot simply exist by themselves. They are a result of human perception. The opinion of majority. By inclining with which we possibly feel a vicarious sense of shared power and pride of belonging to the winning group. However, it must be remembered that, non confirmation to set standards is a silly and absolutely unjustified reason to hold someone at a fault.
If one agrees to the fundamental reasoning that there is no fixed way to see a world, (owing to the changes in environment, the government, the peer group, parenting, books and by the sheer presence of a multitude of psyches), does it not imply that there exist no single sense of an idea called 'order', or 'right' that justifies oppression? Does that not mean we can pursue our ideas of freedom and let ourselves be anything that we choose to be, without holding ourselves at fault for violating others ideas of 'order' as long as it does not lead to another creature's oppression? Does it not make one person free from boxed images of another person's and his own? Isn't it happier to not judge and not be, and live free, instead of trying to chain everybody to the invisible opinions of the 'majority'. Because there exist no majority that agree upon everything. No sect, home, nation or couple, that express the same opinions of right and wrong. Even assuming that they exist, it doesn't mean that the person who likes an orange is wrong because 9 out of 10 prefer apples. Such a situation doesnot in anyway justify the superiority of apples over oranges. Eventually, by time, there may be too many apples in the market and the majority might drift towards the oranges with one left back. It doesnot imply that the one left back is at fault, or at a greater realm, but that attributes are simply so. And that there is no 'right' answer that can take the place of tolerance.
P.S.1 : If one still finds a necessity to judge, is it not happier to frame your own values, keep them at a point fixed enough to act upon them, yet flexible enough to be modified, and not push anyone, ever, to act upon your whims?
P.S.2 : Yes, the spider lives and the web thrives :) Happy ending, isn't it? :D!?




 

Comin Thro' The Rye                                         

O, Jenny's a' weet, poor body,
  Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
  Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need the warl' ken?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
  The thing's a body's ain.

- Robert Burns

Just sharing a poem that I like a lot. Especially because every time I read the poem again, the meaning seems to change over horizons. And every meaning felt dear and close. Social stigma/ erotica ? I wonder what played in his head as he wrote it. Was he smiling because he knew how confused I'd be, was it why he put in the ambiguity, or was the ambiguity a shroud to hide something clear? How are we to know?

A facebook habit and times otherwise (and me degressing- a part that ought to be ignored or unposted or whatever?)

There are hundreds.. ohk.. wait, thousands of pictures literally where I smile with all my teeth, eyes and all. Most of the times when I sense a camera nearby, I play the part, like it was just an act, put my heart in and believe that I’m happy. I start the smile with my lips, show my pretty teeth and narrow my eyes. I’ve observed that people who crinkle their eyes a little when they smile happen to look very convincing.  The photos come beautiful. I am happy that they come so. And I forget them. It’s like they aren’t a part of me. Like the way tourists see things. They go to a place, do a thing, and tick it off their list. Very unlike the traveller that I had I always wanted to become. To live, breathe in, and make the place a part of me. That I guess is what’s wrong with my photos these days. They do not live. Like beautiful jewelry that steal eyes off the face. And then it all loses the point.

But then again, some pictures come, where you jump and you remember the way the wind felt in your hair, feet off the shoes, salt on your lips, skin warm from the setting sun- red over the water, the launch, stretch, jump and a friend who makes you feel right. Bright, in a way that I don't even realize that I'm glowing and laughing and storing the image beyond it’s frame without meaning to. Those pictures make me happy, a little sentimental as I see them. I own them up so much that they’re too meaningful to be exposed without their unique circumstances. They make me so happy that I feel sad, a sweet kind of sadness, full of longing. 

Sometimes it's gurgling sparkling humour or anger, involvement. Friends, love, silent, sweet, textured, funny ones and a million more.  

So you know, I've decided.. not that my decisions hold like Nagarjuna Cement or anything.. but yeah.. I kinda decided to post atleast one picture every week that means a lot to me and tell you the story. Why? Because when I write- I do not talk. And I've been talking too much these days.

( A result of joblessness.. Oops.. My final year finals begin in a week and look at the weird decisions I'm taking.. doesn't matter. What is important is that I write, and that I read. And more importantly learn. And share my process of learning and growing, with a future me and you. Now that I think of it, it's not like I learn much, or that I share the useful part of my learning.. I just like the drama of imagining you reading my page. Not that I write for you alone or that I morph any of my writings to please you. That's the best part of being read by you. I don't know what you expect from me, so I won't be trying to impress you in the way I'd like to. But I know, that if you've had the patience to read this page as far as this sentence, you must have considered my existence and that makes you worth being considered as a friend. )

P.S.: It is fun to dream with open eyes and touch a person, reach a place. Still such a pity that one can't dream a life away.. and then again, who can prove such silly stuff otherwise, that this whole life is not a dream? Just the way as you get closer to waking you gain more control on the dream.. maybe waking is dying and to dream is to live. Maybe it isn't so, it just is what it is. But how would you know?